sunken eyes glowed softly.

Cool water from a sweating jar and rich meat broth thickened with beans
and corn were, at last, equal to the task of satisfying even so ravenous
a hunger and thirst as Lennon's. Elsie had come back with her basket
empty. She set to waiting upon Carmena and "Brother Jack" with shy
delight.

The other visitors, down below, evidently had not been displeased by the
gift of the pie. There was no resumption of the firing. Lennon felt that
he understood the reason, when the girl divided another pie between him
and Carmena. It was made of dewberries, sweetened with honey.

Lennon found his eyelids beginning to droop. At a word from Carmena,
Farley led him to a cool dark inner room. He curtly pointed out a rude
bed-frame across which had been stretched a rawhide. Lennon fell asleep
the moment he lay down upon the elastic bed.

CHAPTER VII

CRAFT AND CRUELTY

When Lennon wakened he was at first so stiff and sore that he could
hardly turn over. Yet his strength had in good part returned to him, and
he was aware of a grateful feeling of refreshment and well-being.

Someone had covered him over with a finely woven old Navaho rug. In
pushing it off he noticed a fresh bandage on his wounded hand and the
arm above. Under the cloth was an aromatic resinous salve. He next
discovered that his boots and socks had been taken off and his badly
blistered feet washed and treated with a healing powder.

He sat up on the side of the bedstead. Before him stood a chair draped
with a towel and a change of coarse, but clean clothes. On the
clean-swept floor were a pair of soft moccasins, a dishpan, a bar of
soap, and a large jar of water.

When he limped out of his bedroom he had "tubbed" himself as thoroughly
as an Englishman and felt as ravenous as a wolf. Elsie was alone in the
living room, deftly handling pots and pans on the charcoal brazier.

"Good morning," he hailed. "Glad I'm just in time for breakfast."

The girl upturned her wide blue eyes to him in a look of shy delight.

"I heard you splashing about and I hustled," she replied. "But it's not
breakfast--it's dinner."

"So early as this?"

"So late! You've slept all the rest of yesterday and all night and all
morning. I thought you'd never wake. Sit down."

"How about the others?"

"Oh, Dad just nibbles when he has his tizwin spells, and Mena ate hers
mid-morning."

The table top had been scrubbed. Lennon sat down at the nearest co