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Updated: June 13, 2025
Elsie, cleared of any kinship to Farley, at once became in his thoughts a being of finer nature than her foster-sister. In contrast, Carmena now seemed to show distinctly the taint of Farley's blood. Her frank manner took on the tinge of boldness. Her vigour and strength now seemed mannish, if not coarse. Might not what he had taken for high spirit and courage be no more than callous hardihood?
But they've still to find Elsie no thanks to you!" He drew away as if her touch were a pollution. She flushed, hesitated, and opened her lips to speak. With a burst of yells, the Apaches rushed in, dragging Slade in their midst. At sight of Lennon, Cochise wrinkled his bruised forehead in a scowl of evil satisfaction. But when he swaggered forward he looked only at Carmena.
Carmena flung herself upon her knees and caught up his torn hand to her red lips. She sucked hard at the wounds With the suddenness of a dropped veil, the hot, white glare of the desert noon went black before Lennon's eyes. He sank down upon the sand, unconscious.
The ponies slowed to a walk up the side of an enormous natural pothole, which the ancient builders had converted into a storage reservoir by means of an earthen dam. Carmena jumped her pony across the intake canal and loped ahead toward the cliff house.
When Lennon stood up and dusted off his hands, no slightest sign was left to betray that the charge of dynamite had been planted. "There you are," he said. "The fuses are cut for fifteen seconds, and they will start burning as soon as the tinder is fired." "You're sure the boiler will be blown up?" queried Carmena. "Your dynamite is out from under it, and there's all the rock in the way."
In all that wide waste of desolation no trickling rill or even the smallest of pools glinted under the fierce rays of the mid-day sun. Over beyond the north side of the Basin, above the lesser peaks and buttes, appeared a higher mountain. The top, dwarfed by distance but as clear cut in outline as a cameo, was divided into three thick tower-like masses. "There's your Triple Butte," said Carmena.
A small stream was flowing through it, down around the left corner of the cañon mouth. Carmena noticed the look of professional interest that Lennon fixed upon the ancient water way. "You're an engineer," she said. "Pretty good piece of irrigation work for those old mummies, isn't it? All we had to do was rebuild the intake dam and clean out the ditch. Here's the tank."
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.
Immediately after the armistice Carmena and Elsie went down to attend the goats and chickens that were penned in small enclosures a short distance up-valley from the cliff house. The girls also gathered a supply of fresh vegetables from a nearby kitchen garden. At dusk the rope ladder was hauled up. In the morning Carmena took Lennon to see the valley.
"Don't you understand, dear? My back it must be broken. We must think of Blossom. You must hurry off with her while there is time. Isn't it good that you love her?" Lennon uttered a choking cry and caught the girl up in his arms. He clasped her to him in an agony of love and remorse. "Carmena! To have thought so wrong of you of you who were giving your life! I've been a fool a blind fool.
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