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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.
Carmena was standing in the doorway, with her head bent. As Lennon looked, she straightened and came toward him, cold-eyed and determined. "What are you doing, Jack Lennon?" she demanded. "I trusted you. I believed that you were not the kind to take advantage of Blossom. I thought you " Elsie struggled free from Lennon to fling her arms about her foster-sister.
While her back was turned Farley winked leeringly at the visitor and offered him a half-emptied whiskey flask. Carmena was in time to see Lennon refuse the drink. Her fatigue-bent shoulders straightened to a deep-drawn breath, and her sunken eyes glowed softly.
All I need do is catch a pony, ride down the valley, and haul up the lift in the lower cañon." "Of course!" agreed Carmena. "What a loon I've been not to think of it myself! Of course, Cochise would have done it if we hadn't got the bunch up the cliff when we did. It will take the Navahos till noon to-morrow to ride all the way back and round to the head of Hell Cañon."
Lennon took the candle from Carmena. "Permit me to carry the light for you, Slade. Your hand is too unsteady. I'm not so sure about Miss Farley's explanation of your mishap. I still believe you had a stroke not as heavy a stroke as it might have been not fatal, you know, but heavy enough to put you down and out." Slade was staggering to his feet.
When he came running back into the cañon mouth Carmena had the canteen swung to the saddlehorn and was lacing on her boots, in place of the torn moccasins. After a last deep drink from the pool and another sombreroful for the pony, the little dam was carefully scraped off the ledge and the clay covered with a loose boulder. The Apaches would be able to lap the wet stone but not to drink.
But inwardly his anger against Cochise hardened into enmity as he looked into the girl's innocent eyes and recalled that the brutal Apache considered her his woman. His reassurance brought instant relief to her volatile mind. She began to chatter gaily about how she and Carmena would entertain him during the wait for Slade. In this the older girl joined with cordial heartiness.
Time and again he stumbled and would have sunk down upon the hot sand but for the convulsive clutch of his left hand on the pony's mane and the strong support of Carmena at his other side. He was giddy and nauseated and leaden-footed. Every step required an agonized effort of will power. Yet the exertion of walking proved the best of treatment for him.
Though Lennon's throat was parched, he sought to refuse the offered canteen, which was still half full. Carmena dropped it at his feet and began to zigzag down the mesa side. Noon had passed before they gained the foot of the steep slope.
Lennon needed no verification of the tragedy that the girl evidently remembered as having occurred only a few hours past. Before his mental vision rose the gruesome images of the skeleton at the foot of the mine slide and the skeleton in the cabin. "I've been blind," he murmured to Carmena.
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