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Updated: June 22, 2025
The accident of the Gila monster's bite alone had blocked her scheme to make him chance the sacrifice of his life in complete ignorance of her real purpose. With his hand disabled, he of course had become valueless at the time as a tool to rid her of Cochise. Yet there was the chance that he could be used in the Hole.
Years afterward one of them confessed the details of the plot. John Slaughter served two terms as sheriff, and when he retired from office Cochise County was as peaceable as any county in the whole Southwest. The old-timers who witnessed the passing of events during his régime invariably speak of him when they are telling of great gunmen.
At a word from Cochise, one of his men ran to fetch Elsie's brazier from the living room. In the bottom of the brazier was still a bed of glowing coals. The Apaches cut free one of Slade's feet and started to thrust it in upon the fire. Carmena flung up her hands before her eyes. "No! no, Cochise!" she cried. "Kill him he deserves to be killed! But not the torture I can't bear it!
Then he set forth one day to pay a visit to Cochise in person. It was a risky venture but the old-timers never balked at taking long chances; else they would never have come west of the Rio Grande.
While he argued slowly against the impatient utterances of Lieutenant Bascom, reading the growing intolerance in the other's eyes, Cochise remembered some of the stories which he had frowned down when his people told them. That was the state of affairs when Lieutenant Bascom, with the cocksureness of the young and the intolerance of the Easterner for frowzy Indians, made a decision.
"Well, we ought to make Athens to-night," replied Scott, thoughtfully. "Tom could start back with our wagon early in the morning. Cochise and this fellow I'm riding, Jasper, could make it." "They'll have to stay at the Sorias' all night. They'll be very uncomfortable." "Oh, I don't know. They're neither of them tenderfeet. They'll get along."
Elsie started a fire in it, placed large kettles of food on her brazier, and began to mix white flour dough. "Slade likes pies as much as Cochise and white biscuits. That's why he brings us flour. He says he's going to make me his cook. It always gets Cochise awful mad."
Whether they were to be used against the Apaches or to aid them against an outside posse was the question. If the first were the case, Lennon felt that he must be armed to fight. The thought of either Elsie or Carmena in the clutches of Cochise filled him with dread and horror. The suspense of the uncertainty was unbearable.
"It's along late in the mornin' when the stage strikes the upper end of Apache Canyon. This yere canyon is lately reckoned some bad. Nothin' ever happens on the line, but them is the days when Cochise is cavortin' 'round plenty loose, an' it's mighty possible to stir up Apaches any time a-layin' in the hills along the trail to Tucson.
Lennon was unarmed. There was no time for him to wrest the knife from the wounded Apache and slash the ladder ropes. Cochise clutched Pete's rifle and started to swing it around. His companion thrust out a revolver. The shot missed Lennon by inches as he leaped to the side opposite the living room.
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