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Bloom of Cactus, a fiction by Robert Ames Bennet |
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Chapter 14. The Prowler |
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_ CHAPTER XIV. THE PROWLER From his plans for the breaking up of the criminal gang Lennon's thoughts drifted into pleasant reveries about his adorable little wife-to-be. Drowsiness crept upon him. When the lone candle on the table burned down, flickered, and went out, he was too sound asleep to waken. But his sleep was troubled with uneasy dreams. In the midst of a nightmare that lived over his flight from the bronchos across the desert, he was roused with a start to alert wakefulness. Some heavy-breathing creature was stealthily shuffling about in the black night of the unlighted room. A thump, followed by a muttered curse, betrayed the identity of the prowler. With utmost caution Lennon slipped his arm from the sling, drew Farley's revolver, and barricaded himself behind the chair. Slade shuffled nearer--so near that his whiskey-poisoned breath struck in Lennon's face. Again came a thud and a curse. The prowler had stubbed his stockinged toe against a chair leg. Lennon aimed the revolver toward the sound, in expectation of an upflaring match. Discovery would mean instant attack by the huge-framed scoundrel. Of that he had no doubt. Slade would not be groping about in the dark in this stealthy manner unless intent upon an evil purpose. But no match flamed. The shuffling feet moved past Lennon to the wall and along the wall toward the doorway that opened upon the short passage to the girl's room. No door barred the passage at either end. The purpose of the prowler was now unmistakable. For the second time Lennon had cause to be thankful that he had not changed to his boots. His moccasined feet noiselessly felt their way after the heavy-footed shuffler. Slade was already through the doorway into the passage. Lennon followed. The finger-tips of his outgroping left hand touched the back of the prowler. A startled grunt warned Lennon to dodge back a step and crouch. A heavier grunt told him of a violent out-clutch or blow, which, meeting only empty air, had wrenched the breath from the big body of the striker. Again Lennon pointed his revolver--and again the expected match failed to crackle and flare. Slade stood silent for several seconds, holding his breath. But Lennon was no less still. The tense listener expelled his pent-up breath in a grunt of disgust. "Huh! Must 'a' been the tizwin. Fools a man." Lennon straightened up and again groped with his hand as he heard Slade shuffle on along the passage. There was need of utmost caution. He did not wish to shoot. But he knew that the grip of Slade's thick arms would be as dangerous as the hug of a grizzly. This time the outstretched finger-tips barely grazed the prowler's shirt. Lennon took a quick step forward, clutched the back of Slade's neck as a guide for his blow, and struck him with the butt of the revolver under the right ear. The massive body of the trader slumped down as if hit by a sledge. The weight of the falling man dragged Lennon after. But the utter limpness of the body under him stayed his hand from a second blow. He thrust the revolver back into his pocket and grasped Slade under the armpits. The body remained flaccid even when dragged out of the passage. Lennon struck a match and bent low over the ghastly face of the man he had felled. The scoundrel was only stunned. Lennon's look of anxiety gave place to a stern smile. Though certain of the man's guilty intentions, he could not put an end to him. He again grasped the unconscious man and dragged him across the living room and out beside the crane of the hoist. A loop of the rope-end about the clumsy ankles, and two or three turns of the windlass lifted the inert body so that it dangled head downward. To swing the crane out through the opening and lower away on the rope was the easiest part of the undertaking. Lennon reversed the crank of the windlass, around and around, with purposeful deliberation. He hoped that Slade would recover consciousness while still swinging in mid-air. There was grim pleasure in the thought of how the scoundrel would first become aware of the dim starlit precipice beside him and then would rouse to the shame and danger of his hanging. When the rope was rather less than half unwound from the windlass Lennon paused to shift his grip on the crank. At the same moment a candle that had been masked by a blanket glowed out at him from the doorway of the living room. The muzzle of a small revolver thrust forward above the candle. "Hands up--quick--or I'll shoot," threatened a vibrant, low-pitched voice. The menace was very real. Most men would have obeyed the command and let Slade drop to a head-foremost smash on the cliff foot. Lennon cried back at the threatener without releasing his hold on the windlass: "Pardon me, Miss Farley--I----" "You!" Holding up the candle, Carmena stepped in to peer about the big anteroom. "Way you were stooped over I mistook you for---- Almost fired. What you doing?" The query was charged with suspicion. Lennon thrust in the crank peg, folded his arms, and leaned against the windlass. "I met your father's partner wandering about, and thought he needed an airing." The girl stared from the windlass out along the taut rope. "You don't mean----" "Yes, dangling head down." "Dead?" "Merely knocked out--worse luck! But one way of restoring consciousness is to raise the feet above the head. He may wake up any moment and appreciate the situation." "Any moment?" cried Carmena. She half dropped her candlestick on the stone floor and sprang to the windlass. "Quick! We must haul him up before he comes to." Lennon did not budge. "No, Miss Farley. That beast shall not again set foot in this place until Elsie is safe away." The girl's eyes widened. Her hand clutched and drew close across her rounded bosom the folds of the blanket that she had flung about her shoulders to cover her night gown. Her face paled and as quickly flushed scarlet. "I thought I heard sounds in the passage, but the rug curtain muffled them," she murmured. "Was he trying to--to----" "Had been drinking," replied Lennon. "My regret now is that the blow did not kill him." "And leave us no chance against Cochise? He's the only living creature that Cochise fears. Can't you see we must make believe--must keep up with him until we are rid of the Apaches? Bad as he is, he's a white man. Cochise is a--devil! When he tired of Blossom, he'd give her to his men." Convinced against his will, Lennon began to wind in on the windlass. Carmena went to the edge of the cliff. When the body of Slade came spinning and swinging up out of the gloom she held down the light and peered anxiously at the knot that held the rope about his thick ankles. It showed no signs of slipping. His down-hung head wobbled up into the flickering light of the candle. The face was purple; the bloodshot eyes were glazed. Carmena swung in the crane and freed the rope the moment Lennon eased off. Slade was wheezing as if almost suffocated. At Carmena's urging, Lennon helped her drag the stupefied man back into the living room. The girl ran to fetch a bowl of water. "Loosen your clothes," she whispered in Lennon's ear. "Hide your moccasins--look as if you'd just jumped out of bed--get your arm back in the sling. That's it. Now lift his head and shoulders up against this chair." As Lennon raised the flaccid upper body, Carmena began to dash water into the purple face. The blotched skin gradually lightened to its natural red. The pale eyes lost their fishy glaze. They stared dazedly up into the deeply concerned face of Carmena. She flung the last cupful of water from the bowl. Slade roused enough to mumble virulent curses. "Oh!" exclaimed Carmena, in a tone of sympathetic relief. "He's not dead--he's coming to. Oh, Mr. Slade, what happened? Did you fall against the table? Or was it a fit? You looked terribly black in the face, as if you'd had a fit. That's why I used the water. Jack held you up to drain the blood out of your head." Slade scowled at his helpers. Lennon frowned back at him but followed up the girl's lead. "Once saw a man taken with apoplexy--stroke of paralysis, you know. Not paralyzed are you? Try lifting your arms and legs?" Slade glowered morosely, but caught the look of concern in Carmena's face and stiffened with sudden alarm. She watched with an intent scrutiny as he gingerly lifted one limb after another. "Bunk!" he growled. "I ain't paralyzed. Needn't think you can con me." "Wait--your face!" warned the girl. "It looked queer. Try smiling." "No, it's all right now," said Lennon. "Sometimes these first strokes of apoplexy paralyze only for a few moments." Carmena changed her look of sympathy to one of sharp reproof. "I don't think it's that at all. You've just been working on our sympathies, Mr. Slade. Own up now. You took too much tizwin to know what you were about. You came in here for a drink of water and fell against the table corner." The glaring eyes of the trader narrowed in a look of crafty calculation. Lennon followed the man's thoughts by his expression. The effects of the moonshine whiskey, of the blow under his ear, and of the suffocation had not yet passed. They had left him lax and shaken and rather muddled. He had been given his fill for one night. Carmena's reproaches disarmed his suspicion that she and Lennon knew what he had been about. His guilty anger at the two subsided into derision of their blindness. "Well, what if I did git tanked up?" he growled. "It's my tizwin as much as Dad's, ain't it? I'm going back to bed to sleep it off." Lennon took the candle from Carmena. "Permit me to carry the light for you, Slade. Your hand is too unsteady. I'm not so sure about Miss Farley's explanation of your mishap. I still believe you had a stroke--not as heavy a stroke as it might have been--not fatal, you know, but heavy enough to put you down and out." Slade was staggering to his feet. Lennon followed him to the room where Farley lay sprawled in drunken slumber beside an empty whiskey jug. As soon as Slade had dropped upon the bed Lennon took the candle back to the living room. Carmena had gone. He gathered up an armful of Navaho rugs and moved one of the heavy chairs around to the doorway of the passage into the girl's room. _ |
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