e stored quantities of corn on the cob, dried
fruit, and vegetables, honey, dried beef, bacon, and other foods. The
family was sufficiently stocked to withstand a half year's siege.

The upper rooms were for the most part empty. Others showed only
fragments of broken pottery. Some had been broken in through their side
walls or were open above and littered with the debris of their roofs.
Lennon surmised the existence of several sealed lower chambers, at the
back.

Carmena led the way down again and zigzagged through connected rooms
toward the far end of the great community house. To the rear of the
front row of rooms was a large chamber heaped with cliff-dweller
mummies.

"Slade had them all dumped in here," explained Carmena. "Like the
Indians, Elsie is still scared of them. But they have been dead a long
time, poor things. They'll not hurt anybody. They'd protect you,
Blossom, if Cochise should get up the cliff and you hid in that corner.
He thinks them bad medicine. Slade laughs at Indian spirits. He says
that corn spirits are the only ones that can put a spell on a man."

"They--they're an awful hold on Dad," quavered Elsie. "He didn't ever
used to speak cross to me."

In the flickering candle light Carmena's eyes glinted with a look that
Lennon thought to be fierce resentment. She thrust past him to the
doorway.

"Wait. I'll be back," she called.

Elsie was tremblingly eager to follow, but Lennon lacked her fear of the
desiccated builders of the cliff house. At one end of the room he had
come upon what to him was a very interesting heap of their no less
ancient possessions. Most of the beautiful old pottery had been smashed,
but among the fragments Lennon found several ceremonial stones and
tablets, a bone awl, many obsidian arrowheads, and a few broken
turquoise ornaments.

His search was cut short by the return of Carmena. She carried a modern
Indian basket-vase that would have been very convenient for holding
Lennon's collection. But she gave him no chance to ask for it. She
stared in at him and Elsie from the doorway, her dark eyes glittering
strangely in the candle light. Her lips were hardset in a bitter smile.

"He's--asleep. Come," she said.

Lennon followed the eager Elsie, who was vastly relieved to leave the
mummy vault. Yet she was no less mystified than Lennon by her
foster-sister's manner. She shrank back behind him when, after passing
through two corn-stacked rooms near the far end of the