Bloom of Cactus Part 8

"We might send down a pie to them," suggested the timid Elsie. "That would make Cochise feel better."

To the vast surprise of Lennon Carmena took this preposterous proposal seriously.

"All right, Blossom. But not a drop of tizwin, mind. This way, Jack."

The doorway opened into a large living-room, homelike with bright-hued Navaho rugs, a quant.i.ty of cliff-dweller pottery, and a sufficiency of heavy, comfortable furniture hewn out of cedar. The chairs were seated and backed with tightly stretched rawhide. Several artistic pictures from periodicals were pasted on the stone walls. In one corner a pot was boiling over a charcoal brazier.

As the fair-haired Elsie thrust a big pie into a loop-handled basket and hurried out, Carmena fetched two large bowls br.i.m.m.i.n.g with soup. While her back was turned Farley winked leeringly at the visitor and offered him a half-emptied whiskey flask. Carmena was in time to see Lennon refuse the drink. Her fatigue-bent shoulders straightened to a deep-drawn breath, and her sunken eyes glowed softly.

Cool water from a sweating jar and rich meat broth thickened with beans and corn were, at last, equal to the task of satisfying even so ravenous a hunger and thirst as Lennon's. Elsie had come back with her basket empty. She set to waiting upon Carmena and "Brother Jack" with shy delight.

The other visitors, down below, evidently had not been displeased by the gift of the pie. There was no resumption of the firing. Lennon felt that he understood the reason, when the girl divided another pie between him and Carmena. It was made of dewberries, sweetened with honey.

Lennon found his eyelids beginning to droop. At a word from Carmena, Farley led him to a cool dark inner room. He curtly pointed out a rude bed-frame across which had been stretched a rawhide. Lennon fell asleep the moment he lay down upon the elastic bed.

CHAPTER VII

CRAFT AND CRUELTY

When Lennon wakened he was at first so stiff and sore that he could hardly turn over. Yet his strength had in good part returned to him, and he was aware of a grateful feeling of refreshment and well-being.

Someone had covered him over with a finely woven old Navaho rug. In pushing it off he noticed a fresh bandage on his wounded hand and the arm above. Under the cloth was an aromatic resinous salve. He next discovered that his boots and socks had been taken off and his badly blistered feet washed and treated with a healing powder.

He sat up on the side of the bedstead. Before him stood a chair draped with a towel and a change of coa.r.s.e, but clean clothes. On the clean-swept floor were a pair of soft moccasins, a dishpan, a bar of soap, and a large jar of water.

When he limped out of his bedroom he had "tubbed" himself as thoroughly as an Englishman and felt as ravenous as a wolf. Elsie was alone in the living room, deftly handling pots and pans on the charcoal brazier.

"Good morning," he hailed. "Glad I'm just in time for breakfast."

The girl upturned her wide blue eyes to him in a look of shy delight.

"I heard you splashing about and I hustled," she replied. "But it's not breakfast--it's dinner."

"So early as this?"

"So late! You've slept all the rest of yesterday and all night and all morning. I thought you'd never wake. Sit down."

"How about the others?"

"Oh, Dad just nibbles when he has his tizwin spells, and Mena ate hers mid-morning."

The table top had been scrubbed. Lennon sat down at the nearest corner and fell to on the omelette and fried chicken, cream cheese, salad, cornbread and honey that she set before him. The food was all served in bowls and jugs of quaintly beautiful ancient cliff-dweller pottery.

"There's no cream for your coffee," the girl apologized. "The milk soured. Mena was asleep, and I da.s.sn't go down to the goats alone.

Cochise has come back with all the bunch. Dad was cross not to get cream. He's cranky over his food."

"You say those red devils are all down there?"

The girl cringed.

"Don't--don't speak so loud. Cochise might hear you. He's stopped swearing. I lowered a whole basketful of pies to them. Carmena is getting ready to give him a big talking to. She--she won't let them get us."

"That's good news," rallied Lennon.

For the first time he was able to look away from his food long enough to notice that Elsie was wearing a fresh pretty frock of blue-dotted calico. He smiled at her amusedly.

"Didn't you promise to be a sister to me--or something like that? Why not sit down with me and celebrate our escape?"

The girl clasped her hands together in childlike delight.

"Oh, do you want me to be, really and truly? Only I don't know how to act to a brother. Sisters are different. They kiss each other--sometimes. If you don't mind, I'll just sit and watch. I had mine with Mena."

With unconscious grace, she perched on the edge of the table.

"You eat ever so much nicer than Cochise."

"I should hope so--a wild Indian!"

"But he isn't. He's educated--he went to the Reservation school. He knows a whole lot. That's why he's never been sent up. They caught him only once. But Dad got him off. Dad's a lawyer, you know. He didn't want to go out and leave us, but he's so scarey he does everything Slade tells him."

Lennon recalled Carmena's plea for him to help her father and sister. He thought he understood the situation.

"So this Slade and the Indians are keeping all of you prisoners, here in the Hole, are they? Yet Carmena got out. Why hasn't she taken you and your Dad?"

Elsie's big blue eyes rounded.

"But they won't let us out--only one at a time, and I'm 'fraid to go alone, 'cause of Cochise. Besides, the Hole is Dad's ranch. He won't give it up and Slade keeps promising him his share of the profits, and it's a mighty flourishing business."

"What, farming in a place like this?"

"Course not. That's just for fodder. We're stockholders, Dad says. We con--conduct a stock exchange. Slade sells what the bunch maverick and brand-blot."

The terms brought no enlightenment to Lennon. He was from the Atlantic coast.

"You mean they deal in cattle?" he inquired.

"Cattle and horses--and tizwin," added Elsie, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her luscious little mouth over the last word as if it had a bad taste.

Lennon caught a half glimmer of the truth. But the girl's thoughts had flitted b.u.t.terfly-fashion----

"I hope your feet don't hurt. Mena's were even rawer--awful bad. She just couldn't help crying when I sopped them with the tizwin. She says that's all it's good for. _I_ never knew her to cry before. But you were too dead asleep to feel the smart. I'll have your boots oiled and your clothes cleaned before you need 'em."

Quite naturally, Lennon inferred from this chatter that Elsie had first made Carmena comfortable and then, with innocent concern for him, had ventured into his room alone to treat his injured hand and feet.