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Bloom of Cactus, a fiction by Robert Ames Bennet |
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Chapter 5. Dead Hole |
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_ CHAPTER V. DEAD HOLE The race up the cañon was far different from the terrible flight of the previous day and the misery of the night. The cool spring water had been very refreshing, lofty cliffs shadowed the cañon bed from the hot morning sunrays, and the pain of Lennon's lacerated hand had eased to a dull ache. He took turn about with Carmena, riding and running. The cañon bottom was fairly smooth. For more than an hour the fugitives raced up the great cleft between the towering precipices and past narrow side cañons. At last they came to a break in the sheer walls. The cliff on the right leaned back in a series of terraces that formed a broken giant stairway to the top of the mesa. Carmena led the pony up a sloping shelf ledge. The line of ascent picked out by her practised eye proved unexpectedly easy. As they climbed in steep zigzags from terrace to terrace Lennon trailed behind. Carmena noticed his frequent glances down into the cañon bottom. "Don't worry," she said. "They didn't rush the cañon mouth--they crawled. If any circled and climbed the mesa, the side cañons cut 'em off 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, clouded look 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 fine man to have two such daughters." The flush in the girl's tanned cheeks deepened. But the soft glow of her eyes 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 sick man." The girl climbed to another terrace before she replied: "That's not the worst of it. Slade came six years ago--when we were starving. Dad got in with him. He can't break loose. If only we could get away, Dad would be all right." "Yes?" said Lennon. Carmena remained silent until he came panting up after her to the top of the steepest ascent. While he paused to catch his breath she opened the canteen. They were by now badly in need of a drink. Before starting on up the ledges she met Lennon's smiling gaze with a look of tremulous appeal. "Dad used to be a lawyer," she faltered. "If only you'll try to like him and--and help." "Of course!" exclaimed Lennon. "Aren't we pals? You're pulling me through this scrape. Perhaps I can pull him out of his hole. You called it 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'll look for that copper mine together. I'm working for a big copper syndicate. If I relocate the mine I am to receive twenty thousand in cash and ten per cent. of the stock. Your half of the cash should pull your 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. You don't sabe. Promise you won't say a word to Dad about the money--or the mine?" "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 up the last ascent. When they rounded the brink, twelve hundred feet above the cañon bed, the girl did not linger to talk. She dropped the pony's reins and started off at a jog across the hot, level, cedar-dotted top of the mesa. Lennon galloped ahead of her, tied the pony, and ran on afoot. Carmena copied the maneuver. In this manner, taking turn about, they covered the ground almost as fast as if both had been mounted. As each drank from the canteen at every stop and Carmena twice wet the nostrils of the pony, none was yet exhausted when, at the end of five or six miles, the girl headed down into a quickly narrowing valley. The funnel-shaped trough pinched to a steep chute between precipices that leaned closer together overhead the deeper the fugitives descended. The bed of the narrow mountain crack became even more steep. In places the pony had to jump like a goat down five and six-foot ledges. Time and again he slid on his haunches. At the worst place of all the beast was saved from certain destruction only by snubbing his horsehair picket rope around a corner of rock and so easing his descent to better footing. But, as Carmena remarked, the steeper the grade the sooner it was ended. They came down into the bottom of the lower cañon, bruised and exhausted but with no bones broken. "Almost there," panted Carmena, and she reeled ahead along the boulder-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-walled valley, two or three miles long and half as broad. First to strike Lennon's desert-starved eyes was the vivid grateful verdure of irrigated cornfields. Beyond, in browning hay meadows, grazed a herd of cattle and twenty or thirty head of horses. Three quarters of a mile to the left, in a cavity forty feet up the rock wall and well under an overhang of the towering precipices, nestled a group of stone ruins. 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 time for the call of Cochise." Before Lennon could inquire the meaning of this, she sprang upon the pony and loped along the cliff foot toward the cliff ruins. As Lennon jogged after her he saw a rope ladder slide down the under cliff, followed by a rope reeved through a crane that thrust out from another opening in the façade of the cliff building. Carmena's saddle and bags, saddle blanket and rifle, and the canteen--all were fast to the hoisting rope when Lennon came staggering and panting up beside the girl. She pointed toward the head of the valley 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 get up. Cochise and Pete must have ridden over around and come down Hell Cañon. Ours was Devil's Chute." Lennon frowned at the pair of riders who were racing swiftly down aslant from the head of the valley. "We'll be ready to pick them off," he said. "There's no cover under here." "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 all his cattle." The girl winced and looked down. "No. You see Dad--he is friends with all the--Indians hereabouts. I'll be safe enough now, soon as Cochise cools off. It's only a question of you." "I see!" exclaimed Lennon. "You know the renegades. You would have been safe at the first. You have risked your own life just to save mine. I'll never forget that, Carmena." "If only--if only you'll remember--when you know!" she whispered, and she turned to start up the rope ladder. As Lennon stepped forward after her he noticed that the saddle load had already been hoisted above his reach and was rapidly going higher. A rope ladder draped upon the face of a smooth rock wall and unfastened below is at best not easy to climb. Lennon had to crook his right elbow through the rungs to get any use of his injured arm. But the riders racing swiftly across the head of the valley would soon be within short rifle range. Lennon's left hand was only a few rungs below Carmena's boot heels all the way up the ladder. At the top the girl pulled herself in over the worn stone sill of a massive-walled doorway. As Lennon scrambled up and through the deep entrance after her he glimpsed a thin gray face, with bleary red eyes and 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 small fair-haired girl was rapidly winding in on a miner's windlass. She stopped to tug at a rope. The crane swung around into the entrance with the saddle and rifles. Carmena had already faced about to haul the ladder up the cliff. Lennon caught hold with his left hand to help her. They had gathered in less than ten yards when a bullet whizzed between their heads and splattered on the stone wall at the rear of the room. Carmena hooked the ladder over a peg at the side of the doorway and forcibly dragged Lennon out of the 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 hand shook and her voice quavered, though she sought to speak in an unconcerned tone: "That's warmer than I expected at this stage of the game. Guess Cochise is feeling pretty bad in his heart. We'll have to let him cool down awhile." "Why not return his compliments?" suggested Lennon. "We can easily pick off both of the devils without exposing ourselves." "And get the rest of the bunch down on us! No, Jack, they've got us holed up. We might slip away before the others came but they'd make a clean sweep of the stock and everything else. Come and meet Elsie. Cochise will soon tire of wasting cartridges." _ |
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