"All right--all right, Pete!" she cried. "Lower me to Cochise. But listen! You needn't fight Slade or any one. You heard how he fooled Cochise--made him feel good by promising him me and Jack?" "Me send you down, pronto." "Yes--yes. Only first, if you want me to be your woman, listen. You lower me, I make bargain with Cochise and----" The rest of the fiercely urgent proposal was in Spanish. Pete came to a pause and cast a stealthy glance at his fellow Navaho. The man had dragged Lennon out past the windlass and turned back to grasp the crank handle. "You damn sure Cochise him no kill me? You no lie?" demanded Pete. "Won't you be proving you are his friend?" countered the girl. "You know Slade only half trusts you. He'll be sure to shoot you, soon as his punchers come. How about it? Do you promise? It's your only chance to get me, so long as you daren't tackle Slade yourself." "Slade, him big devil. Injun no can----" "Just wait and see," broke in Carmena. "Remember, there'll be tizwin for you--all you can drink--heaps of tizwin!" "Ugh!" grunted Pete. "Slade no come. _Bueno_--me do him you say." He grunted to the other Navaho and swung the crane outward as the tightening rope lifted the girl above the sacks of corn. She disappeared from view below the barrier. The Navaho lowered away with a deliberation that set Lennon's teeth on edge. The strain on his nerves was not lessened by the total silence of the waiting Apaches down below. At last the rope slackened. After a brief pause it was rapidly wound in on the barrel of the windlass. Pete had already dragged Lennon to the opening and heaved him up on the barricade. When the rope loop came up to the crane, he jerked it in, made fast to Lennon, and shoved him off into space. Lennon plunged down nearly a dozen feet before the tautened rope stopped his fall with a violent jerk. He hung dangling, with nothing between him and the wreckage-strewn ledges of the cliff foot, thirty feet beneath. The first jerk had started his body to gyrating. The rapidity with which he was lowered increased the movement. By the time he reached the cliff foot he was spinning like a roast before an old-time fireplace. At first he had been able to make out Carmena standing in the midst of a close group of Apaches. But she and the Indians and the cliff wall had all merged into a blurred whirl before his dizzy eyes by the time he struck the cliff foot. With the slackening of the rope he rolled over, too giddy even to attempt to steady himself with his bound hands. While his eyes were yet too dazed for clear vision, he heard Carmena's voice, low-pitched and vibrant with passionate pleading: "... And him too, Cochise. I'm not asking you to give up your fun with him. Only wait till you've made sure of Slade. There's not a second to lose. You have us. We can't get away. But if you don't do what I ask, you won't get Slade. He'll be up there--safe--with your woman! And his Navahos will trap you here in the Hole."