CROOKED WAYS
At gray dawn Elsie started to go out into the living room. Midway of the
dusky passage her foot struck against a roundish object. She bent down
to look. A dim form was lying in the passage, with feet against the
chair that blocked the outer doorway.
The girl's half shriek brought Lennon up at a bound, his revolver out.
"Who's there?" he demanded.
"Oh--oh, Jack!" the girl sobbed her relief.
He clasped her to him protectingly.
"All right, sweetheart--all right," he said, soothingly. "You see I have
been here on watch. Slade---- But that is past. I see light outside. He
will soon be leaving with me."
Elsie clutched him, in renewed panic.
"But I'm afraid! I don't want you to leave me, Jack. You'll never, never
come back! I want to go along, too. If you leave me, I'm awful afraid
Cochise'll catch me!"
"You dear little frightened Blossom! But I cannot take you now. You must
stay with Carmena. She will keep you up here, safe from Cochise. I will
come back--never fear. I will come back and take you away."
"Take me--away from Dead Hole? Oh, how wonderful! Mena says I came from
outside, where are all the book things and people--like you. I can't
remember, but I'll just love to go out and see the wide world with
you--and Mena--and Dad. Only Dad doesn't want to leave the Hole at all."
"You shall go with me out of this place," replied Lennon. "I will bring
the sheriff and have him arrest every member of this band of outlaws."
The rug curtains of the inner room flung apart. Carmena sprang out into
the passage. She drew her foster-sister away from Lennon with a grasp as
resolute as it was gentle.
"Go and start breakfast, Blossom," she directed. "The sooner they leave
the better."
Elsie darted to the doorway and disappeared. Lennon started after her.
He was checked by a low-spoken command from Carmena:
"Stop. I want a show-down from you, Jack Lennon. I heard what you said
about the sheriff. Good thing Slade wasn't in earshot. You'd have a
bullet in you by now. You may yet. What are you aiming to do?"
"You say you heard me," said Lennon. "I spoke clearly."
"Do you count Dad in the gang?"
"Don't you?"
In the brightening light of red dawn Lennon saw the girl's eyes cloud
with anguish. At sight of her grief and suffering a wave of compassion
surged up within him. The flood overwhelmed and submerged all his
prejudice against her.
He started to express his pity and sympathy--only to be checked before
the words could leave his lips. The girl's eyes were ablaze. Her mouth
straightened in resolute lines.
"All right, Mr. Lennon," she said. "You've shown your hand. Here's mine:
You'll give your pledge to leave the sheriff out of this deal, or you'll
never reach the trail."
"Very kind of you, indeed, to warn me, Miss Farley. I presume you will
tell Slade and Cochise to be ready if I attempt to escape."
Though the girl's lips remained firm, her eyes again dilated with
anguish. She turned about and groped her way into the inner room. Lennon
felt an odd mingling of shame and regret, of anger and an emotion that
went far beyond sympathy.
Elsie soon came with a bowl of coffee, which Carmena had sent for Lennon
to give to Slade. There was no need of words to make clear her wish to
be rid of the visitors. Lennon found Slade lying as torpid as Farley.
But the hot coffee roused him to morose alertness.
Breakfast was served by Carmena, though her excuse for the absence of
Elsie failed to satisfy the surly-tempered trader. The younger girl did
not appear until Slade dropped the rope ladder and went scrambling down
the cliff face. Carmena was already lowering Lennon's outfit to the
trader's Navaho followers, who had come at dawn.
With a last word to Elsie to be brave but careful until his return,
Lennon gently freed himself from her clinging embrace, put his arm back
in the sling, and stepped into the loop of the hoist rope. The girls
lowered him to the cliff foot.
The Navahos, who were dressed as Mexicans, already had the prospecting
outfit lashed on a pack horse. At Lennon's request, Slade derisively
ordered one of them to hold the tenderfoot's pony. Lennon nursed his arm
and climbed into his saddle with a show of difficulty. The more awkward
and disabled he could make himself appear to his travelling companions
the better would be his chances later.
Slade put spurs to his big horse and galloped off down the valley,
leaving Lennon to trail behind with the Navahos. The pace did not
slacken until the party raced down into the lower canon and around a
double turn to the drop in the bed.
On the brink of the cliff was set a crane similar in design to the one
at the cliff house but much larger. Hauled back, it was hidden from
below by a corner of rock. Swung out, its block and tackle, operated by
a one-pony windlass, could hoist or lower a two-pony load in the light
basket cage woven of wire and withes. One of the three Apache guards
hitched his pony to the windlass.
Slade went down first, with his horse and Lennon and one of the Apaches.
Before the horse was led through the cage door out upon the smooth
ledges at the foot of the cliff the Apache fastened thick pads of
rawhide upon his hoofs. This was also done for the ponies as they swung
down, two by two, in the cage.
Lennon had noted the arrangement and working of the crane and hoist with
the eye of an engineer. When he turned his attention to the hoof pads,
Slade gratuitously explained that the rawhide was needed to keep the
horses from slipping on the ledges of the cliff. Lennon took this with a
careless nod.
He had already inferred the true reason for the practice. The ledges
were neither slippery nor steep. But scratches made by ironshod hoofs on
the rocks might have led expert trackers to suspect the hoisting of
stolen stock up the cliff.
Down where the bed was of loose stones and gravel a rough trail from the
lower canon twisted up a side gorge. Pursuers trailing a bunch of stolen
cattle or horses would of course turn up the gorge. A glance or two at
the sheer thirty-foot wall of the upstep in the bed of the main canon
would convince the most astute of cowboys that not even a puma could go
up that way.
At the edge of the trail the Apache took off the hoof-pads and returned
to the cage. He was being hoisted up the cliff when Lennon loped after
Slade down-trail around a sharp bend in the canon.
A hard ride down the canon for five miles or more, then up a steep break
and across cedar-dotted mesas, brought the party out to the Moqui trail
shortly after mid-morning. Lennon frowned at the clear-marked trail.
His plans as first made had been to cut and run for the railway the
moment he should reach the main trail. But he had discovered that his
pony was the slowest of the mounts and that the four Navahos always kept
behind him. He could neither drop to the rear nor race ahead of Slade's
big American thoroughbred.
Slade turned to the right, away from the railway, and pushed the pace
for another hour. The trail led through a rather wide valley. Near the
head they came to a well-watered oasis of corn and bean fields. Across
from the trail stood an abandoned Moqui pueblo.
The ruins had been sufficiently restored to house Slade's trading
establishment and the score or more families of his Navaho cowpunchers.
The small storeroom was crowded with bales and boxes, but Lennon noticed
that behind the front piles many of the boxes were empty. This
legitimate business was more or less of a sham to cover the whiskey
running.
Slade's quarters in a half-detached group of stone rooms were somewhat
incongruously furnished. A rather handsome but sad-eyed young Indian
woman in a dirty blue wrapper covertly "dished up" a noon meal for her
master and Lennon on the fly-covered table.
The greasy warmed-over chile con carne, the half-cooked tortillas and
the muddy coffee accounted for Slade's praises of Elsie as a cook. The
Indian girl slunk and cowered under his curses. Whenever she passed him
she cringed as if expectant of a blow. Lennon was doubly relieved when
Slade's impatience to be off on the search for the lost lode hurried him
out into the clean open air.
The horses had been fed and watered and were waiting near the spring,
beside a young peach tree. Slade paused to bellow guttural commands at a
Navaho sheepherder who was driving a small flock down the valley.
Lennon hastened ahead toward the spring, eager to seize his opportunity.
He had only to secure his rifle, leap on Slade's big thoroughbred, and
race away down the back trail. The American horse could easily outrun
the Indian ponies. Once beyond rifle range of the pueblo his escape
would be certain.
The horses were soon only a few steps away. Lennon nerved himself for
the dash. From behind a scraggly bunch of scrub that appeared too thin
to screen even a coyote rose all four of Slade's personal retainers.
Though they were as stolid and silent as wooden Indians, each had his
rifle in hand. Lennon thought he caught a glitter of suspicion in their
covert glances.
Bitter as was his disappointment, he was quick to make the best of the
situation. A sharp command and jerk of his thumb toward Slade led them
to believe he had come for them at the order of their master.
Slade hailed the tenderfoot with bluff cordiality when the mounted party
loped up the slope to him.
"Gitting het up, huh? You act like an old-timer on a gold stampede.
Never before knew a prospector to go loco over copper."
"You should bear in mind I am an engineer, not a prospector," replied
Lennon. "If I am successful over this copper project and it proves to be
as large as I have been led to expect, I shall have won a place well up
in my profession."
Slade grunted contemptuously and spurred his horse into a gallop. Within
a mile he turned off trail to cut across country. Beyond the first
mesas, which were a part of the trader-cowman's cattle range, came a
jumbled waste of crags and broken ridges.
On the edge of this devil's dooryard of bare rocks and no less dry and
sterile ravines Slade gave over the lead to the oldest of his Navahos. A
white man could have found his way only by blind chance through the maze
of twisted clefts that seamed the unscalable cliffs and crags.
Lennon soon lost all sense of direction. He realized that he could not
hope to find his way out of these worst of bad lands without a guide. He
must put off his plans to escape until the return to the trail. He began
to surmise that Cripple Sim's inability to relocate the lost lode may
not have been due altogether to his maiming by Apache arrows.
But this jagged waste that had kept the secret of the mine hidden for a
generation would offer an impassable barrier to any railway. Unless an
easier route could be found, the entire project was already proved
hopeless. Even a vein of solid copper could not be worked at a profit if
the metal had to be packed out on burros.
Yet there remained the chance of another route to the lode; and Lennon
was not minded to confide his disappointment to Slade. He spurred his
pony to keep pace with the others. The sooner the mine was relocated and
the party back at the trail, the sooner he could make his attempt to
escape. After Elsie had been freed from her dangerous prison in Dead
Hole he could take time to search for a feasible route to the mine.
Toward sundown the old Navaho led the party clear of the shattered rock
maze and up the side of a small mesa. From the table top Lennon saw the
mighty towers of Triple Butte startlingly close ahead. Slade reined in
to stare hard-eyed at the engineer.
"There's your butte," he rumbled. "Which side do we head?"
"North," replied Lennon, without a moment's hesitation.
Though he had been lost since leaving the trail, he clearly remembered
all the directions given by the old prospector as to the position of the
lode in relation to Triple Butte. From the top of the mesa practical
railway routes appeared to offer to the east and north of the great
butte.
Lennon studied the landscape until he noticed that the Navaho leader had
headed south of east instead of north. Certain that his reply to Slade
had been misunderstood, he spurred forward to explain that they were
veering away from the lost lode.
Slade rode on without a word of acknowledgment. The presence of the
Navahos made his contemptuous silence doubly galling. Lennon took it as
a foretaste of what was to come and masked his chagrin. For Elsie's
sake, he could not afford to quarrel with Slade at this stage of the
dangerous game that must be played.