Bloom of Cactus

by Robert Ames Bennet

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE SACRIFICE

  The treacherous blow was just hard enough to stun Lennon. Hisunconsciousness probably lasted only a few seconds. He roused to thesound of heavy firing and the pungent odour of powder. He opened hiseyes.

  One of the candles had been extinguished. The other showed one woundedand two dead Apaches lying upon the floor of the kiva. At the entranceother attackers were stealthily thrusting in to fire at the hole in theceiling. The flash of answering shots spewed out of the black spaceabove the hole.

  Lennon had enough presence of mind to lie still. Dislodged by thefusillade of bullets, the dry materials of the ancient ceiling showeredupon him. In the room above he heard the shriek of a mortally struckman. Another fusillade followed. Then a revolver came whirling down outof the darkness.

  The Apaches yelled and burst into the kiva. They rushed toward the hole,firing upward as fast as they could pump their magazines. Unnoticed inthe excitement, Lennon rolled clear of their trampling feet and soughtto grasp Slade's fallen revolver. A chance kick sent it out of hisreach.

  Wild with blood-thirst, the last Apaches were trying to climb up thebacks of those who had first leaped to seize the edge of the ceilinghole. Under the strain of their jerking weight one of the ancient beamsgave way.

  Down crashed a part of the floor above. With it came Slade, bellowingwith rage, bleeding from several wounds, and his right arm shattered.His massive body fell upon and knocked down two of the crowding Apaches.He staggered up and struck out with his maul-like fist.

  The voice of Cochise sounded above the din of the fight. The Apachesflung themselves at Slade like wolves attacking a maimed bull. But theyused neither rifles nor knives. The trader was borne down by the weightof numbers and his left arm lashed fast to his backward twisted feet.

  Cochise had caught up the flickering candle. He sprang upon the back ofanother man and peered into the room above. When at last he jumped downhis face was distorted with anger. He shook his knife in Slade's face.

  "Where you hide my woman?" he demanded.

  "She hid herself," growled Slade. "I was still looking for her."

  "Big mouth--big lie!" scoffed Cochise, and he thrust the flame of thecandle against Slade's nose.

  The trader puffed out the light. Lennon had been edging around towardthe door. He took instant advantage of the darkness to slip out and runtoward the living room. There he might hope to find a rifle and diefighting.

  In the anteroom he came face to face with a pair of Apaches, who stoodon guard over Carmena. At their gestures, emphasized by half-raisedrifles, he backed into the corner beside the girl. She flashed him alook of profound relief and put a tremulous hand on his arm.

  "Jack--I thought they'd killed you. Slade?"

  "Prisoner, like ourselves. But they've still to find Elsie--no thanks toyou!"

  He drew away as if her touch were a pollution. She flushed, hesitated,and opened her lips to speak. With a burst of yells, the Apaches rushedin, dragging Slade in their midst.

  At sight of Lennon, Cochise wrinkled his bruised forehead in a scowl ofevil satisfaction. But when he swaggered forward he looked only atCarmena.

  "Slade swear you hide my woman," he said.

  "How could I?" replied Carmena. "He had me tied up and lowered to you.He was up here with her all that time."

  The face of the young Apache became impassive. He turned about and spokesoftly to Slade. The trader, half dead from his wounds, raised his bighead to mumble a denial.

  At a word from Cochise, one of his men ran to fetch Elsie's brazier fromthe living room. In the bottom of the brazier was still a bed of glowingcoals. The Apaches cut free one of Slade's feet and started to thrust itin upon the fire.

  Carmena flung up her hands before her eyes.

  "No!--no, Cochise!" she cried. "Kill him--he deserves to be killed! Butnot the torture--I can't bear it! I'll try to find Elsie for you. Ithink I know where she's hidden."

  Lennon stared, more than ever filled with horror of her treachery.

  "You--you!" he grasped. "That child--give her, to save that scoundrel?"

  "And ourselves," added Carmena, her lips curved in a cajoling smile atCochise. "When I've found her--and the tizwin--we'll be friends. Won'twe, Cochise?"

  "Sure. Dam' good friends," smoothly agreed the Apache. "You find mywoman quick, I let you go. Sabe?"

  "_And_ the tizwin--the barrels of tizwin," added Carmena. "Come on, allof us together---- You, too, Jack."

  She signed to the Apaches and called out a few words in their own thickguttural tongue.

  Lennon did not hang back. Great as was his abhorrence of the girl, hestarted forward beside her. Probably owing to his ready advance, he wasnot again bound, though Cochise ordered a pair of his followers to guardthe white man. The other Apaches pressed close after the leaders, drawnby their fierce craving for tizwin.

  Regardless of Lennon's look of loathing, Carmena lighted a candle andled the way direct to the mummy room. From a ceiling beam of the roomhad been hung a crudely stuffed horned owl with wide-spread wings. Atsight of the big gray-white bird and of the mummies even Cochiseadvanced less than a step inside the entrance.

  Carmena went in with the candle and methodically peered among and behindall the heaps of rubbish. When she came back to the entrance her darkbrows were drawn together in a frown, as if she were puzzled and tryingto think of another hiding place. She looked at Lennon with a levelglance.

  "Hereafter you will recall that the quick and the dead are associated,"she murmured.

  She faced about to the superstitious Apaches.

  "You see, Cochise. Your woman doesn't like these old dried spirits anymore than you do. Come on."

  Cochise and his men drew back before her advancing candle. They had nofancy to be left in the darkness with the bird of night and the "driedspirits" of the ancient cliff dwellers. They were not so backward,however, in the other inner rooms to which Carmena led them. Where therewas a ceiling hole, one or more readily mounted with the candle tosearch the space above.

  But nowhere was trace found of Elsie, though the candle had burned to astub when the searchers reached the last inner room. They came from itinto a front room, one exit of which was closed with a padlocked door ofheavy planks. Lennon recognized the entrance to the still-room.

  Carmena handed a key to Cochise and stood shielding the flickering flameof the candle.

  "Maybe we'll find both together," she said. "It would have been justlike Slade to lock your woman in with the tizwin."

  She added a guttural murmur in Apache. The Indians pushed forward astheir leader snapped open the padlock. The heavy door swung open. Allsurged into the still-room except one of Lennon's guards, and he cranedhis neck to gape at the still. Into Lennon's ear breathed a faintwhisper: "Keep back."

  A moment later Carmena was darting in after the Apaches. She took hershielding hand away from the candle to point at a pile of jugs behindthe still. With the gesture she called out in Apache. Cochise and allthe others rushed to dig into the pile of jugs. Carmena glided to thestill and bent down. She thrust the candle into the opening of thefirebox.

  For the first time Lennon grasped what the girl was about. And with thathe realized in a flash all the cool courage and cleverness andself-sacrifice of the plan that she had schemed out against the bruteforce of Slade and the cruel cunning of Cochise. Elsie was safe hiddenin the mummy room, Slade was dying or dead, and now she had luredCochise and his murderous followers into the death trap!

  He saw the flare of the lighted tinder in the firebox. The fuse mustalready be burning. Yet the girl remained stooped before the still. Shewould be blown to pieces no less certainly than the Apaches.

  Lennon glanced desperately at his guard, who stood beside him in thedoorway. The almost naked Apache was a mass of sinewy muscle, and hisbeady eyes were fixed upon the prisoner in alert watchfulness. Yet hewas not quick enough to dodge Lennon's uppercut. He sprawled backwardand struck his shock head upon the stone
floor.

  Carmena had straightened and faced about. At sight of Lennon boundingtoward her she thrust out her hands in a repellant gesture.

  He clutched her outflung hands and dragged her toward the door. Frombehind the still came an answering yell. Cochise and another Apacherushed around at the couple. Carmena lunged forward, to thrust Lennon atthe doorway. Unbalanced by the shove, he stumbled over the Apache whomhe had knocked senseless.

  Carmena fell, rolled to one side, and struggled to her knees as Cochiseleaped to the doorway after Lennon. Behind them roared a deafeningdetonation.

  Though Lennon was out in the anteroom, he was hurled down by the forceof the explosion. He staggered to his feet and faced about. In the thickof the smoke that spumed from the still-room Cochise bounded from thefloor and came at him with upraised knife. Lennon barely saved himselfby the quickest of side-stepping.

  Cochise shot past, whirled, and closed in with the fury of a wildcat.Lennon's parry of the knife stab was sheer luck, but not the blow thathe drove to the solar plexus. Superb as was the physical condition ofthe young Apache, that solid jolt sent him reeling back, gasping forbreath.

  Lennon closed and sought to wrest away the knife. He twisted down on theApache's wrist. The knife fell to the floor. He bent to grasp it.Cochise dropped upon him and seized his throat. The slender sinewy handstightened with frightful force. A few seconds of that throttlingpressure would have brought unconsciousness to Lennon. In vain he soughtto tear loose the strangle hold.

  He was on the verge of frantic flurry when his failing reason fixed uponthe fact that there was a lump under his down-pressed back. By greateffort he wrenched his body around. His groping hand grasped the fallenknife.

  At the second stroke the terrible clutch on his throat relaxed. Cochisetwisted convulsively and rolled over on his back.

  Lennon wheezed, felt his throat, and jerked himself over, ready to drivethe knife into the heart of his merciless enemy. Cochise lay inert, hismouth agape and his eyes rolled up so that only the whites could beseen. Lennon's deep-drawn sigh of satisfaction over that death-maskface caught in the midst and turned into a gasp. He flung himself aboutto the doorway of the still-room. Where the still had stood was now onlya hole in the stone floor. He did not look too closely at the generalwreckage.

  His half-dazed roving gaze fell upon Carmena. She lay as inert asCochise and the Apache guard. Yet she was not dead. A fragment of stoneor metal, or the shock of the explosion, had injured her back.

  He carried her out into the anteroom. She revived. But when she soughtto rise, she sank back with an ominous limpness.

  "Carmena!" he cried. "Carmena--what is it? You're hurt!"

  She smiled up at him, her dark eyes radiant with infinite tenderness anddevotion.

  "It's all right, Jack--all right," she murmured. "I wanted to do it--forBlossom--and you, dear. Now you are safe. The way up the canon is clear.Take the right fork, then, each time, the left of the next forks. Thetrail is only a few miles west, over the mesas. You'll find Blossom inthe mummy room. Hurry off with her before Slade's men come. Hurry--don'tlinger----"

  "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. Ican'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 thinkof Blossom. You must hurry off with her while there is time. Isn't itgood that you love her?"

  Lennon uttered a choking cry and caught the girl up in his arms. Heclasped her to him in an agony of love and remorse.

  "Carmena! To have thought so wrong of you--of you who were giving yourlife! I've been a fool--a blind fool. Forgive me! That child---- My God!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 abouthis neck. "You do love me--I'm glad now you did not let me die--atonce--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 heraway before Slade's men---- But first find me my little pistol. I gaveit 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 piercingchildish shrieks. Carmena twisted about in Lennon's suddenly loosenedembrace. There was a sound like the snap of a dry twig. Carmena screamedand fell over sideways in a deathlike faint.