Bloom of Cactus

by Robert Ames Bennet

  CHAPTER V

  DEAD HOLE

  The race up the canon was far different from the terrible flight of theprevious day and the misery of the night. The cool spring water had beenvery refreshing, lofty cliffs shadowed the canon bed from the hotmorning sunrays, and the pain of Lennon's lacerated hand had eased to adull ache. He took turn about with Carmena, riding and running.

  The canon bottom was fairly smooth. For more than an hour the fugitivesraced up the great cleft between the towering precipices and past narrowside canons. At last they came to a break in the sheer walls. The cliffon the right leaned back in a series of terraces that formed a brokengiant stairway to the top of the mesa.

  Carmena led the pony up a sloping shelf ledge. The line of ascent pickedout by her practised eye proved unexpectedly easy. As they climbed insteep zigzags from terrace to terrace Lennon trailed behind. Carmenanoticed his frequent glances down into the canon bottom.

  "Don't worry," she said. "They didn't rush the canon mouth--theycrawled. If any circled and climbed the mesa, the side canons cut 'emoff from us. We'll beat 'em to the Hole."

  "The Hole--we'll find help there?" queried Lennon.

  "Slade is away. But I figure we'll be safe enough, once we get in.There's Dad and--my sister."

  "If they are at all like you, Carmena!"

  The girl paused on a ledge to gaze down at him with a somber, cloudedlook that brightened into a tender smile.

  "Elsie is as much like me as a lily is like a cactus. No thorns about_her_. She's cuddlier than a kitten. Eyes bluer than forget-me-nots,Jack; hair yellow as corn silk. She's only eighteen and sweet as honey."

  "I'm picturing an angel," bantered Lennon. "Your father must be a fineman to have two such daughters."

  The flush in the girl's tanned cheeks deepened. But the soft glow of hereyes faded and left them dull and haggard.

  "Dad's been unlucky all 'round," she murmured. "Not his fault, either.He came West for his health--almost died--one lung gone."

  "Hard lines," sympathized Lennon. "Ranch work can't be easy for a sickman."

  The girl climbed to another terrace before she replied:

  "That's not the worst of it. Slade came six years ago--when we werestarving. Dad got in with him. He can't break loose. If only we couldget away, Dad would be all right."

  "Yes?" said Lennon.

  Carmena remained silent until he came panting up after her to the top ofthe steepest ascent. While he paused to catch his breath she opened thecanteen. They were by now badly in need of a drink. Before starting onup the ledges she met Lennon's smiling gaze with a look of tremulousappeal.

  "Dad used to be a lawyer," she faltered. "If only you'll try to like himand--and help."

  "Of course!" exclaimed Lennon. "Aren't we pals? You're pulling methrough this scrape. Perhaps I can pull him out of his hole. You calledit Dead Hole, didn't you?"

  "Yes," murmured the girl. "That's the name and--it fits."

  "You've stood by me. I'll stand by you," Lennon pledged himself. "We'lllook for that copper mine together. I'm working for a big coppersyndicate. If I relocate the mine I am to receive twenty thousand incash and ten per cent. of the stock. Your half of the cash should pullyour dad out of his hole."

  The girl's eyes dilated.

  "Don't--don't tell Dad!" she gasped. "It's not the money I want. Youdon't sabe. Promise you won't say a word to Dad about the money--or themine?"

  "Why, if you do not wish me----"

  "Not a word--not the barest hint! Promise!"

  "Very well. Only----"

  "You'll learn all too soon!" she murmured, and she started quickly upthe last ascent.

  When they rounded the brink, twelve hundred feet above the canon bed,the girl did not linger to talk. She dropped the pony's reins andstarted off at a jog across the hot, level, cedar-dotted top of themesa.

  Lennon galloped ahead of her, tied the pony, and ran on afoot. Carmenacopied the maneuver. In this manner, taking turn about, they covered theground almost as fast as if both had been mounted. As each drank fromthe canteen at every stop and Carmena twice wet the nostrils of thepony, none was yet exhausted when, at the end of five or six miles, thegirl headed down into a quickly narrowing valley.

  The funnel-shaped trough pinched to a steep chute between precipicesthat leaned closer together overhead the deeper the fugitives descended.The bed of the narrow mountain crack became even more steep. In placesthe pony had to jump like a goat down five and six-foot ledges. Time andagain he slid on his haunches. At the worst place of all the beast wassaved from certain destruction only by snubbing his horsehair picketrope around a corner of rock and so easing his descent to betterfooting.

  But, as Carmena remarked, the steeper the grade the sooner it was ended.They came down into the bottom of the lower canon, bruised and exhaustedbut with no bones broken.

  "Almost there," panted Carmena, and she reeled ahead along theboulder-strewn bed of the chasm.

  At the second turn the cliff ended in a vertical slit-glare of sunlight.The pony whinnied. Carmena led the way out into an oval cliff-walledvalley, two or three miles long and half as broad.

  First to strike Lennon's desert-starved eyes was the vivid gratefulverdure of irrigated cornfields. Beyond, in browning hay meadows, grazeda herd of cattle and twenty or thirty head of horses. Three quarters ofa mile to the left, in a cavity forty feet up the rock wall and wellunder an overhang of the towering precipices, nestled a group of stoneruins.

  Lennon pointed toward the ancient buildings.

  "Cliff dwellings, I take it."

  "Yes--I told Elsie to be ready with the ladder. We'll make it in timefor the call of Cochise."

  Before Lennon could inquire the meaning of this, she sprang upon thepony and loped along the cliff foot toward the cliff ruins. As Lennonjogged after her he saw a rope ladder slide down the under cliff,followed by a rope reeved through a crane that thrust out from anotheropening in the facade of the cliff building.

  Carmena's saddle and bags, saddle blanket and rifle, and thecanteen--all were fast to the hoisting rope when Lennon came staggeringand panting up beside the girl. She pointed toward the head of thevalley and caught the rifle from him to tie it on the load.

  "A miss is as good as a mile," she said. "We'll just have time to getup. Cochise and Pete must have ridden over around and come down HellCanon. Ours was Devil's Chute."

  Lennon frowned at the pair of riders who were racing swiftly down aslantfrom the head of the valley.

  "We'll be ready to pick them off," he said. "There's no cover underhere."

  "Too late for that," sighed Carmena. "Dad won't let us.Besides--Pete----"

  "But when the murderers have tried to kill you!--And they'll steal allhis cattle."

  The girl winced and looked down.

  "No. You see Dad--he is friends with all the--Indians hereabouts. I'llbe safe enough now, soon as Cochise cools off. It's only a question ofyou."

  "I see!" exclaimed Lennon. "You know the renegades. You would have beensafe at the first. You have risked your own life just to save mine. I'llnever forget that, Carmena."

  "If only--if only you'll remember--when you know!" she whispered, andshe turned to start up the rope ladder.

  As Lennon stepped forward after her he noticed that the saddle load hadalready been hoisted above his reach and was rapidly going higher.

  A rope ladder draped upon the face of a smooth rock wall and unfastenedbelow is at best not easy to climb. Lennon had to crook his right elbowthrough the rungs to get any use of his injured arm. But the ridersracing swiftly across the head of the valley would soon be within shortrifle range. Lennon's left hand was only a few rungs below Carmena'sboot heels all the way up the ladder.

  At the top the girl pulled herself in over the worn stone sill of amassive-walled doorway. As Lennon scrambled up and through the deepentrance after her he glimpsed a thin gray face, with bleary red eyesand loose lips, leering at him out of the darkness of an inner room.

  To the
right, a little way back from the next opening, a smallfair-haired girl was rapidly winding in on a miner's windlass. Shestopped to tug at a rope. The crane swung around into the entrance withthe saddle and rifles.

  Carmena had already faced about to haul the ladder up the cliff. Lennoncaught hold with his left hand to help her. They had gathered in lessthan ten yards when a bullet whizzed between their heads and splatteredon the stone wall at the rear of the room. Carmena hooked the ladderover a peg at the side of the doorway and forcibly dragged Lennon out ofthe opening.

  Two more bullets whizzed in, one of them angling up close over the sill.Had it come a moment sooner Lennon must have been struck. Carmena's handshook and her voice quavered, though she sought to speak in anunconcerned tone:

  "That's warmer than I expected at this stage of the game. Guess Cochiseis feeling pretty bad in his heart. We'll have to let him cool downawhile."

  "Why not return his compliments?" suggested Lennon. "We can easily pickoff both of the devils without exposing ourselves."

  "And get the rest of the bunch down on us! No, Jack, they've got usholed up. We might slip away before the others came but they'd make aclean sweep of the stock and everything else. Come and meet Elsie.Cochise will soon tire of wasting cartridges."