Bloom of Cactus Part 31

"You----" broke in Lennon. "Can you think I would leave you here?"

"There's no other way. My back--I can't sit up, and my legs are numb. I can't move them."

"I'll carry you, and there's the hoist rope."

"No use. I couldn't ride."

"I'll carry you," repeated Lennon.

The girl laid a gently caressing hand on his arm.

"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. Forgive me! That child---- My G.o.d!

I can't give you up--I'll _not_ give you up!"

"Then--you do--love me, Jack," sighed the girl. Her arms crept up about his neck. "You do love me--I'm glad now you did not let me die--at once--in there."

"Not at all!" vowed Lennon. "Even though your back---- You'll not die."

"I can't live--like this, dear. And there's Blossom. You must get her away before Slade's men---- But first find me my little pistol. I gave it to Blossom--to use if there was no other way left. Leave it with me, and hurry off with her while there's time. Hurry!"

Lennon's clasp tightened.

"No. I'll never leave you--never while----"

From the inner rooms of the cliff house came a burst of piercing childish shrieks. Carmena twisted about in Lennon's suddenly loosened embrace. There was a sound like the snap of a dry twig. Carmena screamed and fell over sideways in a deathlike faint.

CHAPTER XXIII

OUT OF THE PAST

As Lennon knelt beside the swooning girl the shrieks rang nearer. Elsie came flying through the rear opening, in wild fright. Her dress was torn and her yellow hair full of dust and wooden bits. Lennon sprang up, certain that the Apache who had been wounded in the kiva was pursuing her.

In her flurry she appeared to heed nothing until almost upon the body of Cochise. But one glance at the ghostly whites of the Apache's upturned eyes sent her shrinking backward, stricken to horrified silence. Her wild stare fixed first upon Carmena and then s.h.i.+fted to Lennon. With a shriek, she flung herself upon him, clutching him about the body in frantic terror.

"Oh! oh! Papa! Papa! Papa!" she screamed, in a childish treble. "Bad Indian! He's hurting mamma! He's choking mamma!"

Lennon pressed her face hard against his breast to stifle her shrieks.

"Be still," he shouted. "Stop that noise. You're safe. Be still. Hear me? You're safe."

Checked by the sternness of his voice the distracted girl hushed her hysterical cries. When he repeated that she was safe, she at last seemed to grasp the fact. Yet she continued to cling fast to him.

"Tell me quick," he demanded. "Is an Indian following you?"

"No-no-no!" she babbled. "It's mamma--he's choking her! He----"

The tremulous words broke off in a gasp of astonishment. The wild blue eyes stared up at Lennon in bewildered lack of recognition.

"Why--why, you're not my papa!" she cried.

"Of course not, Blossom. I'm Jack--Brother Jack. Don't you know me?"

The girl shrank back.

"You're not my brother. Let me go. I haven't any brother. I never saw you before."

"Oh, Blossom!" came a cry beside them.

Lennon's glance darted aslant.

Carmena had risen to a sitting position with her arms outstretched toward Elsie. Her face was white from pain, and she was swaying--but she was sitting upright. Realization of what that meant burst upon Lennon like a flood of golden suns.h.i.+ne.

He dropped on his knees to fling a supporting arm about the girl's shoulders.

"Dearest, it's not true--not true that you---- Your back! You're able to rise!"

Carmena lowered her gaze from her bewildered sister.

"What, I----" she murmured. "Why, so I am! There was a snap, and then, oh, such a pain! It must be the bone had only slipped. That twist snapped it back into place."

"But the pain, dear?"

"It's getting better. It's good pain. It proves I'm alive again--all alive. Raise me up, Jack. I want to see if I can stand."

He lifted her with utmost gentleness. Her teeth clenched upon her lip.

But, once she was upright, the pain again eased. She was delighted to find that she could stand with no more than half support from him.

"Yes--all alive," she repeated and she turned to Elsie. "With a brace I'll be able to rise. Blossom, you can bind on----"

"I'm not Blossom. I'm--I'm Elsie Lane," faltered the younger girl. "And you're not my mamma, no more than he's my papa."

Lennon and Carmena stared at each other questioningly. The girl seemed rational, yet clearly she recognized neither of them. Carmena was first to catch an inkling of the truth.

"No, dear," she soothed. "Of course we're not your papa and mamma. Of course you're Elsie Lane. But we want to help you. We are your friends, dear. What has happened? Tell us."

The girl stared from them to her surroundings, more than ever bewildered. But the hideous gape of Cochise's mouth and his upturned gla.s.sy eyes drew from her a whimpering cry. She shrank around to hide behind Lennon and clutch his arm.

"Oh! That man--that bad Indian--he came after papa found old Sim's mine, and mamma fed him, and--and then he choked her, and I ran to get papa, and papa was lying down at the bottom, with an awful red hole in his head--and I ran back to mamma--and she was dead. The bad Indian was chasing our ponies. I was 'fraid he'd kill me, too, and I ran and ran and ran, right up past the middle tower of the giant's castle and down the other side, and I got awful thirsty. Then--then I went to sleep--and when I woke up the roof was falling on me and it was night, and when I got out here, you weren't my papa and mamma, but there was that bad Indian."

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.