Bloom of Cactus Part 12

"Cochise was hiding in Devil's Chute until you rode out of sight," he quavered. "He demanded tizwin. I convinced him that Slade took away every drop. He then threatened to seize you for his woman and torture Mr. Lennon, if I did not send down Elsie. I postponed the decision until your return."

"All right, Dad. We persuaded him to let us come up. But now we're here, I think we'll take no more rides till Slade comes."

Lennon freed his rifle from the belt and stepped in through the doorway after the father and daughter. His first glance inside the cliff house showed him Elsie labouring at the windla.s.s. He hastened to take the crank out of her plump little hands. His one-armed winding soon hoisted the saddles to the crane. The moment the load was safe, Elsie tremblingly lifted his hand to look at the blackening bruises left by Cochise's steel grip.

"Does it--does it hurt much, Jack?" she whispered. "Once I saw him snap a dog's leg."

Lennon smilingly denied the sharp pain of the strained ligaments. 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 rea.s.surance 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. Elsie displayed a high stack of women's magazines, for which Carmena was a regular subscriber. Every three or four months they were brought in from the nearest post office by Slade.

Elsie fairly showered Lennon with nave questions about the faraway land of cities and green trees and vast stretches of water. Aside from the magazines and what had been told her by Farley and Carmena, she had no knowledge of the world outside the Hole.

Beneath Carmena's quiet manner Lennon discovered an interest as keen as that of her foster-sister and very much more intelligent. She had childhood memories of Ohio. Much to his distaste, she persuaded Farley to remain most of the day with them in the living room.

But as the wreck that once had been a man listened to Lennon's talk, his bent shoulders began to straighten and his drink-bleared eyes cleared. By evening he was talking as one man of culture to another. He even showed occasional flashes of a once brilliant mind.

Carmena took care to keep her father stimulated with frequent cups of coffee. The whiskey flask appeared to be quite forgotten. After supper, at his suggestion, Elsie brought out an old dog-eared set of Shakespeare. In the flaring light of a homemade tallow candle he read parts of "King Lear" and "Hamlet," with his rapt eyes frequently off the page for a dozen lines or more.

Lennon's aversion to the broken old drunkard had by now mellowed to tolerance and a degree of pity. He realized what the man had been before sickness had pulled him down and drink degraded him. At times Farley's whiskey-shattered mind tended to wander. But Lennon good-humouredly helped Carmena to bridge the gaps. When her father's face became gray and drawn, the girl said he was sleepy and took him off to bed.

She returned, to find Elsie perched on the arm of Lennon's chair. They were both peering at a magazine ill.u.s.tration, with their heads so close together that Elsie's yellow curls brushed Lennon's cheek.

The warm glow in Carmena's eyes faded; her smiling lips tightened. Her voice vibrated with a touch of sharpness:

"Sleep time, Blossom."

Elsie sprang to her light feet with docile obedience. But she lingered to eye Lennon wistfully as he stood up to meet Carmena's level glance.

"Aren't you going to say good night, Jack?" she coaxed. "Don't--don't brothers ever kiss their sisters good night?"

Lennon cast a half-doubtful glance at the girl's unsmiling foster-sister, hesitated, caught Elsie's golden head between his hands and bent to kiss her forehead. She drew back, overcome with sudden shyness.

Carmena held out a firm hand to Lennon.

"Good night, Jack--and thank you for--Dad. It's two years since he has been anything like to-day."

"The pleasure was mine," replied Lennon.

His tone was not uncordial, but his eyes had turned to watch Elsie dance across to one of the inner doorways that led into a short pa.s.sage.

Carmena swung around after her foster-sister, with her head well up and her boot heels briskly clicking on the stone floor.

The discovery at his bedside of his own clothes thoroughly cleaned and his boots well oiled added a touch of grat.i.tude to his tender, compa.s.sionate, delightful thoughts of Elsie. He lay awake for an hour or more, dwelling upon her dainty beauty and fascinating innocence.

But the bleak gray light of dawn brought sober reflections. What interest could he have in the young girl other than to help her escape from the savage Cochise? She was a waif, of unknown parentage. Mentally she was little more than a child, and all her conscious experience had been confined to the environment of this crude desert valley.

Lennon came out to breakfast with scant appet.i.te. But his moodiness had company. Elsie sat at table tearful-eyed and drooping. Carmena's eyes were somber and her expression was hard. In reply to Lennon's polite inquiry for Farley she coldly replied that her father was not hungry.

Through one of the outer slit windows of the living room Lennon saw a thin column of smoke down the valley toward the corral. Carmena answered his unspoken question:

"They're brand-blotting the last bunch of cattle brought into the Hole."

"Brand-blotting?"

"Yes. You wouldn't care to see it--especially when Cochise takes part."

Elsie uttered a smothered little gasp that quickened again all of Lennon's repressed tenderness and compa.s.sion. He looked around, trying to think of some means to divert her. His glance fell upon one of the bowls of ancient pottery.

"May I ask you to show me the rest of this cliff house? Or are the other rooms in ruins?"

Elsie instantly brightened.

"Oh, no, course not. Only some of the top ones have tumbled in. Dad won't mind if we show Jack the mummies, will he, Mena?"

"Fetch candles," directed Carmena, clearly as relieved as the others at the thought of diversion.

They started to ramble through the interior of the cliff house, taking with them a light ladder to climb to the upper stories. In the lower rooms at the near end were stored quant.i.ties of corn on the cob, dried fruit, and vegetables, honey, dried beef, bacon, and other foods. The family was sufficiently stocked to withstand a half year's siege.

The upper rooms were for the most part empty. Others showed only fragments of broken pottery. Some had been broken in through their side walls or were open above and littered with the debris of their roofs.

Lennon surmised the existence of several sealed lower chambers, at the back.

Carmena led the way down again and zigzagged through connected rooms toward the far end of the great community house. To the rear of the front row of rooms was a large chamber heaped with cliff-dweller mummies.

"Slade had them all dumped in here," explained Carmena. "Like the Indians, Elsie is still scared of them. But they have been dead a long time, poor things. They'll not hurt anybody. They'd protect you, Blossom, if Cochise should get up the cliff and you hid in that corner.

He thinks them bad medicine. Slade laughs at Indian spirits. He says that corn spirits are the only ones that can put a spell on a man."

"They--they're an awful hold on Dad," quavered Elsie. "He didn't ever used to speak cross to me."

In the flickering candle light Carmena's eyes glinted with a look that Lennon thought to be fierce resentment. She thrust past him to the doorway.

"Wait. I'll be back," she called.

Elsie was tremblingly eager to follow, but Lennon lacked her fear of the desiccated builders of the cliff house. At one end of the room he had come upon what to him was a very interesting heap of their no less ancient possessions. Most of the beautiful old pottery had been smashed, but among the fragments Lennon found several ceremonial stones and tablets, a bone awl, many obsidian arrowheads, and a few broken turquoise ornaments.

His search was cut short by the return of Carmena. She carried a modern Indian basket-vase that would have been very convenient for holding Lennon's collection. But she gave him no chance to ask for it. She stared in at him and Elsie from the doorway, her dark eyes glittering strangely in the candle light. Her lips were hardset in a bitter smile.

"He's--asleep. Come," she said.

Lennon followed the eager Elsie, who was vastly relieved to leave the mummy vault. Yet she was no less mystified than Lennon by her foster-sister's manner. She shrank back behind him when, after pa.s.sing through two corn-stacked rooms near the far end of the cliff house, Carmena stopped before an entrance that had been closed with a door of heavy planks. The thick iron hasp was secured with a big padlock.

Carmena handed her candle to Lennon and took a key from her basket.

"Oh, Mena!" whispered Elsie. "Oh, you can't be going to--to---- You know how angry Dad--and Slade----"

For answer, Carmena thrust the key into the padlock.