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Updated: June 13, 2025
The meeting was by no means unpleasant. After a short pause Carmena led the visitors in from the big anteroom. Cochise cast a covert glance at Elsie, and with an air of stolid indifference to the others sat down at the table. Slade was neither silent nor stolid. He stared hard about the living room and bellowed over to Elsie, who was raking her pies out of the dutch oven: "Ho, howdy, Cookie Gal!
Farley feared his associates, and they would permit him and Carmena to leave the Hole only one at a time. On the other hand, when he first met Carmena, she had been alone on the trail, only a few miles from the railway. Why had she not galloped to the nearest station and led a sheriff's posse to free her father and sister? She knew that Cochise and his fellows were "bronchos."
Though neither could see the slightest sign of lurking Indians, Carmena hastened to lead her pony across the ridge crest and down the other side. When safe below the skyline the girl broke into a dog trot. She held to the pace, on a long slant along the ridge side, until they came up into the mouth of a small cañon. Between the bald ledges of the dry channel were bars of sand and gravel.
Lennon had counted upon this dread and uncertainty of the young Navaho. He flung out his hands to him in urgent gestures. "Quick quick!" he cried. "Cut loose the ladder! Cochise will kill you! He's coming! Cut the ladder!" The Indian shrank back to peer at the inner openings of the cliff house. "Carmena him no lie," he muttered. "Cochise kill 'um Slade." "But you first!" urged Lennon. "He will "
So that is the way our new graveyard was begun, my father and the little baby; it is the very young and the very old that have the blessed fortune to die. I cannot die, it seems!" "Where did they bury Jose?" gasped Ramona. "In Temecula," said Alessandro. "Mr. Rothsaker made two of his men dig a grave in our old graveyard for Jose. But I think Carmena will go at night and bring his body away.
A moment later the ladder came slithering down the cliff face. "Cut That face in the window Cochise! He's not dead!" cried Carmena. "Oh, Jack, if you hadn't come down fast! He tried to make you fall!" Lennon was already running out to aim his rifle at the doorway from which the ladder had fallen. There was no sign of the ladder-cutter.
The Navahos seized him on either side and forced him down again. He caught a glimpse of Carmena futilely clutching for Slade's throat. The big man burst into a bellow of contemptuous laughter and flung her from him. "Bah!" he jeered. "What you bucking about? Don't figger I want you any more, do you?" "No no, of course not. I But Jack's head If you hogtie him " "Got to be kept quiet, ain't he?
Carmena gravely drew a sheath knife from the pocket of her skirt. "He knows I usually carry my revolver," she said. Lennon stared. "Your revolver wasn't in your pocket? Yet you sheathed your rifle!" "Didn't you notice his men had their guns pointed at us across their laps? Sheathing mine was what gave me the chance to bluff him. It's all right now. He won't try any more tricks this time."
The lawyer-ranchman appeared to cringe, yet he held to his position and even attempted an ingratiating smile as he rasped out a half-whispered, "G'day." Lennon gave him a curt nod and bent down to peer into the deep entrance. Carmena did not glance around. If she heard him, she gave no heed.
She says you want to dicker with us." "I said he might want to," murmured the girl. Slade grinned genially at the guest's bandaged arm. "No might about it, Carmena. Your dad came into Dead Hole for his health. But I figger Lennon here knows it ain't no general health resort."
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