Bloom of Cactus

  CHAPTER X

  THE SETTER OF TRAPS

  The unlocked door squeaked shrilly on its hinges as it swung in beforethe heave of Carmena's shoulder. Elsie peeped fearfully back pastLennon. Carmena pushed on into the secret room.

  Lennon had expected to see some kind of treasure chamber. He staredblankly at the big object in the centre of the room--a complex objectthat somehow reminded him of his laboratory experiments in college. Astep nearer, with his own and Carmena's candles upraised, gave him aclear view of the bulging copper boiler, the tubes and worm andfermenting vats. The air of the room was pervaded with a sour smell.

  At his exclamation Carmena gave him a sombre glance.

  "You see now?"

  "A still," he said. "This tizwin you've been talking about--it'smoonshine whiskey. Your father----"

  "No--Slade!" broke in the girl with passionate emphasis. "He brought thething into the Hole and forced Dad to run it. He's the one toblame--not Dad. He bootlegs it to the Indians."

  "Indians? That's a Federal penitentiary offense!"

  "What could we do? If he's convicted, he'll swear that Dad is just asguilty. You see why I couldn't go for the sheriff?"

  "Yes," said Lennon; but he looked at Elsie.

  Carmena's face whitened.

  "If it hadn't been for Dad, there's no telling what Cochise would havedone with her. Anyhow, he's my father."

  To this Lennon could make no answer. He turned again to stare at the bigstill. Fuel had been placed in the firebox, ready for lighting. Carmenaknelt down before it and dipped her hand into the Indian basket. Oneafter the other, she laid out the six sticks of dynamite and the capsand fuses that she had saved from Lennon's prospecting outfit.

  She looked up at him, gravely expectant.

  "You said you'd help us, Jack. I want this whole thing fixed so it willnever make another drop of poison."

  "At once?"

  "No. They'd be sure we did it, and I figure---- Can you fix it so itwill go off a quarter minute after the fire is lighted?"

  "Oh-h, Mena!" cried Elsie. "What you going to do? You know Dad alwayslights the fire."

  "Never fear, Blossom. I'll take good care of Dad. If Jack does what Iwant, there'll be no more of the nasty tizwin to make Dad cross andsick."

  Lennon found himself regarding the girl with rekindled admiration forher ingenuity and daring.

  "So this is why you saved the dynamite?" he remarked. "Will it not bedangerous--I mean, to anger that man Slade, you know?"

  "Anything to save Dad---- If you're afraid, just tell me how to fix it.I'll do the work and take all blame--if it fails. You can go back withElsie and be able to swear you didn't have a hand in it."

  The girl's tone was as contemptuous as when, at their first meeting onthe trail, she had jeered him into cutting across the desert with her.He looked the still over with a professional eye.

  The chimney stones were laid in mud plaster. But the stones of thefirebox, or furnace, were loose. On one side they extended out in arough platform that held the water-cooled vat of the condensation worm.From the two-foot space between the furnace hole and the vat Lennonbegan to pull out the stones. He was able to make a hole down to thesolid stone floor.

  A crack gave opening enough to thrust the stiff fuse from the fireboxinto the hole. To make certain of results, Lennon used three pieces offuse, which were attached with caps to the sticks of dynamite, in thebottom of the hole. He then put the stones back in their places. Theends of the fuses were hidden by the tinder of the fuel in the firebox.

  When Lennon stood up and dusted off his hands, no slightest sign wasleft to betray that the charge of dynamite had been planted.

  "There you are," he said. "The fuses are cut for fifteen seconds, andthey will start burning as soon as the tinder is fired."

  "You're sure the boiler will be blown up?" queried Carmena. "Yourdynamite is out from under it, and there's all the rock in the way."

  Lennon smiled at her ignorance of explosives.

  "The stones will double the destruction. After that charge detonates,there will be a hole in the floor, a good deal of shattered stone, andsome splinters and shreds of metal. Everything in the room will besmashed. Is that satisfactory?"

  Carmena shuddered as if seized with a fever chill, but pulled herselftogether. "All right. We'll go now."

  She picked up her basket and backed out after the others, scrutinizingthe floor to make certain they had left nothing to tell of their visit.

  "It's a secret, Blossom," she cautioned. "Promise you'll never tell anyone?"

  "But--you'll have to tell Dad, Mena. He always goes in with Slade andCochise to measure the mash--And you know he sometimes goes in first tostart the cooking."

  "Didn't I say I'd take care of Dad?" reassured Carmena.

  Lennon stepped before her, his gray eyes wide with dread.

  "Wait," he demanded. "What is it you plan to do? Elsie says yourfather's partners---- But I have told you the dynamite will destroyeverything in the room. If you scheme to get those men in there, give methat key. I shall not permit such a trap to remain."

  "Why not? You promised to help."

  "Not this way. It would be cold-blooded murder."

  "You say that when they----?"

  Carmena checked her indignant protest and gazed down at herfoster-sister.

  "Well, then, how if I use that blast to blow Slade and Cochise apart?"she inquired. "Suppose I make each think the other put the giant powerin the furnace?"

  "Too great a risk. We will explode the charge at once, or draw it."

  Carmena's eyes flashed.

  "No. They shall not make another drop of poison in that devilpot. But ifwe blew it up now, Slade will put the blame on us---- Tell youwhat--I'll just misplace the key. That will give us time to act afterSlade comes."

  "Have I your promise you will not try to get him into that death trap?"

  "Yes."

  Back in the living room they became aware that the day was almost gone.Carmena asked Lennon to cover her from above with his rifle while shewent down to milk the goats. He offered to change places with her, buthad to confess that he did not know how to milk.

  The ladder had been drawn up. To save time, the girl directed Lennon tolower her by means of the hoist rope. Though there was no sign of anIndian nearer than the corral and she smiled at the suggestion ofdanger, he saw her slip her small revolver into the bosom of her dress.

  The moment the slackening of the hoist rope told him she had reached theground he hurried with his rifle to an embrazured window in the livingroom. He looked down and saw her calmly walking away toward the goatpens. The goats flocked to nibble the salt that she had brought forthem. She knelt down and started milking.

  Elsie had already busied herself at the charcoal brazier. After a time,when her pots were simmering, she came to cuddle up in the window besideLennon.

  "My goodness, but hasn't it been an awful nice day, Jack," she sighed inheartfelt contentment. "Mena is--is the best sister in all the wholeworld. But it's doubly nice to have a brother like you. Isn't it, just?"

  She snuggled her head against Lennon's right shoulder. He reached acrossand stroked her silky hair without looking away from the valley.

  "I am glad you like me, Blossom. You know, Carmena brought me to helpher get you away from this place."

  "Me--and Dad, Jack. Don't forget Dad. Mena never does. And Dad won'tever give up the Hole, 'cause he said so. That's why Mena shot yourburro to make you fight Cochise."

  Lennon chuckled.

  "Carmena came along after the Apache shot my burro."

  "Oh, but that's the joke," tittered the girl, in her turn. "Mena was the'Pache. She shot your hat off and your burro to see how you'd behave,and when you didn't scare, she rode 'round to make you come with her."

  The enlarged version struck Lennon as just so much the morepreposterous.

  "To be sure," he made mock agreement. "Only, by the way, what was thepoint of the joke?"

  "Yo
u mean, why did she do it?"

  "Yes. Why ruin a twelve-dollar sombrero and a ten-dollar burro?"

  "So's you'd get mad and fight Cochise, of course. She was desp'rit, soshe told him she'd get another man into the Basin to be caught and madeto pay. But she planned, when she signalled them, to warn you and slipaway while you fought them."

  "Ripping!" praised Lennon. "Wonderful flight of fancy. And after thefight?"

  "Oh, that depends. You'd prob'ly been dead. But if you'd killed all thatpart of the bunch, Mena would have brought you into the Hole to shoot upthe rest and make Slade quit."

  "I see. Quite in keeping with the burro. But why, then, did she help merun away?"

  Elsie's playful tone sobered.

  "Why, 'cause you couldn't fight, of course. After she signalled Cochiseyou went and got bit by the Gila monster and saved her life. Course shehad to save you then."

  "Saved!" bantered Lennon. "A fact--a solid fact at last, in this sea offiction. What a slip! I was beginning to fancy you quite a consistentfairy-tale tinker, Blossom. Take that last touch about her signallingCochise. She sent a message by wireless, I presume."

  "Wireless? Is that what you call smoke signalling?"

  "Smoke?"--Before Lennon's mental vision flashed a vivid picture of thepuffs of smoke rising into the noontime desert sky from the ridge nearthe waterhole--"Smoke signalling!"

  What a dupe he had been! Even now, when the truth had been spread outbefore his eyes, he had taken it for pure fiction. Yet every seemingabsurdity in Elsie's account became credible the moment he consideredthe facts he knew, in the light of understanding.

  Though Carmena had made much of probable danger from the "bronchos," shehad sent up those telltale puffs of smoke. During the flight across theBasin she had changed from boots to moccasins, which he now knew to beof Apache style, if not of Apache make. They would account for themoccasin print behind the crag from which his hat had been shot off andhis burro killed. For her to cut down to her pony, pull on her boots,and ride around to the wash along the trail had been easy.

  The purpose of her strange attack clearly had been to break up hisprospecting trip by the death of the burro and to test whether he couldand would fight. No less clear, now, was the subtle manner in which shehad both spurred his daring with her derision and appealed to hischivalry for protection against the murderous bronchos. All the timeCochise and his band were over in the Basin, waiting for her to lure avictim within their power.

  On this point was it not probable that Elsie was mistaken? Had notCarmena's intention been to have her savage accomplices capture him andhold him for ransom? The game might well have included a pretendedcapture of herself, so that chivalry would lead him to pay a largerransom.

  No--Elsie's explanation was the more probable. And he could trust hertruthfulness. Whatever he might think of Carmena, this child-minded girlat least was absolutely innocent of any scheming. Her dread of Cochisecould not possibly have been feigned.

  Even Carmena must be given her due. She had been driven desperate by thethreats of Cochise to take Elsie as his squaw; and the partnership ofher father in the illicit making and bootlegging of moonshine whiskeyhad prevented her from appealing to the law for protection. But, on theother hand, she had deliberately taken the risk of killing the firstchance stranger that came along the Moqui trail----

  Lennon frowned as he pictured the hole through the crown of hissombrero. That had been an uncomfortably close shot. Why had not thegirl met him face to face on the trail and frankly asked for his aid?Instead of that straightforward, above-board procedure, she had riskedshooting him, had deceived him, had led him into a trap where he wouldhave had to kill all the bronchos or be killed. In the first case,according to Elsie, she would have had him help her attack the rest ofthe Apaches in the Hole. But if he had been killed she undoubtedly hadplanned to put all the blame on him.

  He was no coward. As he mulled over the situation his eyes sparkled atthe thought of how, with his long-range rifle, he might have out-foughtCochise and his followers. But that was not the rub. Carmena had treatedhim as a blind dupe--had thrown dust in his eyes and beguiled him intothe double snare that she had set for him and Cochise.

  He would have been only too glad to take the venture with her if she hadtold him beforehand. But she had not trusted him. The accident of theGila monster's bite alone had blocked her scheme to make him chance thesacrifice of his life in complete ignorance of her real purpose.

  With his hand disabled, he of course had become valueless at the time asa tool to rid her of Cochise. Yet there was the chance that he could beused in the Hole. That would account for the seeming devotion andself-sacrifice by which she had saved him from the Gila monster poison,from death by thirst, and from Apache torture.

  The prejudice that had been first implanted in Lennon's mind by therepulsiveness of the girl's drunken father now prevented him from makingany allowances for her difficult position. Had it not been for herrelationship to that weak-faced besotted moonshiner, Lennon might havestopped to consider how love for her foster-sister had driven herdesperate, and how desperation might have kept her from telling thetruth of the situation to the stranger on the trail.

  The average stranger would have referred her to the sheriff--and sheloved her father. But Lennon could see only her lack of trust in him andher deceit.