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Bloom of Cactus, a fiction by Robert Ames Bennet |
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Chapter 12. A Bargain |
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_ CHAPTER XII. A BARGAIN During the meal prepared by Elsie a solemn avowal by Slade that the cook must go home with him brought the knife of Cochise half out of its sheath. Slade either did not see the movement, or, if he did, he contemptuously disregarded its menace. He had turned to Farley, his big red face and pale blue eyes suddenly sober. "Well, Dad," he boomed, "guess we'd better hold a seance and git Brother Cochise back into a proper spiritual frame of mind. I got some converting work for him to go out and do." Cochise shot a side glance at Elsie. "You leave my woman--I go. Sabe?" The trader burst into his hoarse laugh. "Go to hell! Can't you take a joke? We're pards, ain't we? Can't I josh the gal without you gitting rattlesnakey? Don't suppose I meant it, do you? Come on, Dad. Git a hustle on you. We got to hold that seance." He looked at Lennon with a hard smile. "We run a lodge here---- Spirits Order Secret Scotch Rites. We'll go into a seance and find out whether to initiate you." "Dad is too sick," interposed Carmena. "He can't help any. I'll take his place." "No. He's going to come, and you'll stick here," ordered Slade. Farley rose and tottered out into the anteroom with him and Cochise. Lennon sprang up beside the coolly smiling girl. "You've permitted them to go--knowing what will happen!" "Nothing will happen. I changed keys on Dad. He'll come back. Then I will go in his place." "You shall not," forbade Lennon. "I told you it would be murder." "How about Blossom?" queried the girl. "Slade isn't joking and you know now what he is like." Lennon looked at the prospective victim, hesitated, and tightened his jaw. "I must hold you to your promise. Set them upon each other, if you wish---- But it shall not be that other way." "If you hold me to my promise," said Carmena, her eyes hot with scorn. She started to help Elsie clear the food-splattered table. Before many minutes Farley reeled in, speechless from terror. He collapsed into the first chair and held out a key in his wavering hand. Carmena looked at it, nodded understandingly, and hastened out, with a significant glance for Lennon. He was not altogether reassured. After a few moments he followed her along the front row of the cliff house rooms. He was close enough to hear the talk that followed when she joined Cochise and Slade at the padlocked door. The trader gruffly accepted her excuses for her father, but swore violently when the two keys that she had brought failed to open the lock. She explained how she had changed her father's clothes, and took upon herself all the blame with regard to the misplacing of the key. After much soothing talk, she at last quieted Slade by promising to have a given quantity of whiskey distilled before his next visit. "That'll do," he conceded. "Look out you don't forgit it, though, or I'll take it out of Dad's hide. Now, Cochise, you hit the high places for them hosses. Don't do no shooting this time. Just natchelly have 'em drift off. Git a move on you." Had not Lennon been wearing moccasins, he must have been caught. As it was, he glided back through the many rooms, undetected. Farley had crept into his own room. His absence gave Lennon opportunity to calm Elsie's fears and comfort her with the promise that he would save her from both Slade and Cochise. The tread of heavy boots sent her scurrying out of the living room. Slade strode in after Carmena and jerked a chair around to where he could look close into Lennon's face. "Now, young man, what's this bunk about you and Carmena being pards?" he demanded. "What business you got in Dead Hole, anyhow? Cochise says you shot a hoss of hisn." "I told you how that started," interposed Carmena. "It wasn't our fault that Cochise flew off the handle. Jack had to shoot to save me as well as himself." Slade stared hard at the girl and then at Lennon. "Well, supposing the young devil did break loose. What of it? How about this pard bunk? That's what I want to know." "I fear that Miss Farley has found me rather a disappointment," put in Lennon, and he looked at his trussed arm. "Not at all--just the other way 'round," Carmena glowingly asserted. "Figure it out for yourself, Mr. Slade. A man who could follow up a Gila monster bite by outrunning Cochise and his bunch across the Basin, and then make them back up. Can you wonder I think he's a man for us to tie to?" "If we needed a new pard," qualified Slade. "Fact is, we don't, and you know it. We got enough a'ready to do the work and split up our profits." Carmena cast a significant glance toward Elsie, who had ventured back to renew the fire in her oven. "How about Cochise getting out of hand? All the time it's harder to hold him. He's beginning to bristle up even to you." Slade's tobacco-stained teeth showed in a grin of contemptuous indifference. "Bah. I'll pull his head off if he gits sassy, and he knows it." "Of course. He'd have no show--unless a pot-shot or a knife in your back---- If only he was white!" "Surely you do not mean to say, Miss Farley, that Cochise would attack his own partner," Lennon backed up the girl's play. "I saw him pull out that long knife of his under the table, but imagined it was merely the Indian way of easing his feelings against Mr. Slade." "Pulled his knife on me, did he?" bellowed the trader, in a sudden burst of anger. "And just because you dared speak kindly to Elsie," sympathized Carmena. Strange enough, the barbed sting appeared to quiet rather than enrage Slade. He laughed. "No four-flushing, Mena. Needn't try to pull the wool over my eyes. I can't run my business without Cochise, and you know it. You got to show me a deal with more in it, before you talk about a shift of pards. I'm running this shebang. There ain't no place for Lennon 'round Dead Hole. He best hit out back the way he come." Carmena's look told Lennon that he must make the next play. He thought quickly. If the girl was not mistaken, Slade would take Elsie away with him and chance the revenge of Cochise. The Apache might be appeased by permission to follow his intended victim back into the Basin. Had Lennon considered only himself he would have been willing to chance a fight with the renegade. But the mere thought of abandoning Elsie to either the Apache or this brutal trader was altogether unbearable. "Indeed, yes--to be sure, Mr. Slade," he blandly made reply. "If you do not desire me as a partner, I have no wish to remain here. Doubtless I shall not require your aid to find the mine for which I am looking." "Mine?" queried Slade, his pale eyes narrowing. "What mine?" "It's the lost lode," cut in Carmena, her rich voice quivering with eagerness. "I couldn't say anything until Jack spoke. He was headed for the mine when his burro was shot and we had to leave his outfit--thanks to Cochise. But he knows where to find the lost lode. Got it from Cripple Sim--back East. It's somewhere over near Triple Butte. You see now why I thought you'd be glad to have me bring Jack in as a partner?" The red face of the trader fairly glowed with geniality. He held out his beefy hand to Lennon. "Shake, pard. Why didn't you speak up sooner? I might have knowed you was O.K. But Carmena is only a gal, and we got to be careful of strangers in these parts. Bad place for hoss thieves and brand-blotters. That's why I put up with a mean Injun like Cochise. He and his bunch see to it we don't lose no stock." "Yes, they're great on rounding up, and so far they have never committed any murders--that can be proved against them," put in Carmena, with an ironical smile. "Just the same, it wasn't their fault they didn't get Jack. Do you wonder he won't have them in on this lost-lode deal? Either he plays a lone hand, or we run Cochise out of the country." "My offer is ten thousand in cash," said Lennon. "The copper company pays me twice that and----" "Copper, huh? What's a copper company got to do with a gold lode?" demanded Slade. "But Jack says the lost lode is copper, not gold," said Carmena. "Maybe we've been mistaken all these years. Sim told Jack it was a copper mine, and Sim ought to know." Lennon caught the significant glance that the girl covertly gave to Slade. He was seized with black doubt whether her scheming was against Slade or with Slade against himself. Yet he continued to play to her lead---- "Yes, the discoverer of the mine should know whether it was gold or copper." After some argument, Slade finally admitted that the old rumour about Cripple Sim's fabulously rich lost gold mine might be an "exaggeration." With much hemming and hawing, he then agreed that if the lost mine were rediscovered he would accept ten thousand dollars and rid Dead Hole of Cochise. "We might git up a company our own selves, Lennon, but we couldn't bring in any railroad to develop a copper mine," he repeated what Carmena had already remarked. "Take what you can git and be thankful, is my motto. Soon's we find that mine, you can count on me to run Cochise clean out of the country." Carmena drew in a deep quavering breath. "That's such a relief, Mr. Slade! I've been so afraid for Elsie. I know that Cochise figures on making off with her at the first chance." "He does, does he?" growled the trader. "Well, then, you're going to stick here and see he don't git no chance, while I go with our new pard. How's that, Lennon?" "Good enough," agreed Lennon. "Elsie and I will hunt up some tools," said Carmena and she hurried her foster-sister out into the store-rooms before Slade could voice an objection. He at once began to give Lennon a pessimistic account of the small profits and many risks and hardships of a trader's life in this arid land of mesas and cañons. As for the cattle business, there was more work than money in it, what with mountain lions, wolves, and brand-blotters. Lennon checked himself on the point of asking the meaning of the strange term. He recalled that Elsie had said something about mavericking and brand-blotting by the Apaches. Unless Farley and the girls were conniving with Cochise, the Indian could not be carrying on any work in the Hole unknown to Slade, and he had just intimated that brand-blotting was some kind of harmful or criminal action. _ |
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