Bloom of Cactus Part 30

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

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

In the anteroom he came face to face with a pair of Apaches, who stood on guard over Carmena. At their gestures, emphasized by half-raised rifles, he backed into the corner beside the girl. She flashed him a look 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 to you!"

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 rushed in, dragging Slade in their midst.

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

"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 impa.s.sive. He turned about and spoke softly to Slade. The trader, half dead from his wounds, raised his big head to mumble a denial.

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

Carmena flung up her hands before her eyes.

"No!--no, Cochise!" she cried. "Kill him--he deserves to be killed! But not the torture--I can't bear it! I'll try to find Elsie for you. I think 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 at Cochise. "When I've found her--and the tizwin--we'll be friends. Won't we, Cochise?"

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

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

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

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

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

Carmena went in with the candle and methodically peered among and behind all the heaps of rubbish. When she came back to the entrance her dark brows were drawn together in a frown, as if she were puzzled and trying to think of another hiding place. She looked at Lennon with a level glance.

"Hereafter you will recall that the quick and the dead are a.s.sociated,"

she murmured.

She faced about to the superst.i.tious Apaches.

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

Cochise and his men drew back before her advancing candle. They had no fancy to be left in the darkness with the bird of night and the "dried spirits" of the ancient cliff dwellers. They were not so backward, however, in the other inner rooms to which Carmena led them. Where there was a ceiling hole, one or more readily mounted with the candle to search the s.p.a.ce above.

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

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

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

She added a guttural murmur in Apache. The Indians pushed forward as their leader snapped open the padlock. The heavy door swung open. All surged into the still-room except one of Lennon's guards, and he craned his neck to gape at the still. Into Lennon's ear breathed a faint whisper: "Keep back."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carmena fell, rolled to one side, and struggled to her knees as Cochise leaped to the doorway after Lennon. Behind them roared a deafening detonation.

Though Lennon was out in the anteroom, he was hurled down by the force of the explosion. He staggered to his feet and faced about. In the thick of the smoke that spumed from the still-room Cochise bounded from the floor and came at him with upraised knife. Lennon barely saved himself by 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 that he drove to the solar plexus. Superb as was the physical condition of the young Apache, that solid jolt sent him reeling back, gasping for breath.

Lennon closed and sought to wrest away the knife. He twisted down on the Apache's wrist. The knife fell to the floor. He bent to grasp it.

Cochise dropped upon him and seized his throat. The slender sinewy hands tightened with frightful force. A few seconds of that throttling pressure would have brought unconsciousness to Lennon. In vain he sought to tear loose the strangle hold.

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

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

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

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

He carried her out into the anteroom. She revived. But when she sought to 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 and devotion.

"It's all right, Jack--all right," she murmured. "I wanted to do it--for Blossom--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. The trail is only a few miles west, over the mesas. You'll find Blossom in the mummy room. Hurry off with her before Slade's men come. Hurry--don't linger----"