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"Oh, you can't be going to to You know how angry Dad and Slade " For answer, Carmena thrust the key into the padlock. The unlocked door squeaked shrilly on its hinges as it swung in before the heave of Carmena's shoulder. Elsie peeped fearfully back past Lennon. Carmena pushed on into the secret room. Lennon had expected to see some kind of treasure chamber.
The present called him too loudly. Putting his hand in his bosom, and feeling the soft, knotted handkerchief, he thought: "Twenty dollars! It is not much! But it will buy food for many days for my Majella and for Baba!" EXCEPT for the reassuring help of Carmena's presence by her side, Ramona would never have had courage to remain during this long hour in the graveyard.
Lennon had to crook his right elbow through the rungs to get any use of his injured arm. But the riders racing swiftly across the head of the valley would soon be within short rifle range. Lennon's left hand was only a few rungs below Carmena's boot heels all the way up the ladder. At the top the girl pulled herself in over the worn stone sill of a massive-walled doorway.
"And these are the men that have stolen our lands, and killed my father, and Jose, and Carmena's baby!" thought Alessandro, as he ran swiftly back towards the graveyard. "And Father Salvierderra says, God is good. It must be the saints no longer pray to Him for us!" But Alessandro's heart was too full of other thoughts, now, to dwell long on past wrongs, however bitter.
Carmena's bosom was heaving with the things she longed to say and to ask; but all she could do was to press Ramona's hand again and again, and occasionally lay her soft cheek upon it. "Now, was it not the saints that put it into my head to come to the graveyard?" thought Ramona. "What a comfort to this poor heart-broken thing to see Alessandro! And she keeps me from all fear.
I wanted to see him;" and he rode away, Carmena's eyes following him with a covert gleam of triumph. When these last words of his were interpreted to her, she started, made as if she would run after him, but checked herself. "No," she thought. "It may be a lie. He may be an enemy, for all that. I will not tell. Alessandro wished not to be found. I will not tell."
The big trader swung around to stare down upon the guest. Lennon stood a good six feet in his boots, but Slade over-topped him by two or three inches and was no less thickset than tall. He looked Lennon straight in the eyes, crushed his left hand in a hearty grip, and greeted him in a tone of bluff cordiality. "So you're Carmena's new pard. Glad to see you in Dead Hole.
"Oh, Mena, please, please don't be cross with Jack! I love him so, and and he loves me back!" Lennon met Carmena's hard stare with a gaze no less cool and resolute. "Elsie is to be my wife," he declared. "I shall marry her as soon as possible." "Your wife? Marry her? You mean that?" "Yes." Carmena's fixed gaze wavered and sank.
Lennon frowned back at him but followed up the girl's lead. "Once saw a man taken with apoplexy stroke of paralysis, you know. Not paralyzed are you? Try lifting your arms and legs?" Slade glowered morosely, but caught the look of concern in Carmena's face and stiffened with sudden alarm. She watched with an intent scrutiny as he gingerly lifted one limb after another. "Bunk!" he growled.
But his moodiness had company. Elsie sat at table tearful-eyed and drooping. Carmena's eyes were somber and her expression was hard. In reply to Lennon's polite inquiry for Farley she coldly replied that her father was not hungry. Through one of the outer slit windows of the living room Lennon saw a thin column of smoke down the valley toward the corral.
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