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We have to leave Dad's ranch." The belt was already fast about Lennon's waist. Elsie appeared, dragging the saddlebags and the girth. Lennon brought the wide cinch to wrap around Carmena's waist. The double fold lashed fast with the straps made a broad stiff corsage support for her wrenched back.
He stared blankly at the big object in the centre of the room a complex object that somehow reminded him of his laboratory experiments in college. A step nearer, with his own and Carmena's candles upraised, gave him a clear view of the bulging copper boiler, the tubes and worm and fermenting vats. The air of the room was pervaded with a sour smell.
Carmena hooked the ladder over a peg at the side of the doorway and forcibly dragged Lennon out of the opening. Two more bullets whizzed in, one of them angling up close over the sill. Had it come a moment sooner Lennon must have been struck. Carmena's hand shook and her voice quavered, though she sought to speak in an unconcerned tone: "That's warmer than I expected at this stage of the game.
And Mena she'll go along too and help take care of me and love us? Won't she? You know I couldn't ever bear to go away and leave Mena." Along with his amusement over the child's naïve suggestion Lennon was conscious of an odd thrill. He remembered the look in Carmena's dark eyes when she saved him from the poison of the Gila monster and at the end of their desperate flight across the Basin.
Carmena swung in the crane and freed the rope the moment Lennon eased off. Slade was wheezing as if almost suffocated. At Carmena's urging, Lennon helped her drag the stupefied man back into the living room. The girl ran to fetch a bowl of water. "Loosen your clothes," she whispered in Lennon's ear. "Hide your moccasins look as if you'd just jumped out of bed get your arm back in the sling.
"It is Carmena whom I am going to marry, Elsie. Remember that." The girl looked at him, blushing and dimpling with shy delight. "Oh, it'll be ever so much nicer, 'cause then I can be just your dear little sister, and Mena loves you a thousand times more." Carmena's cheeks flooded with scarlet, but she faced Lennon with a look of unflinching candour. "Yes, Jack, I do. I tricked you into the Basin.
He had seen many darting lizards that day. But none had moved more swiftly than the clumsily built Gila monster now darted at the disturbers of his torpor. There was no time for thought. Lennon sensed that the reptile aimed to strike at Carmena's bared wrist. "Jump!" he cried, and flung himself forward to block the attack with his out-thrust right hand.
About advertising Elsie, we tried that some. There was no answer. We think she belonged to a stray family, out prospecting. The others must have died of thirst." "Or were murdered by Cochise," put in Lennon. Carmena's eyes narrowed. "Maybe maybe not. It was just after he jumped the Reservation. But he was only a sulky schoolboy then, playing hookey. Besides, he had not harmed the child.
Had not Carmena's intention been to have her savage accomplices capture him and hold him for ransom? The game might well have included a pretended capture of herself, so that chivalry would lead him to pay a larger ransom. No Elsie's explanation was the more probable. And he could trust her truthfulness.
Carmena's eyes flashed. "No. They shall not make another drop of poison in that devilpot. But if we blew it up now, Slade will put the blame on us Tell you what I'll just misplace the key. That will give us time to act after Slade comes." "Have I your promise you will not try to get him into that death trap?" "Yes." Back in the living room they became aware that the day was almost gone.
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