behind a barricade
of corn-filled sacks, hotly blazing away down the valley. Lennon hurried
on into the living room.

Beside the nearest outer window Farley lay upon a pile of rugs very
white and still. His neck and right leg were swathed in bandages. The
rifle under the window showed that the broken drunkard had not lacked
courage to join in the defense of his home.

Carmena stood at the next window, too intent upon her firing to heed her
exposed position. A bullet had grazed the side of her head. At sight of
the blood trickling down on her cheek Lennon felt an almost irresistible
impulse to run over and draw her out of danger.

But the angle of the girl's rifle barrel told him that the fight was
rapidly coming back up the valley. He sprang to Farley's window. As he
looked down, the two Navahos broke from the last scant cover and came
leaping and zigzagging up toward the cliff foot.

Lennon thrust out his rifle and began to pump shots at the scrub and
cactus clumps above which rose thin puffs of semi-smokeless powder. A
bullet nipped the point of his shoulder. He jumped back to refill his
magazine. Before he could again empty it, another bullet seared across
the top of his head. He reeled and fell senseless.

When he recovered consciousness he was first aware of the face of
Carmena. In his first daze, he fancied that he was out on the far side
of the Basin, lying upon the sand under the cliff where the Gila monster
had bitten his hand. The girl's eyes were clouded with the same look of
profound concern that he had then seen in their shadowy depths.

But as his own gaze cleared he noticed two marked differences in her
appearance. One of her pale cheeks was streaked with crimson, and the
dark eyes were wide not with dread alone. They gazed down at him heavy
with the anguish of mingled grief and yearning. He knew that he was
looking into the girl's inmost heart.

A hand was thrust between their faces--a little dimpled hand that held a
bowl of red liquid. Elsie's voice quavered urgently:

"Let me fix your hurt with the dragon sap, Mena. He's alive again."

Carmena's long lashes drooped upon her white cheeks. She drew back.
Lennon turned aside his violently aching head. Across the living room he
saw Pete cauterizing a bullet wound on the bare arm of a fellow Navaho
with the astringent red sap of the sangre de dragon tree.

Elsie noticed Lennon's roving look of inquiry.

"They shot the other one on the ladder," s