de the girl. She flashed him a
look of profound relief and put a tremulous hand on his arm.

"Jack--I thought they'd killed you. Slade?"

"Prisoner, like ourselves. But they've still to find Elsie--no thanks to
you!"

He drew away as if her touch were a pollution. She flushed, hesitated,
and opened her lips to speak. With a burst of yells, the Apaches rushed
in, dragging Slade in their midst.

At sight of Lennon, Cochise wrinkled his bruised forehead in a scowl of
evil satisfaction. But when he swaggered forward he looked only at
Carmena.

"Slade swear you hide my woman," he said.

"How could I?" replied Carmena. "He had me tied up and lowered to you.
He was up here with her all that time."

The face of the young Apache became impassive. He turned about and spoke
softly to Slade. The trader, half dead from his wounds, raised his big
head to mumble a denial.

At a word from Cochise, one of his men ran to fetch Elsie's brazier from
the living room. In the bottom of the brazier was still a bed of glowing
coals. The Apaches cut free one of Slade's feet and started to thrust it
in upon the fire.

Carmena flung up her hands before her eyes.

"No!--no, Cochise!" she cried. "Kill him--he deserves to be killed! But
not the torture--I can't bear it! I'll try to find Elsie for you. I
think I know where she's hidden."

Lennon stared, more than ever filled with horror of her treachery.

"You--you!" he grasped. "That child--give her, to save that scoundrel?"

"And ourselves," added Carmena, her lips curved in a cajoling smile at
Cochise. "When I've found her--and the tizwin--we'll be friends. Won't
we, Cochise?"

"Sure. Dam' good friends," smoothly agreed the Apache. "You find my
woman quick, I let you go. Sabe?"

"_And_ the tizwin--the barrels of tizwin," added Carmena. "Come on, all
of us together---- You, too, Jack."

She signed to the Apaches and called out a few words in their own thick
guttural tongue.

Lennon did not hang back. Great as was his abhorrence of the girl, he
started forward beside her. Probably owing to his ready advance, he was
not again bound, though Cochise ordered a pair of his followers to guard
the white man. The other Apaches pressed close after the leaders, drawn
by their fierce craving for tizwin.

Regardless of Lennon's look of loathing, Carmena lighted a candle and
led the way direct to the mummy room. From a ceiling beam of the room
had been hung a crudely stuffed horned owl wit