The John DeWitt who helped break camp after finding Rhoda's scarf was a different man from the half-crazed person of the three days previous. He had begun to hope. Somehow that white scarf with Rhoda's perfume clinging to it was a living thing to him, a living, pulsing promise that Rhoda was helping him to find her. Now, while Jack and Billy were feverishly eager, he was cool and clear-headed, leaving the leadership to Billy still, yet doing more than his share of the work in preparing for the hard night ahead of them. The horses were well watered, their own canteens were filled and saturated and food so prepared that it could be eaten from the saddle.
"For," said Porter, "when we do hit the little girl's trail, starvation or thirst or high hell ain't goin' to stop us!"
It was mid-afternoon when they started down the mountainside. There was no trail and going was painful but the men moved with the care of desperation. Once in the cañon they moved slowly along the wall and some two miles from where the scarf had been found, they discovered a fault where climbing was possible. It was nearing sundown when they reached a wide ledge where the way was easy. Porter led the way back over this to the spot below which fluttered a white paper to mark the place where the scarf had been found. The ledge deepened here to make room for a tiny, bubbling spring. Giant boulders were scattered across the rocky floor.
The three men dismounted. The ledge gave no trace of human occupancy and yet Porter and Jack nodded at each other.
"Here was his camp, all right. Water, and no one could come within a mile of him without his being seen."
"He's still covering his traces carefully," said Jack.
"Not so very," answered Porter. "He's banking a whole lot on our stupidity, but Miss Tuttle beat him to it with her scarf."
The three men treated the ledge to a microscopic examination but they found no trace of previous occupation until Billy knelt and put his nose against a black outcropping of stone in the wall. Then he gave a satisfied grunt.
"Come here, Jack, and take a sniff."
Jack knelt obediently and cried excitedly:
"It smells of smoke, by Jove! Don't it, John, old scout!"
"They knew smoke wouldn't show against a black outcrop, but they didn't bank on my nose!" said Billy complacently. "Come ahead, boys."
A short distance from the spring they found a trail which led back up the mountain, and as dusk came on they followed its dizzy turns until darkness forced them to halt and wait until the moon rose. By its light they moved up into a piñon forest.
"Let's wait here until daylight," suggested Jack. "It's a good place for a camp."
"No, it's too near the ledge," objected Billy. "Of course we are working on faith mostly. I'm no Sherlock Holmes. We'll keep to the backbone of this range for a while. It's the wildest spot in New Mexico. Kut-le will avoid the railroad over by the next range."
So Billy led his little band steadfastly southward. At dawn they met a Mexican shepherd herding his sheep in a grassy cañon. Jack Newman called to him eagerly and the Mexican as eagerly answered. A visitor was worth a month's pay to the lonely fellow. The red of dawn was painting the fleecy backs of his charges as the tired Americans rode into his little camp.
"Seen anything of an Injun running away with a white girl?" asked Billy without preliminaries.
The Mexican's jaw dropped.
"Sacra Maria!" he gasped. "Not I! Who is she?"
"Listen!" broke in Jack. "You be on the watch. An educated Indian has stolen a young lady who was visiting my wife. I own the Newman ranch. That Indian Cartwell it was, three days ago."
John DeWitt interrupted.
"If you can catch that Indian, if you can give us a clue to him, you needn't herd sheep any more. Lord, man, speak up! Don't stand there like a chump!"
"But, señors!" stammered the poor fellow to whom this sudden torrent of conversation was as overwhelming as a cloudburst. "But I have not seen—"
Billy Porter spoke again.
"Hold up, boys! We are scaring the poor devil to death. Friend pastor," he said, "we'll have breakfast here with you, if you don't object, and tell you our troubles."
The shepherd glowed with hospitality.
"Yonder is good water and I have tortillas and frijoles."
Unshaven and dirty, gaunt from lack of sleep, the three men dismounted wearily and gladly turned their coffee and bacon over to the herder to whom the mere odor of either was worth any amount of service. As they ate, Jack and Billy quizzed the Mexican as to the topography of the surrounding country. The little herder was a canny chap.
"He will not try to cover his trail carefully now," he said, swallowing huge slabs of bacon. "He has a good start. You will have to fool him. He sleeps by day and travels by night, you will see. You are working too hard and your horses will be dead. You should have slept last night. Now you will lose today because you must rest your horses."
Porter looked at his two companions. Jack was doing fairly well, but the calm that DeWitt had found with Rhoda's scarf had deserted him. He was eating scarcely anything and stared impatiently at the fire, waiting for the start.
"I'm a blamed double-action jackass, with a peanut for a mind!" exclaimed Porter. "Taking on myself to lead this hunt when I don'tsabefrijoles! We take a sleep now."
DeWitt jumped to his feet, expostulating, but Jack and Billy laid a hand on either of his shoulders and forced him to lie down on his blanket. There nature claimed her own and in a short time the poor fellow was in the slumber of exhaustion.
"Poor old chap!" said Jack as he spread his own blanket. "I can't help thinking all the time 'What if it were Katherine!' Dear old Rhoda! Why, Billy, we used to play together as kids! She's slapped my face, many a time!"
"Probably you deserved it!" answered Billy in an uncertain voice. "By the limping piper! I'm glad I ain't her financier. I'm most crazy, as it is!"
The sheep herder woke the sleepers at noon. After a bath at the spring, and dinner, the trio felt as if reborn. They left the herder with minute directions as to what he was to do in case he heard of Rhoda. Then they rode out of the cañon into the burning desert.
And now for several days they lost all clues. They beat up and down the ranges like tired hunting-dogs, all their efforts fruitless. Little by little, panic and excitement left them. Even DeWitt realized that the hunt was to be a long and serious one as Porter told of the fearful chases the Apaches had led the whites, time and again. He began to realize that to keep alive in the terrible region through which the hunt was set he must help the others to conserve their own and his energies. To this end they ate and slept as regularly as they could.
Occasionally they met other parties of searchers, but this was only when they beat to the eastward toward the ranch, for most of the searchers were now convinced that Kut-le had made toward Mexico and they were patrolling the border. But Billy insisted that Kut-le was making for some eerie that he knew and would ensconce himself there for months, if need be, till the search was given up. Then and then only would he make for Mexico. And John DeWitt and Jack had come to agree with Billy.
"He'll keep her up in some haunt of his," said Jack, again and again, "until he's worn her into consenting to marry him. And before that happens, if I know old Rhoda, we'll find them."
"He's mine when we do find him, remember that," John DeWitt always said through his teeth at this point in the discussion.
It was on the twelfth day of the hunt that the sheep-herder found them. They were cinching up the packs after the noon rest when he rode up on a burro. He was dust-coated and both he and the burro were panting.
"I've seen her! I've seen the señorita!" he shouted as he clambered stiffly from the burro.
The three Americans stood rigid.
"Where? How? When?" came from three heat-cracked mouths.
The Mexican started to answer, but his throat was raw with alkali dust and his voice was scarcely audible. DeWitt impatiently thrust a canteen into the little fellow's hands.
"Hurry, for heaven's sake!" he urged.
The Mexican took a deep draught.
"The night after you left I moved up into the peaks, intending to cross the range to lower pastures next day. A big storm came up and I made camp. Then an Indian in a blanket rode up to me and asked me if I was alone. Isabedhim at once. 'But yes, señor,'" I answered, "'except for the sheep!'"
"But Miss Tuttle! The señorita!" shouted DeWitt.
The Mexican glanced at the tired blue eyes, the strained face, pityingly.
"She was well," he answered. "Be patient, señor. Then there rode up another Indian, two squaws and what looked to be a young boy. The Indian lifted the boy from the saddle so tenderly, señors. And it was your señorita! She did not look strong, yet I think the Indian is taking good care of her. They sat by the fire till the storm was over. The señorita ignored Kut-le as if he had been a dog."
Porter clinched his teeth at this, while Jack murmured with a gleam of savage satisfaction in his eyes, "Old Rhoda!" But DeWitt only gnawed his lip, with his blue eyes on the Mexican.
"The Indian said I was to say nothing, but the señorita made him let me tell about you after I said I had seen you. She—she cried with happiness. They rode away in a little while but I followed as long as I dared to leave my sheep. They were going north. I think they were in the railroad range the night you were with me, then doubled back. I left my sheep the next day with the salt-boy who came up. I tramped twenty miles to the rancho and got a burro and left word about the señorita. Then I started on your trail. Everyone I met I told. I thought that my news was not worth much except that the señor there would be glad to know that the Indian is tender to his señorita."
DeWitt turned to Porter and Newman.
"Friends, perhaps she is being taken care of!" he said. "Perhaps that devil is trying to keep her health, at least. God! If nothing worse has befallen her!"
He stopped and drew his wrist across his forehead. Something like tears shone in Jack's eyes, and Porter coughed. John turned to the Mexican and grasped the little fellow's hand.
"My boy," he said, "you'll never regret this day's work. If you have a señorita you know what you have done for me!"
The Mexican looked up into DeWitt's face seriously.
"I have one. She has a dimple in her chin."
John turned abruptly and stood staring into the desert while tears seared his eyes. Billy hastily unpacked and gave Carlos and his burro the best that the outfit afforded.
"Can the salt-boy stay on with the sheep while you come with us?" asked John DeWitt. "I'll pay your boss for the whole flock if anything goes wrong." He wanted the keen wit of the herder on the hunt.
The Mexican nodded eagerly.
"I'll stay!"
Shortly the four were riding northward across the desert. They were in fairly good shape for a hard tide. Two days before, they had stopped at Squaw Spring ranch and re-outfitted. With proper care of the horses they were good for three weeks away from supplies. And for two weeks now they scoured the desert, meeting scarcely a human, finding none of the traces that Rhoda was so painfully dropping along her course. The hugeness, the cruelty of the region drove the hopelessness of their mission more and more deeply into DeWitt's brain. It seemed impossible except by the merest chance to find trace of another human in a waste so vast. It seemed to him that it was not skill but the gambler's instinct for luck that guided Carlos and Billy.
They rode through open desert country one afternoon, the only mountains discernible being a far purple haze along the horizon. For hours the little cavalcade had moved without speech. Then to the north, Porter discerned a dot moving toward them. Gradually under their eager eyes the dot grew into a man who staggered as he walked. When he observed the horsemen coming toward him he sat down and waited.
"Jim Provenso! By the limping Piper!" cried Billy. "Thought you was in Silver City."
Jim was beyond useless speech. He caught the canteen which Jack swung to him and drank deeply. Then he said hoarsely:
"I almost got away with the Tuttle girl last week!"
Every man left his saddle as if at a word of command. Jim took another drink.
"If I catch that Injun alone I'll cut his throat!"
"Was Miss Tuttle bad off?" gasped Porter.
"She? Naw; she looked fine. He sassed me, though, as I won't take it from any man!"
"Tell us what happened, for heaven's sake," cried DeWitt, eying Provenso disgustedly.
Jim told his story in detail.
"That Injun Alkus," he ended, "he tied a rag over my eyes, tied my hands up and, say, he lost me for fair! He took all day to it. At night he tied me up to a tree and I stood there all night before I got my hands loose. I was sure lost, now, I can tell you! I struck a cowman up on the range the next night. He give me some grub and a canteen and I made out pretty good till yesterday, working south all the time. Then I got crazy with thirst and threw my canteen away. Found a spring last night again, but I'm about all in."
"How did Miss Tuttle seem?" asked John with curious quietness. It seemed to him the strangest thing of all that first the Mexican, then this coarse, tramp-like fellow, should have talked to Rhoda while he could only wander wildly through the Hades of the desert without a trace of her camp to solace him.
"Say, she was looking good! She thanked me and told me to tell you all to hurry."
They gave to Provenso a burro whose pack was nearly empty, what food and water they could spare, and he left them. They started on dejectedly. Provenso had told them where Kut-le had camped ten days before.
They could only find that spot and attempt to pick up the trail from there.
"Just the same," said Billy, "it's just as well he didn't get away with Miss Rhoda. He's a tough pill, that Provenso. She'd better be with the Injun than him!"
"Provenso must be a bad lot," said Jack.
"He is!" replied Billy grimly.
The camp was made that night near a smooth-faced mesa. Before dawn they had eaten breakfast and were mounting, when Carlos gave a low whistle. Every ear was strained. On the exquisite stillness of the dawn sounded a woman's voice which a man's voice answered.
Rhoda gave a cry of joy. From the horsemen rose a sudden shout.
"Spread! Spread! There they are!"
"Don't shoot!" It was Porter's voice, shrill and high with excitement. "That's her, the boy there! Rhoda! Rhoda! We're coming!"
With a quick responsive cry, Rhoda struck her horse. With the blow, Kut-le leaned from his own horse and seized her bridle, turning her horse with his own away from the mesa and to the left. The other Indians followed and with hoarse cries of exultation the rescuers took up the pursuit.
Rhoda looked back.
"Shoot!" she screamed. "Shoot!"
Before the second scream had left her lips she was lifted bodily from the saddle to Kut-le's arms where, understanding his device, she struggled like a mad woman. But she only wasted her strength. Without a glance at her, Kut-le turned his pony almost in its tracks and made for the mesa.
"Cut him off! He'll get away from us!" It was DeWitt's voice, and "John! John DeWitt!" Rhoda cried.
But the young Indian had gaged his distance well. He brought his horse to its haunches and with Rhoda in his arms was running into a fissure seemingly too narrow for human to enter, while the pursuers were still a hundred yards away.
"Hold 'em, Alchise!" he said briefly as he ran.
Alchise, with rifle cocked, stopped by the opening. The fissure widened immediately into a narrow passageway. High, high above them rolled a strip of pink and blue morning sky. Before them was a seemingly interminable crevice along which the squaws scuttled. As Rhoda watched them they disappeared around a sudden curve. When Kut-le reached this point with his burden, the squaws were climbing like monkeys up the wall which here gave back, roughly, ending the fissure in a rude chimney which it seemed to Rhoda only a bear or an Apache could have climbed. Kut-le set Rhoda on her feet. She looked up into his face mockingly. To her mind she was as good as rescued. But the young Apache seemed in no wise hurried or excited.
"Our old friends seem to want something!" he commented with his boyish grin.
"What are you going to do now?" asked Rhoda, with calm equal to the Apache's.
"I can't carry you up this wall," suggested Kut-le.
"Very well!" returned Rhoda pleasantly. "I am quite willing that you should leave me here."
Kut-le's eyes glittered.
"Rhoda, you must climb this wall with me!"
"I won't!" replied Rhoda laconically.
"Then I shall force you to," said the Indian, shifting his rifle and prodding Rhoda ever so gently with the barrel.
Rhoda gave Kut-le a look of scorn that he was not soon to forget and slowly mounted the first broken ledge. The wall was composed of a series of jutting rocks and of ledges that barely offered hand or foot hold. Up and up and up! Kut-le was now beside her, now above her, now lifting, now pulling. Half-way to the top, Rhoda stopped, dizzy and afraid. Kneeling on the ledge above, with one hand thrust down to lift her, Kut-le looked into her eyes almost pleadingly. That handsome face so close to hers affected Rhoda strangely.
"Don't be afraid," whispered Kut-le. "Nothing can happen to you while I am taking care of you."
Rhoda looked into his eyes proudly.
"I am not afraid," she said, reaching for a fresh handhold with trembling fingers.
The jutting rocks were sharp. Kut-le from his ledge saw Rhoda look at her hold then turn white. Her nails were torn to the quick and bleeding. She swayed with only an atom of gravity lacking to send her to death below. Instantly Kut-le was back beside her, his sinewy hand between her shoulders, supporting and lifting her to the ledge above. As they neared the top the broken surface became prickly with cactus and Rhoda winced with misery as the thorns pierced and tore her flesh. But finally, in what actually had been an incredibly short time, they emerged on the plateau, where the two squaws huddled high above the pursuers.
"They think they have you now!" said Kut-le, as Rhoda dropped panting to the ground. "We must move out of here before they investigate the mesa top."
He allowed, however, a few minutes' breathing spell for Rhoda. She sat quietly, though her gray eyes were brilliant with excitement. It seemed to her but a matter of a few hours now when she would be with her own. Yet she could not but notice with that curious observance of detail which comes at moments of intensest excitement the varied colors of the distances that opened before her. The great mesa on which she sat was a mighty peninsula of chalcedony that stretched into the desert. It was patched by rocks of lavender, of yellow, and of green, and belled over by the intensity of the morning blue above.
"Come!" said Kut-le. "There will be little rest for us today."
Rhoda rose, took a few staggering steps, then sat down.
"I can't start yet," she said. "I'm too worn out."
Kut-le's expression was amused while it was impatient.
"I suppose you may be sleepy, but I think you can walk a little way. Hurry, Rhoda! Hurry!"
Rhoda sat staring calmly into the palpitating blue above.
"I hate to have you carry me," she said after a moment, "but I don't feel at all like walking!"
Her tired face was irresistibly lovely as she looked up at the Apache, but by an effort he remained obdurate.
"You must walk as long as you can," he insisted. "We have got to hustle today!"
"I really don't feel like hustling!" sighed Rhoda.
"Rhoda!" cried Kut-le impatiently, "get up and walk after me! Cesca, see that the white squaw keeps moving!" and he handed his rifle to the brown hag who took it with evident pleasure. Molly ran forward as if to protest but at a look from Kut-le she dropped back.
Rhoda rose slowly, with her lower lip caught between her teeth. She followed silently after Kut-le, Cesca and the rifle at her shoulder and Molly in the rear. It seemed to the girl that of all the strange scenes through which the past weeks had carried her this was of all the most unreal. All about her was a world of vivid rock heaps so intensely colored that she doubted her vision. Away to the south lay the boundless floor of the desert, a purple and gold infinity that rolled into the horizon. Far to the north mountains were faintly blue in the yellow sunlight.
Kut-le headed straight for the mountains. His pace was swift and unrelenting. Almost immediately Rhoda felt the debilitating effects of overheat. The sun, now sailing high, burned through her flannel shirt until her flesh was blistered beneath it. The light on the brilliantly colored rocks made her eyes blink with pain. Before long she was parched with thirst and faint with hunger. This was her first experience in tramping for any distance under the desert sun. But Kut-le kept the pace long after the two squaws were half leading, half carrying the girl.
Rhoda had long since learned the uselessness of protesting. She kept on until the way danced in reeling colors before her eyes. Then without a sound she dropped in the scant shadow of a rock. At the cry from Molly, Kut-le turned, and after one glance at Rhoda's white face and limp figure he knelt in the sand and lifted the drooping, yellow head. Molly unslung her canteen and forced a few drops of water between Rhoda's lips. Then she tenderly chafed the small hands and the delicate throat and Rhoda opened her eyes. Immediately Kut-le lifted her in his arms and the flight was resumed.
At short intervals during the morning, Rhoda walked, but for the most part Kut-le packed her as dispassionately as if she had been a lame puppy. He held her across his broad chest as if her fragile weight were nothing. Lying so, Rhoda watched the merciless landscape or the brown squaws jogging at Kut-le's heels. Surely, she thought, the ancient mesa never had seen a stranger procession or known of a wilder mission. She looked up into Kut-le's face and wondered as she stared at his bare head how his eyes could look so steadily into the sun-drenched landscape.
As she lay, the elation of the early morning left her. More and more surely the conviction came to her that the Apache's boast was true; that no white could catch him on his own ground. Dizzy and ill from the heat, she closed her eyes and lay without hope or coherent thought.
At noon they stopped for a short time that Rhoda might eat. Their resting-place was in the shadow of a beetling, weather-beaten rock that still bore traces of hieroglyphic carvings. There were broken bits of clay pots among the tufts of cactus. Rhoda stared at them languidly and wondered what the forgotten vessels could have contained in a region so barren of life or hope.
Kut-le strolled over to a cat's-claw bush at whose base lay a tangle of dead leaves. With a bit of stick, he scattered this litter, struck the ground several good blows and returned with a string of fat desert mice. With infinite care Cesca kindled a fire so tiny, so clear, that scarcely a wisp of smoke escaped into the quivering air. Into this she flung the eviscerated mice and in an instant the tiny things were a delicate brown. The aroma was pleasant but Rhoda turned whiter still when Molly brought her the fattest of the mice.
"Take it away!" she whispered. "Take it away!"
Molly looked at the girl in stupid surprise.
"You must eat, Rhoda girl!" said Kut-le.
Rhoda made no reply but leaned limply against the ancient rock, her golden hair touching the crude drawings of long ago. She was a very different Rhoda from the eager girl of the early morning. She ignored every effort Kut-le made to tempt her to eat. Her tired gaze wandered to her hands, still blood-grimed, and her cleft chin quivered. Kut-le saw the expressive little look.
"I'm sorry," he said simply.
Rhoda looked up at him.
"I don't believe you," she returned calmly.
The Indian's jaw stiffened.
"Come, we'll start now."
The afternoon was like the morning, except that the sun was more burning overhead, the way more scorching underfoot; except that the course became more broken, the clambering heavier, the drops more wracking. All the afternoon, Kut-le carried Rhoda. At last the sun sank below the mesa and the day was ended.
The place of their camping seemed to Rhoda damp and cold. It was close beside a spring that gave out a faint, miasmic odor. The bitter water was grateful, however. Again more mice were seered over before the fire was stamped out hastily. This time Rhoda forced herself to eat. Then she drank deeply of the bitter water and lay down on the cold ground. Despite the fact that she was shivering with the cold, she fell asleep at once. Toward midnight she awoke and moving close to Molly's broad back for warmth, she looked up into the sky. For the first time the great southern stars seemed near and kindly to her and before she fell asleep again she wondered why.
At earliest peep of dawn the squaws were astir waiting for Kut-le, who shortly staggered into camp with a load of meat on his shoulder. Alchise was with him.
"Mule meat!" said Kut-le to Rhoda. "I went to find horses but there was nothing but an old lame mule, I brought him back this way!"
"Heavens!" ejaculated Rhoda.
The squaws worked busily, cutting the meat into strips which they hung over their shoulders to sun dry during the day. Alchise cleansed a length of mule's intestine in the spring, to serve as a canteen. Rhoda gave small heed to these preparations. She was too ill and feverish even to be disgusted by them. She refused to eat but drank constantly from the spring. When at Kut-le's command she took up the march with the others the young man eyed her anxiously. He slung Molly's canteen from his own to Alchise's shoulder and felt Rhoda's pulse.
"This water was bad for you," he said. "But it was the only spring within miles. Perhaps you will throw off the effects of it when we get into the heat of the sun."
Rhoda made no reply but staggered miserably after Molly. The spring lay in a pocket between mountains and mesa. The mountains seemed cruelly high to Rhoda as she looked at them and thought of toiling across them. With head sunk on her breast and feverishly twitching hands she followed for half an hour. Then Kut-le turned.
"I'm going to carry you, Rhoda," he said.
The girl shrank away from him.
"You and Molly and all of them think I'm just a parasite," she muttered. "You don't have to do anything for me! Just let me drop anywhere and die!"
Kut-le looked at her strangely. Without comment, he picked her up. There was a sternly tender look on his face that never had been there before. He did not carry her dispassionately today, but very gently. Something in his manner pierced through Rhoda's half delirium and she looked up at him with a faint replica of her old lovely smile that Kut-le had not seen since he had stolen her. He trembled at its beauty and started forward at a tremendous pace.
"I'll get you to good water by noon," he said.
At noon they were well up in the mountains by a clear spring fringed with aspens. Watercress grew below it, and high above it were pines and junipers. It was a spot of surpassing loveliness, but Rhoda, tossing and panting, could not know it, Kut-le laid his burden on the ground and Molly drew off her tattered petticoat to lay beneath the feverish head. The young Apache stood looking down at the little figure, so graceful in its boyish abandonment of gesture, so pitiful in its broken unconsciousness. Molly bathed the burning face and hands in the pure cold water, muttering tender Apache phrases. Kut-le constantly interrupted her to change the girl's position. For an hour or so he waited for the fever to turn. By three o'clock there was no change for the better and he left Rhoda's side to pace back and forth by the spring in anxious thought.
At last he came to a conclusion and with stern set face he issued a few short orders to his companions. The canteens were refilled. Kut-le lifted Rhoda and the trail was taken to the west. Alchise would have relieved him of his burden, willingly, but Kut-le would not listen to it. Molly trotted anxiously by the young Apache's side, constantly moistening the girl's lips with water.
Rhoda was quite delirious now. She murmured and sometimes sobbed, trying to free herself from Kut-le's arms.
"I'm not sick!" she said, looking up into the Indian's face with unseeing eyes. "Don't let him see that I am sick!"
"No! No! Dear one!" answered Kut-le.
"Don't let him see I'm sick!" she sobbed. "He hurts me so!"
"No! No!" exclaimed Kut-le huskily. "Molly, give her a little more water!"
"Molly!" panted Rhoda, "you tell him how hard I worked—how I earned my way a little! And don't let him do anything for me!"
The little group, trudging the long difficult trail along the mountain was a rich study in degrees: Rhoda, the fragile Caucasian, a product of centuries of civilization; and Kut-le, the Indian, with the keenness, the ferocious courage, the cunning of the Indian leavened inextricably with the thousand softening influences of a score of years' contact with civilization; then Cesca, the lean and stoical product of an ancient and terrible savagery; and Alchise, her mate. Finally Molly—squat, dirty Molly—the stupid, squalid aborigine, as distinct from Cesca's type as is the brown snail from the stinging wasp.
Alchise, striding after his chief, was smitten with a sudden idea. After ruminating on it for some time, he communicated it to his squaw. Cesca shook her head with a grunt of disapproval. Alchise insisted and the squaw looked at Kut-le cunningly.
"Quién sabe?" she said at last.
At this Alchise hurried forward and touched Kut-le on the shoulder.
"Take 'em squaw to Reservation. Medicine dance. Squaw heap sick.Sabe?"
"Reservation's too far away," replied Kut-le, shifting Rhoda's head to lie more easily on his arm. "I'm making for Chira."
Alchise shook his head vigorously.
"Too many mens! We go Reservation. Alchise help carry sick squaw."
"Nope! You're way off, Alchise. I'm going where I can get some white man's medicine the quickest. I'm not so afraid of getting caught as I am of her getting a bad run of fever. I have friends at Chira."
Alchise fell back, muttering disappointment. White man's medicine was no good. He cared little about Rhoda but he adored Kut-le. It was necessary therefore that the white squaw be saved, since his chief evidently was quite mad about her. All the rest of the day Alchise was very thoughtful. Late at night the next halt was made. High up in the mountain on a sheltered ledge Kut-le laid down his burden.
"Keep her quiet till I get back," he said, and disappeared.
Rhoda was in a stupor and lay quietly unconscious with the stars blinking down on her, a limp dark heap against the mountain wall. The three Indians munched mule meat, then Molly curled herself on the ground and in three minutes was snoring. Alchise stood erect and still on the ledge for perhaps ten minutes after Kut-le's departure. Then he touched Cesca on the shoulder, lifted Rhoda in his arms and, followed by Cesca, left the sleeping Molly alone on the ledge.
Swiftly, silently, Alchise strode up the mountainside, Rhoda making neither sound nor motion. For hours, with wonderful endurance the two Indians held the pace. They moved up the mountain to the summit, which they crossed, then dropped rapidly downward. Just at dawn Alchise stopped at a graycamposunder some pines and called. A voice from the hut answered him. The canvas flap was put back and an old Indian buck appeared, followed by several squaws and young bucks, yawning and staring.
Alchise laid Rhoda on the ground while he spoke rapidly to the Indian. The old man protested at first but on the repeated use of Kut-le's name he finally nodded and Alchise carried Rhoda into thecampos. A squaw kindled a fire which, blazing up brightly, showed a huge, dark room, canvas-roofed and dirt-floored, quite bare except for the soiled blankets on the floor.
Rhoda was laid in the center of the hut. The old buck knelt beside her. He was very old indeed. His time-ravaged features were lean and ascetic. His clay-matted hair was streaked with white; his black eyes were deep-sunk and his temples were hollow. But there was a fine sort of dignity about the old medicine-man, despite his squalor. He gazed on Rhoda in silence for some time. Alchise and Cesca sat on the floor, and little by little they were joined by a dozen other Indians who formed a circle about the girl. The firelight flickered on the dark, intent faces and on Rhoda's delicate beauty as she lay passing rapidly from stupor to delirium.
Suddenly the old man raised his lean hand, shaking a gourd filled with pebbles, and began softly to chant. Instantly the other Indians joined him and thecamposwas filled with the rhythm of a weird song. Rhoda tossed her arms and began to cough a little from the smoke. The chant quickened. It was but the mechanical repetition of two notes falling always from high to low. Yet it had an indescribable effect of melancholy, this aboriginal song. It was as hopeless and melancholy as all of nature's chants: the wail of the wind, the sob of the rain, the beat of the waves.
Rhoda sat erect, her eyes wild and wide. The old buck, without ceasing his song, attempted to thrust her back with one lean brown claw, but Rhoda struck him feebly.
"Go away!" she cried. "Be quiet! You hurt my head! Don't make that dreadful noise!"
The chant quickened. The medicine-man now rocked back and forth on his knees, accenting the throb of the song by beating his bare feet on the earth. He seemed by some strange suppleness to flatten his instep paddle-wise and to bring the entire leg from toe to knee at one blow against the ground. Never did his glowing old eyes leave Rhoda's face.
The girl, thrown into misery and excitement by the insistence of the chant, began to wring her hands. The words said nothing to her but the rhythmic repetition of the notes told her a story as old as life itself: that life passes swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and without hope; that our days are as grass and as the clouds that are consumed and are no more; that the soul sinks to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death. Rhoda struggled, with horror in her eyes, to rise; but the old man with a hand on her shoulder forced her back on the blanket.
"Oh, what is it!" wailed Rhoda, clutching at the mass of yellow-brown hair about her face. "Where am I? What are you doing? Have I died? Where is Kut-le? Kut-le!" she screamed. "Kut-le!"
The medicine-man held her to the blanket and for a time she sat quiescent. Then as the Indian lifted his hand from her shoulder the bewilderment of her gray eyes changed to the wildness of delirium. She looked toward the doorway where the dawn light made but little headway against the dark interior. With one blue-veined hand on her panting breast she slowly, stealthily gathered herself together, and with unbelievable swiftness she sprang for the square of dawn light. She leaped almost into the arms of a young buck who sat near the door. He bore her back to her place while the chant continued without interruption.
Exhausted, Rhoda lay listening to the song. Gradually it began to exert its hypnotic influence over her. Its sense of melancholy enveloped her drug-like. She lay prone, the tears coursing down her cheeks, her twitching hands turned upward beside her. Slowly she floated outward upon a dark sea whose waves beat a ceaseless requiem of anguish on her ears. It seemed to her that she was enduring all the sorrows of the ages; that she was brain-tortured by the death agonies of all humanity; that all the uselessness, all the meaninglessness, all the utter weariness of the death-ridden world pressed upon her, suffocating her, forcing her to stillness, slowing the beating of her heart, the intake of her breath. Slowly her white lids closed, yet with one last conscious cry for life:
"Kut-le!" she wailed. "Kut-le!"
A quick shadow filled the doorway.
"Here, Rhoda! Here!"
Kut-le bounded into the room, upsetting the medicine-man, and lifted Rhoda in his arms. She clung to him wildly.
"Take me away, Kut-le! Take me away!"
He soothed her with great tenderness.
"Dear one!" he murmured. "Dear one!" and she closed her eyes quietly.
During this time the Indians sat silent and watchful. Kut-le turned to Alchise.
"You cursed fool!" he said.
"She get well now," replied Alchise anxiously. "Alchise save her for you. Molly tell you where come."
For a moment Kut-le stared at Alchise; then, as if realizing the futility of speech, "Come!" he said, and ignoring the other Indians, he strode from thecampos. Alchise and Cesca followed him, and outside the anxious Molly seized Rhoda's limp hand with a little cry of joy. Kut-le led the way to a quiet spot among the pines. Here he laid Rhoda on a sheepskin and covered her with a tattered blanket, the spoils of his previous night's trip.
About the middle of the morning Rhoda opened her eyes. As she stirred, Kut-le came to her.
"I've had such horrible dreams, Kut-le. You won't go and leave me to the Indians again?"
This appeal from Rhoda in her weakness almost overcame Kut-le but he only smoothed her tangled hair and answered:
"No, dear one!"
"Where are we now?" she asked feebly.
Kut-le smiled.
"In the Rockies."
"I think I am very sick," continued Rhoda. "Do you think we can stay quiet in one place today?"
Kut-le shook his head.
"I am going to get you to some quinine as quick as I can. There is some about twenty-four hours from here."
Rhoda's eyes widened.
"Shall I be with white people?"
"Don't bother. You'll have good care."
The light faded from Rhoda's eyes.
"It's hard for me, isn't it?" she said, as if appealing to the college man of the ranch.
"Rhoda! Rhoda!" whispered Kut-le, "your suffering kills me! But I must have you, I must!"
Rhoda moved her head impatiently, as if the Indian's tense, handsome face annoyed her. She refused food but drank deeply of the tepid water and shortly they were again on the trail.
For several hours Rhoda lay in Kut-le's arms, weak and ill but with lucid mind. They were making their way up a long cañon. It was very narrow. Rhoda could see the individual leaves of the aspens on the opposite wall as they moved close in the shadow of the other. The floor, watered by a clear brook, was level and green. On either side the walls were murmurous with delicately quivering aspens and sighing pines.
Suddenly Cesca gave a grunt of warning. Far down the valley a sheep-herder was approaching with his flocks. Kut-le turned to the right and Alchise sprang to his aid. In the shelter of the trees, Kut-le twisted a handkerchief across Rhoda's mouth; and in reply to her outraged eyes, he said:
"I don't mind single visitors as a rule but I haven't time to fuss with one now."
Together the two men carried Rhoda up the cañon-side. They lifted her from trunk to trunk, now a root-hold, now a jutting bit of rock, till far up the sheer wall. Rhoda lay at last on a little ledge heaped with pine-needles. By the time the Indians were settled on the rock Rhoda was delirious again. The fever had returned twofold and Molly's entire efforts were toward keeping the tossing form on the ledge.
Slowly, very slowly, the herder, a sturdy ragged Mexican, moved up the cañon, pausing now and again to scratch his head. He was whistlingLa Paloma. The Indians' black eyes did not leave him and after his flute-like notes had melted into the distance they still crouched in cramped stillness on the ledge.
But shortly Kut-le freed Rhoda's mouth, gave Alchise a swift look, and with infinite care the descent was begun. Kut-le did not like traveling in the daylight, for many reasons. Carefully, swiftly they moved up the cañon, always hugging the wall. Late in the afternoon they emerged on an open mesa. All the wretched day Rhoda had traveled in a fearsome world of her own, peopled with uncanny figures, alight with a glare that seared her eyes, held in a vice that gripped her until she screamed with restless pain. The song that the shepherd had whistled tortured her tired brain.
"The day that I left my home for the rolling sea,I said, 'Mother dear, O pray to thy God for me!'But e'er we set sail I went a fond leave to take—"
Over and over she sang the three lines, ending each time with a frightened stare up into Kut-le's face.
"Whom did I say good-by to? Whom? But they don't care!"
Then again the tired voice:
"The day that I left my home for the rolling sea—"
Night came and the weary, weary crossing of a craggy, heavily wooded mountain. Kut-le did not relinquish his burden. He seemed not to tire of the weight of the slender body that lay now in helpless stupor. If the squaws or Alchise felt fatigue or impatience as Kut-le held them to a pace on the tortuous trail that would nearly have exhausted a Caucasian athlete, they gave no sign. All the endless night Kut-le led the way under the midnight blackness of the piñon or the violet light of the stars, until the lifting light of the dawn found them across the ranges and standing at the edge of a little river.
In the dim light there lifted a terraced adobe building with ladders faintly outlined on the terraces. There was no sound save the barking of a dog and the ripple of the river. With a muttered admonition, Kut-le left Rhoda to the others and climbed one of the ladders. He returned with a blanketed figure that gazed on Rhoda non-committally. At a sign, Kut-le lifted Rhoda, and the little group moved noiselessly toward the dwelling, clambered up a ladder, and disappeared.
Rhoda opened her eyes with a sense of physical comfort that confused her. She was lying on the floor of a long, gray-walled room. In one corner was a tiny adobe fire-place from which a tinier fire threw a jet of flame color on the Navajo that lay before the hearth. Along the walls were benches with splendid Navajos rolled cushion-wise upon them. Above the benches hung several rifles with cougarskin quivers beneath them. A couple of cheap framed mirrors were hung with silver necklaces of beautiful workmanship. In a corner a table was set with heavy but shining china dishes.
Rhoda stared with increasing wonder. She was very weak and spent but her head was clear. She lifted her arms and looked at them. She was wearing a loose-fitting gray garment of a strange weave. She fingered it, more and more puzzled.
"You wake now?" asked a low voice.
Coming softly down the room was an Indian woman of comely face and strange garb. Over a soft shirt of cut and weave such as Rhoda had on, she wore a dark overdress caught at one shoulder and reaching only to the knees. A many-colored girdle confined the dress at the waist. Her legs and feet were covered with high, loose moccasins. Her black hair hung free on her shoulders.
"You been much sick," the woman went on, "much sick," stooping to straighten Rhoda's blanket.
"Where am I?" asked Rhoda.
"At Chira. You eat breakfast?"
Rhoda caught the woman's hand.
"Who are you?" she asked. "You have been very good to me."
"Me Marie," replied the woman.
"Where are Kut-le and the others?"
"Kut-le here. Others in mountain. You much sick, three days."
Rhoda sighed. Would this kaleidoscope of misery never end!
"I am very tired of it all," she said. "I think it would have been kinder if you had let me die. Will you help me to get back to my white friends?"
Marie shook her head.
"Kut-le friend. We take care Kut-le's squaw."
Rhoda turned wearily on her side.
"Go away and let me sleep," she said.