Home > Authors Index > Robert Ames Bennet > Bloom of Cactus > This page
Bloom of Cactus, a fiction by Robert Ames Bennet |
||
Chapter 6. Her Folks |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER VI. HER FOLKS The fair-haired girl was cowering behind the massive front wall of the cliff house. At every shot from the rifles of the infuriated Apaches she crouched lower. Carmena held out reassuring arms to her. "There, there, Blossom," she soothed. "You've no need to be scared." The trembler sprang to clasp the neck of the older girl. "Oh, Mena, Mena!" she sobbed. "I'm so glad you're back! It's been awful! Dad had one of his spells; and now, with Cochise angry----" "We'll manage him--never fear. He's stopped shooting already. Quit your shaking. I don't want Jack to think you a silly little rabbit." For the first time the panic-stricken girl appeared to realize that Lennon was a stranger. She lifted her head from Carmena's bosom to stare at him with innocent childish wonderment. Her piquant little face was flowerlike in its delicate contours and apricot tinting; her big blue eyes were the pure intense blue of alpine forget-me-nots. No line of her pretty face bore the slightest resemblance to Carmena's comely but strong features. "O-o-oh!" she voiced her amazement. "He's new--and he's white!" "Yes, but he and I are pards," Carmena reassured her. "Shake hands. He has come to help us." "To help us?" The young girl held out a timid hand. "You--you won't side with Cochise? You won't let him take me?" "'Course he won't," put in Carmena. "Didn't I tell you we're pards? His name is Jack Lennon, and he's a real man." Lennon was pressing the soft little hand of the younger girl. "So you are Sister Elsie," he said. "Carmena is right. I will not side with Cochise--if that's our hot friend down below." The girl's rosebud lips parted in a smile of wondering delight. "You called me sister! Then you'll be my brother--my Brother Jack!" Lennon was astonished that any girl more than fourteen could be so naïve. Yet the effect was more than charming. "I'll be only too happy, if Carmena has no objection." He glanced up into the face of the older girl and surprised a look not meant for him to see. As the down-drooping lashes veiled her dark eyes a deep blush glowed under the tan of her dust-grimed, haggard face. The realization of the meaning of that blush and glance sobered Lennon. The girl had known him a scant seven-and-twenty hours. But in that full day had been packed more intense peril and emotion than many couples share in a lifetime. He had saved her and she him. Together they had suffered agonies of thirst and exhaustion, and together they had cheated the murderous Apaches. Even now, down beneath them at the foot of this ancient cliff refuge, the leader of the renegades was futilely cursing. Lennon was a white man, and he had proved himself not a quitter. The girl had been overwrought by their terrible flight. That she should fancy herself beginning to fall in love with him was quite understandable. The discovery of the fact set his jaded nerves to tingling with a pleasant thrill even as he realized the awkwardness of the situation. By way of diversion, he stepped around to take his rifle from the saddle. As he straightened up with it the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun thrust out at him from a small slit window in the end wall of the room. Behind the gun, framed deep by the thick stone of the window casing, he saw the leering gray face that he had first caught a glimpse of in another opening at the opposite end of the room. A thin dry voice that was shrill with fear snarled at him: "Hands up! Drop that gun!" Carmena flung herself between Lennon and the threatening muzzle. "Don't shoot, Dad! He's a friend!" she cried. Over her shoulder Lennon saw the reddened eyes blink and the muscles of the gray face twitch. The muzzle of the shotgun wavered. "Put your gun down, Dad," Carmena ordered. "Mr. Lennon and I are partners. Come out here and meet him." Both face and gun disappeared. After several moments a smallish gray-haired man shuffled out through the doorway on the right of the window and scurried across the opening into which the crane had swung its load. As he unbent his emaciated body to face the visitor his breath was heavy with the fumes of whiskey. Lennon knew without looking that Carmena's eyes were fixed upon him in mute appeal. He had given her his promise to help her father. There was no betrayal of repugnance in the friendly offer of his hand. "My name is Lennon, Mr. Farley. Your daughter tells me you were a lawyer. I'm a professional man myself--engineer." Farley stiffened to a show of dignity. "I am still a lawyer," he rasped. "I must stipulate that you are received here with reservations. Your presence is a trespass. This ranch is private property and----" "All right, Dad. That lets you out with Slade and Cochise," interrupted Carmena. "We'll all bear witness. Come in now. We're both half dead for want of food and sleep. Those devils ran us clear across the Basin." Lennon glanced at his rifle. "How about the two below?" "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 quantity 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 brimming 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. _ |
||