"That's not the worst of it. Slade came six years ago--when we were starving. Dad got in with him. He can't break loose. If only we could get away, Dad would be all right." "Yes?" said Lennon. Carmena remained silent until he came panting up after her to the top of the steepest ascent. While he paused to catch his breath she opened the canteen. They were by now badly in need of a drink. Before starting on up the ledges she met Lennon's smiling gaze with a look of tremulous appeal. "Dad used to be a lawyer," she faltered. "If only you'll try to like him and--and help." "Of course!" exclaimed Lennon. "Aren't we pals? You're pulling me through this scrape. Perhaps I can pull him out of his hole. You called it Dead Hole, didn't you?" "Yes," murmured the girl. "That's the name and--it fits." "You've stood by me. I'll stand by you," Lennon pledged himself. "We'll look for that copper mine together. I'm working for a big copper syndicate. If I relocate the mine I am to receive twenty thousand in cash and ten per cent. of the stock. Your half of the cash should pull your dad out of his hole." The girl's eyes dilated. "Don't--don't tell Dad!" she gasped. "It's not the money I want. You don't sabe. Promise you won't say a word to Dad about the money--or the mine?" "Why, if you do not wish me----" "Not a word--not the barest hint! Promise!" "Very well. Only----" "You'll learn all too soon!" she murmured, and she started quickly up the last ascent. When they rounded the brink, twelve hundred feet above the canon bed, the girl did not linger to talk. She dropped the pony's reins and started off at a jog across the hot, level, cedar-dotted top of the mesa. Lennon galloped ahead of her, tied the pony, and ran on afoot. Carmena copied the maneuver. In this manner, taking turn about, they covered the ground almost as fast as if both had been mounted. As each drank from the canteen at every stop and Carmena twice wet the nostrils of the pony, none was yet exhausted when, at the end of five or six miles, the girl headed down into a quickly narrowing valley. The funnel-shaped trough pinched to a steep chute between precipices that leaned closer together overhead the deeper the fugitives descended. The bed of the narrow mountain crack became even more steep. In places the pony had to jump like a goat down five and six-foot ledges. Time and again he slid on his haunches. At the worst place of all the beast was saved from certain destruction only by snubbing his horsehair picket rope around a corner of rock and so easing his descent to better footing. But, as Carmena remarked, the steeper the grade the sooner it was ended. They came down into the bottom of the lower canon, bruised and exhausted but with no bones broken. "Almost there," panted Carmena, and she reeled ahead along the boulder-strewn bed of the chasm.