Bloom of Cactus

by Robert Ames Bennet

  CHAPTER XV

  CROOKED WAYS

  At gray dawn Elsie started to go out into the living room. Midway of thedusky passage her foot struck against a roundish object. She bent downto look. A dim form was lying in the passage, with feet against thechair that blocked the outer doorway.

  The girl's half shriek brought Lennon up at a bound, his revolver out.

  "Who's there?" he demanded.

  "Oh--oh, Jack!" the girl sobbed her relief.

  He clasped her to him protectingly.

  "All right, sweetheart--all right," he said, soothingly. "You see I havebeen here on watch. Slade---- But that is past. I see light outside. Hewill soon be leaving with me."

  Elsie clutched him, in renewed panic.

  "But I'm afraid! I don't want you to leave me, Jack. You'll never, nevercome back! I want to go along, too. If you leave me, I'm awful afraidCochise'll catch me!"

  "You dear little frightened Blossom! But I cannot take you now. You muststay with Carmena. She will keep you up here, safe from Cochise. I willcome back--never fear. I will come back and take you away."

  "Take me--away from Dead Hole? Oh, how wonderful! Mena says I came fromoutside, where are all the book things and people--like you. I can'tremember, but I'll just love to go out and see the wide world withyou--and Mena--and Dad. Only Dad doesn't want to leave the Hole at all."

  "You shall go with me out of this place," replied Lennon. "I will bringthe sheriff and have him arrest every member of this band of outlaws."

  The rug curtains of the inner room flung apart. Carmena sprang out intothe passage. She drew her foster-sister away from Lennon with a grasp asresolute as it was gentle.

  "Go and start breakfast, Blossom," she directed. "The sooner they leavethe better."

  Elsie darted to the doorway and disappeared. Lennon started after her.He was checked by a low-spoken command from Carmena:

  "Stop. I want a show-down from you, Jack Lennon. I heard what you saidabout the sheriff. Good thing Slade wasn't in earshot. You'd have abullet in you by now. You may yet. What are you aiming to do?"

  "You say you heard me," said Lennon. "I spoke clearly."

  "Do you count Dad in the gang?"

  "Don't you?"

  In the brightening light of red dawn Lennon saw the girl's eyes cloudwith anguish. At sight of her grief and suffering a wave of compassionsurged up within him. The flood overwhelmed and submerged all hisprejudice against her.

  He started to express his pity and sympathy--only to be checked beforethe words could leave his lips. The girl's eyes were ablaze. Her mouthstraightened in resolute lines.

  "All right, Mr. Lennon," she said. "You've shown your hand. Here's mine:You'll give your pledge to leave the sheriff out of this deal, or you'llnever reach the trail."

  "Very kind of you, indeed, to warn me, Miss Farley. I presume you willtell Slade and Cochise to be ready if I attempt to escape."

  Though the girl's lips remained firm, her eyes again dilated withanguish. She turned about and groped her way into the inner room. Lennonfelt an odd mingling of shame and regret, of anger and an emotion thatwent far beyond sympathy.

  Elsie soon came with a bowl of coffee, which Carmena had sent for Lennonto give to Slade. There was no need of words to make clear her wish tobe rid of the visitors. Lennon found Slade lying as torpid as Farley.But the hot coffee roused him to morose alertness.

  Breakfast was served by Carmena, though her excuse for the absence ofElsie failed to satisfy the surly-tempered trader. The younger girl didnot appear until Slade dropped the rope ladder and went scrambling downthe cliff face. Carmena was already lowering Lennon's outfit to thetrader's Navaho followers, who had come at dawn.

  With a last word to Elsie to be brave but careful until his return,Lennon gently freed himself from her clinging embrace, put his arm backin the sling, and stepped into the loop of the hoist rope. The girlslowered him to the cliff foot.

  The Navahos, who were dressed as Mexicans, already had the prospectingoutfit lashed on a pack horse. At Lennon's request, Slade derisivelyordered one of them to hold the tenderfoot's pony. Lennon nursed his armand climbed into his saddle with a show of difficulty. The more awkwardand disabled he could make himself appear to his travelling companionsthe better would be his chances later.

  Slade put spurs to his big horse and galloped off down the valley,leaving Lennon to trail behind with the Navahos. The pace did notslacken until the party raced down into the lower canon and around adouble turn to the drop in the bed.

  On the brink of the cliff was set a crane similar in design to the oneat the cliff house but much larger. Hauled back, it was hidden frombelow by a corner of rock. Swung out, its block and tackle, operated bya one-pony windlass, could hoist or lower a two-pony load in the lightbasket cage woven of wire and withes. One of the three Apache guardshitched his pony to the windlass.

  Slade went down first, with his horse and Lennon and one of the Apaches.Before the horse was led through the cage door out upon the smoothledges at the foot of the cliff the Apache fastened thick pads ofrawhide upon his hoofs. This was also done for the ponies as they swungdown, two by two, in the cage.

  Lennon had noted the arrangement and working of the crane and hoist withthe eye of an engineer. When he turned his attention to the hoof pads,Slade gratuitously explained that the rawhide was needed to keep thehorses from slipping on the ledges of the cliff. Lennon took this with acareless nod.

  He had already inferred the true reason for the practice. The ledgeswere neither slippery nor steep. But scratches made by ironshod hoofs onthe rocks might have led expert trackers to suspect the hoisting ofstolen stock up the cliff.

  Down where the bed was of loose stones and gravel a rough trail from thelower canon twisted up a side gorge. Pursuers trailing a bunch of stolencattle or horses would of course turn up the gorge. A glance or two atthe sheer thirty-foot wall of the upstep in the bed of the main canonwould convince the most astute of cowboys that not even a puma could goup that way.

  At the edge of the trail the Apache took off the hoof-pads and returnedto the cage. He was being hoisted up the cliff when Lennon loped afterSlade down-trail around a sharp bend in the canon.

  A hard ride down the canon for five miles or more, then up a steep breakand across cedar-dotted mesas, brought the party out to the Moqui trailshortly after mid-morning. Lennon frowned at the clear-marked trail.

  His plans as first made had been to cut and run for the railway themoment he should reach the main trail. But he had discovered that hispony was the slowest of the mounts and that the four Navahos always keptbehind him. He could neither drop to the rear nor race ahead of Slade'sbig American thoroughbred.

  Slade turned to the right, away from the railway, and pushed the pacefor another hour. The trail led through a rather wide valley. Near thehead they came to a well-watered oasis of corn and bean fields. Acrossfrom the trail stood an abandoned Moqui pueblo.

  The ruins had been sufficiently restored to house Slade's tradingestablishment and the score or more families of his Navaho cowpunchers.The small storeroom was crowded with bales and boxes, but Lennon noticedthat behind the front piles many of the boxes were empty. Thislegitimate business was more or less of a sham to cover the whiskeyrunning.

  Slade's quarters in a half-detached group of stone rooms were somewhatincongruously furnished. A rather handsome but sad-eyed young Indianwoman in a dirty blue wrapper covertly "dished up" a noon meal for hermaster and Lennon on the fly-covered table.

  The greasy warmed-over chile con carne, the half-cooked tortillas andthe muddy coffee accounted for Slade's praises of Elsie as a cook. TheIndian girl slunk and cowered under his curses. Whenever she passed himshe cringed as if expectant of a blow. Lennon was doubly relieved whenSlade's impatience to be off on the search for the lost lode hurried himout into the clean open air.

  The horses had been fed and watered and were waiting near the spring,beside a young peach tree. Slade paused to bellow guttural commands at aNavaho
sheepherder who was driving a small flock down the valley.

  Lennon hastened ahead toward the spring, eager to seize his opportunity.He had only to secure his rifle, leap on Slade's big thoroughbred, andrace away down the back trail. The American horse could easily outrunthe Indian ponies. Once beyond rifle range of the pueblo his escapewould be certain.

  The horses were soon only a few steps away. Lennon nerved himself forthe dash. From behind a scraggly bunch of scrub that appeared too thinto screen even a coyote rose all four of Slade's personal retainers.Though they were as stolid and silent as wooden Indians, each had hisrifle in hand. Lennon thought he caught a glitter of suspicion in theircovert glances.

  Bitter as was his disappointment, he was quick to make the best of thesituation. A sharp command and jerk of his thumb toward Slade led themto believe he had come for them at the order of their master.

  Slade hailed the tenderfoot with bluff cordiality when the mounted partyloped up the slope to him.

  "Gitting het up, huh? You act like an old-timer on a gold stampede.Never before knew a prospector to go loco over copper."

  "You should bear in mind I am an engineer, not a prospector," repliedLennon. "If I am successful over this copper project and it proves to beas large as I have been led to expect, I shall have won a place well upin my profession."

  Slade grunted contemptuously and spurred his horse into a gallop. Withina mile he turned off trail to cut across country. Beyond the firstmesas, which were a part of the trader-cowman's cattle range, came ajumbled waste of crags and broken ridges.

  On the edge of this devil's dooryard of bare rocks and no less dry andsterile ravines Slade gave over the lead to the oldest of his Navahos. Awhite man could have found his way only by blind chance through the mazeof twisted clefts that seamed the unscalable cliffs and crags.

  Lennon soon lost all sense of direction. He realized that he could nothope to find his way out of these worst of bad lands without a guide. Hemust put off his plans to escape until the return to the trail. He beganto surmise that Cripple Sim's inability to relocate the lost lode maynot have been due altogether to his maiming by Apache arrows.

  But this jagged waste that had kept the secret of the mine hidden for ageneration would offer an impassable barrier to any railway. Unless aneasier route could be found, the entire project was already provedhopeless. Even a vein of solid copper could not be worked at a profit ifthe metal had to be packed out on burros.

  Yet there remained the chance of another route to the lode; and Lennonwas not minded to confide his disappointment to Slade. He spurred hispony to keep pace with the others. The sooner the mine was relocated andthe party back at the trail, the sooner he could make his attempt toescape. After Elsie had been freed from her dangerous prison in DeadHole he could take time to search for a feasible route to the mine.

  Toward sundown the old Navaho led the party clear of the shattered rockmaze and up the side of a small mesa. From the table top Lennon saw themighty towers of Triple Butte startlingly close ahead. Slade reined into stare hard-eyed at the engineer.

  "There's your butte," he rumbled. "Which side do we head?"

  "North," replied Lennon, without a moment's hesitation.

  Though he had been lost since leaving the trail, he clearly rememberedall the directions given by the old prospector as to the position of thelode in relation to Triple Butte. From the top of the mesa practicalrailway routes appeared to offer to the east and north of the greatbutte.

  Lennon studied the landscape until he noticed that the Navaho leader hadheaded south of east instead of north. Certain that his reply to Sladehad been misunderstood, he spurred forward to explain that they wereveering away from the lost lode.

  Slade rode on without a word of acknowledgment. The presence of theNavahos made his contemptuous silence doubly galling. Lennon took it asa foretaste of what was to come and masked his chagrin. For Elsie'ssake, he could not afford to quarrel with Slade at this stage of thedangerous game that must be played.