d 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