As Kut-le, with Rhoda in his arms, disappeared into the mesa fissure, John DeWitt threw himself from his horse and was at the opening before the others had more than brought their horses to their haunches.
He was met by Alchise's rifle, with Alchise entirely hidden from view. For a moment the four men stood panting and speechless. The encounter had been so sudden, so swift that they could not believe their senses. Then Billy Porter uttered an oath that reverberated from the rocky wall.
"They will get to the top!" he cried. "Jack, you and DeWitt get up there! Carlos and I will hold this!"
The two men mounted immediately and galloped along the mesa wall, looking for an ascent. Neither of them spoke but both were breathing hard, and through his blistered skin DeWitt's cheeks glowed feverishly. For a mile up and down from the fissure the wall was a blank, except for a single wide split which did not come within fifty feet of the ground. After over half an hour of frantic search, DeWitt found, nearly three miles from the fissure, a rough spot where the wall gave back in a few narrow crumbling ledges.
"We'll have to leave the horses," he said, "and try that."
Jack nodded tensely. They dismounted, pulled the reins over the horses' heads and started up the wall, John leading, carefully. One bitter lesson the desert was teaching him: haste in the hot country spells ruin! So, though Rhoda's voice still rang in his ears, though the sight of the slender boyish figure struggling in Kut-le's arms still ravished his eyes, he worked carefully.
The ascent was all but impossible. The few jutting ledges were so narrow that foothold was precarious, so far apart that only the slight backward slant of the wall made it possible for them to flatten their bodies against the crumbling brown rock and thus keep from falling. They toiled desperately, silently. After an hour of utmost effort, they reached the top, and with an exclamation of exultation started in the direction of the fissure. But their exultation was short-lived. The great split that stopped fifty feet from the desert floor cut them off from the main mesa. They ran hastily along its edge but at no point was it to be crossed. Shortly DeWitt left Jack to follow it back and he hastened to the mesa front where he made a perilous descent and returned with the horses to Porter.
That gentleman forced John to eat some breakfast while Carlos rode hastily to scour the mesa front to the west. Porter and the Mexican had captured two of the horses and the burro that the Indians had left. The other horses had run out into the desert back to the last spring they had camped at, Porter said. To DeWitt's great disappointment, the horses carried only blankets, and the burro was loaded with bacon and flour. There were none of Rhoda's personal belongings. The animals were in good condition, however, and the men annexed them to their outfit gladly.
John was torn betwixt hope and bitter disappointment.
"Do you think they could climb out of the fissure?" he asked half a dozen times, then without waiting for an answer, "Did you see her face, Billy? I had just a glimpse! Didn't she look well! Just that one glance has put new life in me! I know we will get her! Even this cursed desert isn't wide enough to keep me from her! God help that Indian when I get him!"
Porter kept his eyes on Alchise's rifle which had never wavered in the past three hours.
"I've a notion to shoot the barrel off that thing just for luck!" he growled. "John, sit down! You will need all the strength you've got and then some before you catch that Injun!"
"What are you going to do?" asked John, seating himself in the sand some few feet from the fissure.
"The big probability is," said Billy, "that they are in the crack. It would be just about impossible for a girl to climb out of one of 'em. If they have got out, though, it's just a matter of finding their trail again. We'll have 'em! It's just this chance crack that saved 'em. If you're rested, ride along the west wall and try for the top again."
For the next five hours, Porter guarded the mesa front alone. It was nearing six o'clock when Jack returned, exhausted and disappointed. He had followed the great split back until the mesa top became so cut and striated with mighty fissures that progress was impossible.
"Isn't it the devil's own luck," he growled to Porter as he ate, "that we should have let him get into that one crack! What next! Unless they are still in there, we've lost them and are just losing time squatting here."
As he spoke, there was a sound of voices in the fissure. The two men cocked their rifles as John and Carlos emerged from the opening. John was scowling and breathless.
"Lost 'em as usual, by our infernal stupidity," he panted, while Carlos dropped his empty canteen and lifted Porter's to his lips. "I rode round to the south of the mesa. There are a couple of possible ascents there. I found Carlos making one. We followed a dozen fissures before we located this one. We got into it about a mile back from here. Here's a basket we found at the bottom in a burlap bag."
He tossed one of Cesca's pitch baskets at Billy, then threw himself in the sand.
"They were down off the mesa, I bet," he went on, "before we fools found the way up, and it was easy for the chap they left guarding the entrance to avoid us. The mesa is covered with big rocks."
"He got away within the last half-hour then," said Billy, "for I didn't stir from this spot until the burro started to eat the grub pack, and I naturally had to wrestle with him. And no human being could a got out the front even then."
"God! What a country!" groaned DeWitt. "The Indians outwit us at every step!"
"Well," Jack answered dejectedly, "tell us what we could have done differently."
"I'm not blaming any one," replied John.
Billy Porter rose briskly.
"You boys quit your kicking. The scent is still warm. You fellows get a couple of hours' sleep while I take the horses back to Coyote Hole for water. By daylight we got to be on the south side of the mesa to pick up the trail."
Billy's businesslike manner heartened Jack and John DeWitt. They turned in beside Carlos, who already was sleeping.
Dawn found them examining the ascents on the south side of the mesa but they found no traces and as the sun came well up they followed the only possible way toward the mountains. At noon they found a low spring in a pocket between mesa and mountain. Kut-le was growing either defiant or careless, for he had left a heap of ashes and a pile of half-eaten desert mice. Very much cheered they allowed the horses a fair rest. They found no further traces of camp or trail that day and made camp that night in the open desert.
At dawn they were crossing a heavily wooded mountain. The sun had not yet risen when they heard a sound of singing.
"What's that?" asked DeWitt sharply, as the four pulled up their horses.
"A medicine cry," answered Jack. "We must be near some medicine-man'scampos."
"Come on," cried DeWitt, "we'll quiz them!"
"Hold up, you chump!" exclaimed Billy. "If you rush in on a cry that way you are apt not to come back again. You've got to go at 'em careful. Let me do the talking."
They rode toward the sound of the chant and shortly a dingycamposcame into view. An Indian buck made his way from the doorway toward them.
"Who is sick, friend?" asked Billy.
"Old buck," said the Indian.
"Apache?" said Billy.
The Indian nodded.
"YousabeApache named Kut-le?"
The buck shook his head, but Billy went on patiently.
"Yes, yousabehim. He old Ke-say's son. Apache chief's son. He run off with white squaw. We want squaw, we no hurt him. Squaw sick, no good for Injun. You tell, have money." Billy displayed a silver dollar.
The Indian brightened.
"Long time 'go, some Injun say hesabeKut-le. Some Injun say he all same white man. Some Injun say he heap smart." He looked at Billy inquiringly, and Billy nodded approval. DeWitt swallowed nervously. "Come two, three day 'go," the buck went on, his eyes on the silver dollar, "big Injun, carry white squaw, go by here very fast. He go that way all heap fast." The buck pointed south.
"Did he speak to you? What did he say?" cried DeWitt.
But the Indian lapsed into silence and refused to speak more. Porter felt well rewarded for his efforts and tossed the dollar to the Indian.
"Gee!" said Billy, as they started elated down the mountain. "I wish we could overtake him before he outfits again. That poverty-stricken lot couldn't have had any horses here for him to use. I'll bet he makes for the nearest ranch where he could steal a good bunch. That would be at Kelly's, sixty miles south of here. We'll hike for Kelly's!"
This idea did not meet with enthusiastic approval from the other three but as no one had a better suggestion to make, the trail to Kelly's was taken. It seemed to John Dewitt that Billy relied little on science and much on intuition in trailing the Indians. At first, considering Porter's early boasts about his skill, DeWitt was much disappointed by the old-timer's haphazard methods. But after a few weeks' testing of the terrible hardships of the desert, after a few demonstrations of the Apache's cleverness, John had concluded that intuition was the most reliable weapon that the whites could hope to discover with which to offset the Indian's appalling skill and knowledge.
It was an exhausted quartet with its string of horses that drew up at Kelly's dusty corral. Dick Kelly, a stocky Irishman, greeted the strangers pleasantly. When, however, he learned their names he rose to the occasion as only an Irishman can.
"You gentlemen are at the end of your rope, wid the end frayed at that!" he said. "Now come in for a few hours' rest and the Chinaman will cook you the best meal he knows how."
"Lord, no!" cried Billy. "We're so close on the track now that we can hang on to the end. If you've had no trace here we'll just double back and start from the mountains again!"
By this time a dozen cowboys and ranch hands were gathered about the newcomers. Every one knew about Rhoda's disappearance. Every one knew about every man in the little search party. In the flicker of the lanterns the men looked pityingly at DeWitt's haggard face.
"Say," said a tall, lank cowman, "if you'll go in and sleep till daylight, usn'll scour this part of the desert with a fine-tooth comb. So you all won't lose a minute by taking a little rest. An' if we find the Injun we'll string him up and save you the trouble."
DeWitt spoke for the first time.
"If you find the Indian," he said succinctly, "he's mine!"
There was a moment's silence in the crowd. These men were familiar with elemental passion. DeWitt's feeling was perfectly correct in their eyes. The pause came as each pictured himself in DeWitt's place with the image of the delicate Eastern girl suffering who knew what torments constantly before him.
"If Mr. Kelly can arrange for that," said Jack, "I guess it will about save our lives. I'd like a chance to write a letter to my wife."
"You ought to go back to the ditch, Jack," said DeWitt, "Porter and I will manage somehow."
Jack gave DeWitt a strange look.
"Rhoda's a lifelong friend of mine. She was stolen from my home by my friend whom I told her she could trust. Katherine and the foreman can run the ranch."
By the time that the four had washed themselves, Kelly had his men dotted over the surrounding desert. For the first time in weeks, the searchers sat down at a table. DeWitt, Porter and Newman were in astonishing contrast to the three who had dined at the Newman ranch the night of Cartwell's introduction to Porter. Their khaki clothes had gradually been replaced by nondescript garments picked up at various ranches. DeWitt and Porter boasted of corduroy trousers, while Jack wore overalls. On the other hand, Jack wore a good blue flannel shirt, while the other two displayed only faded gingham garments that might have answered to almost any name. All of them were a deep mahogany color, with chapped, split lips and bleached hair, while DeWitt's eyes were badly inflamed from sun-glare and sand-storm.
They ate silently. Dick Kelly, sitting at the head of the table, plied them with food and asked few questions. DeWitt's shaking hands told him that questions were torture to the poor fellow. After the meal Kelly led them to bed at once, and they slept without stirring until four o'clock in the morning, when the Chinaman called them. Breakfast was steaming on the table.
"Now," said Kelly, as his guests ate, "the boys didn't get a smell for ye, but we've a suggestion. Have you been through the Pueblo country yet?"
"No," said Porter.
"Well," the host went on, "Chira is the only place round here except my ranch where he could get a new outfit. He's part Pueblo, you know, too. I'd start for there if I was you."
Carlos entered to hear this suggestion.
"I've got a friend at Chira," he said, "who might help us. He's a half-breed."
The tired men took eagerly to this forlorn hope. With all the population of the ranch, including the cook, gathered to wish them Godspeed, the four started off before the sun had more than tinted the east. Kelly had offered them anything on the ranch, from himself, his cook and his cowboys, to the choice of his horses. His guests left as much heartened by his cheerfulness and good will as they were by the actual physical comforts he had given them.
The trail to Chira was long and hard. They reached the little town at dusk and Carlos set out at once in search of his friend, Philip. He found him easily. He was half Mexican, half Pueblo. He and Carlos chatted briskly in hybrid Spanish while the Americans watched the horses wade in the little river. Visitors were so common in Chira that the newcomers attracted little or no attention.
Carlos finally turned from his friend.
"Philip does not know anything about it. He says for us to come to his house while he finds out anything. His wife is a good cook."
The thought of a hot meal was pleasant to the Americans. They followed gladly to Philip's adobe rooms. Here the half-breed left them to his wife and disappeared. He was gone perhaps an hour when he returned with a bit of cloth in his hand, which he handed to Carlos with a few rapid sentences. Carlos gave the scrap of cloth to DeWitt, who looked at it eagerly then gave a cry of joy. It was Rhoda's handkerchief.
"He found a little girl washing her doll with it at the river," said Carlos. "She said she found it blowing along the street this morning."
"Come on!" cried Jack, making for the door.
"Come on where?" said Billy. "If they are in the village, you don't want to get away very far. And if they ain't, which way are you going?"
"Ask Philip where to go, Carlos," said DeWitt.
He held the little moist handkerchief in his hand tightly while his heart beat heavily. Once more hope was soaring high.
Philip thought deeply, then he and Carlos talked rapidly together.
"Philip says," reported Carlos, "that you must go out and watch along the river front so that if they have not gone you can catch them if they try. He and I will go visit every family as if I wanted to buy an outfit."
Darkness had settled on the little town when the three Americans took up their vigil opposite the open face of the Pueblo along the river. All that night they stood on guard but not a human being crossed their line of patrol.
Late in the afternoon, Rhoda woke. Kut-le stood beside her. His expression was half eager, half tender.
"How do you feel now?" he asked.
"Quite well," answered Rhoda. "Will you call Marie? I want to dress."
"You must rest in bed today," replied the Indian. "Tomorrow will be soon enough for you to get up."
Rhoda looked at the young man with irritation.
"Can't you learn that I am not a squaw? That it maddens me to be ordered about? That every time you do you alienate me more, if possible?"
"You do foolish stunts," said Kut-le calmly, "and I have to put you right."
Rhoda moaned.
"Oh, how long, how long must I endure this! How could they be so stupid as to let you slip through their fingers so!"
Kut-le's mouth became a narrow seam.
"As soon as I can get you into the Sierra Madre, I shall marry you. You are practically a well woman now. But I am not going to hurry overmuch. You are going to love me first and you are going to love this life first. Then we will go to Paris until the storm has passed."
Rhoda did not seem to hear him. She tossed her arms restlessly.
"Please send Marie to me," she said finally. "You will permit me to eat something perhaps?"
Kut-le left the room at once. In a short time he returned with Marie, who bore a steaming bowl which he himself flanked with a dish of luscious melon. The woman propped Rhoda adroitly to a sitting position and Kut-le gravely balanced the bowl against the girl's knees. The stew which the bowl contained was delicious, and Rhoda ate it to the last drop. She ate in silence, while Kut-le watched her with unspeakable longing in his eyes. The room was almost dark when the simple meal was finished. Marie brightened the fire and smoothed Rhoda's blankets.
"Kut-le go now," said the Pueblo woman. "You rest. In morning, Marie bring white squaw some clothes."
Rhoda was glad to pillow her head on her arm but it was long before she slept. She tried to piece together her faint and distorted recollection of the occurrences since the morning when the mesa had risen through the dawn. But her only clear picture was of John DeWitt's wild face as she disappeared into the fissure. She recalled its look of agony and sobbed a little to herself as she realized what torture he and the Newmans must have endured since her disappearance. And yet she was very hopeful. If her friends could come as close to her as they did before the mesa, they must be learning Kut-le's methods. Surely the next time luck would not play so well for the Indian.
Rhoda woke in the morning to the sound of song. Marie knelt on the ground before a sloping slab of stone and patiently kneeded corn with a smaller stone. Her song, a quaint repetition of short mellow syllables pleased Rhoda's sensitive ear and she lay listening. When Marie saw Rhoda's wide eyes she came to the girl's side.
"You feel good now?" she queried.
"Yes, much better. I want to get up."
The Indian woman nodded.
"Marie clean white squaw's clothes. White squaw wear Marie's. Now Marie help you wash."
Rhoda smiled.
"You are not an Apache if you want me to bathe!"
Marie answered indignantly.
"Marie is Pueblo squaw!"
The clothes that Marie brought, Rhoda thought very attractive. There was a soft wool underdress of creamiest tint. Over this Marie pulled, fastening it at one shoulder, a gay, many-colored overdress which, like the one she herself wore, reached to the knees. Rhoda pulled on her own high laced boots which had been neatly mended. Then the two turned their attention to the neglected braid of hair.
When it was loosened and hung in tangled masses nearly to Rhoda's knees, Marie's delight in its loveliness knew no expression. She fetched a queer battered old comb which she washed and then proceeded with true feminine rapture to comb the wonderful waving locks. In the midst of this Kut-le entered. He gazed on Rhoda's new disguise with delight. Indeed her delicate face, above the many-hued garment, was like a harebell growing in a gaudy nasturtium bed.
"We can only let you on the roof," said Kut-le, who was carrying Rhoda's sombrero.
Rhoda made no reply but when Marie had plaited her hair in a rippling braid she followed Kut-le up the short ladder. Her sense of cleanliness after the weeks of disorder was delightful. As she stepped on the flat-topped roof and the sweet clear air filled her lungs she felt as if reborn. With Navajo blankets, Kut-le had contrived an awning that not only made a bit of shade but precluded view from below. The rich tints of the blankets were startlingly picturesque against the yellow gray of the adobe. Rhoda, dropped luxuriantly to the heap of blankets and turned her face toward the mountain, many-colored and bare toward the base, deep-cloaked with piñon, oak and Juniper on the uplands. From its base flowed the little river, gurgling over its shallow bed of stone and rich with green along its flat banks. Close beside the river was the Pueblo village, the many-terraced buildings, on one of the roofs of which Rhoda sat.
Kut-le, stretched on the roof near by, smoked cigarette after cigarette as he watched the girl's quiet face, but he did not speak. For three or four hours the two sat thus in silence. Just as the sun sank behind the mountain, a bell clanged and then fell to tolling softly. Then Kut-le broke his silence.
"That's the bell of the old mission. Some one has been buried, I guess. We can look. There are no tourists now."
There was a sound of wailing: a deep mournful sound that caught Rhoda's heart to her throat and blanched her face. It was the sound of the grief of primitive man, the cry of the forlorn and broken-hearted, uncloaked by convention. It touched a primitive chord of response in Rhoda that set her to trembling. Surely, when the world was young she too had wept so. Surely she too had voiced a poignant, unbearable loss in just such a wild outpouring of grief!
They moved to the edge of the terrace and looked below into the street. Down the rocky way a line of Indians was bearing hand-mills and jars and armloads of ornaments.
"They will take those to the 'killing place' and break them that the dead owner may have them afterward," explained Kut-le softly. "It always makes me think of a verse in the Bible. I can't recall the words exactly though."
Rhoda glanced up into the dark face with a look of appreciation.
"'And the grinders shall cease because they are few!'" she said, "'and those that look out of the windows be darkened. And the doors shall be shut in the street when the sound of the grinding is low, because man goeth to his long home and mourners go about the street.'"
"And there is something else," murmured Kut-le, "about 'the silver cord.'"
"'Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken or the pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit to God who gave it.'"
They stood in silence again. The wailing died into the distance. The sun touched to molten gold the heavy shadows of the mountain arroyos. Rhoda was deeply moved by the scene below her. She felt as if she had been thrust back through the ages to look upon the sorrow of some little Judean town. The little rocky street, the vivid robes, the weird, dying wail, the broken ornaments and utensils that some folded tired hands would use no more, and, above all, the simple unquestioning faith, roused in her a sudden longing for a life that she never had known. For a long time she stood in thought. As darkness fell she roused herself.
"Let me go back to my room," she said.
As they turned, neither noticed that Rhoda's little handkerchief, which she had carried through all her experiences, fluttered from her sleeve to the street.
Again it was long before Rhoda slept. Through her window there floated the sound of song, the evening singing of Indian lads in the village street. There was a vibrant quality in their voices that Rhoda could liken only to the music of stringed instruments. There was neither the mellow smoothness of the negro voice nor the flute-like sweetness of the white, yet the voices compassed all the mystical appealing quality of violin notes.
The music woke in Rhoda a longing for she knew not what. It seemed to her as if she were peering past a misty veil into the childhood of the world to whose simple beauty and delights civilization had made her alien. The vibrating voices chanted slower and slower. Rhoda stirred uneasily. To be free again as these voices were free! Not to long for the civilization she had left but for open skies and trails! To be free again!
As the voices melted into silence, a guitar was touched softly under Rhoda's window and Kut-le's voice rose inLa Golondrina:
"Whither so swiftly flies the timid swallow?What distant bourne seeks her untiring wing?To reach her nest what needle does she followWhen darkness wraps the poor wee storm-tossed thing?"
Rhoda stirred restlessly and threw her arms above her head.
"To build her nest near to my couch I'll call her!Why go so far dark and strange skies to seek?Safe would she be, no evil should befall her,For I'm an exile sad, too sad to weep!"
Mist-like floated across Rhoda's mind a memory of the trail with voice of mating bird at dawn, with stars and the night wind and the open way. And going before, always Kut-le—Kut-le of the unfathomable eyes, of the merry smile, of the gentle touch. The music merged itself into Rhoda's dreams.
She spent the following day on the roof. Curled on her Navajo she watched the changing tones on the mountains and listened to the soft voices of the Pueblo women in the street below. Naked brown babies climbed up and down the ladders and paddled in the shallow river Indian women with scarlet shawls across their shoulders filled their ollas at the river and stood gossiping, the brimming ollas on their heads. In the early morning the men had trudged to the alfalfa and melon fields and returned at sundown to be greeted joyfully by the women and children.
Kut-le spent the day at Rhoda's side. They talked but little, though Rhoda had definitely abandoned her rule of silence toward the Indian. Her mind during most of the day was absorbed in wondering why she so enjoyed watching the life in this Indian town and why she was not more impatient to be gone.
As the sun dropped behind the mountain Marie appeared on the roof, her black eyes very bright.
"Half-breed Philip find white squaw's handkerchief. Give to white men, maybe! Marie see Philip get handkerchief from little girl."
Kut-le gave Rhoda an inscrutable look, but she did not tell him that she shared his surprise.
"Well," said Kut-le calmly, "maybe we had better mosey along."
They descended to find Marie hastily doing up a bundle of bread and fruit. While Kut-le went for blankets Rhoda, at Marie's request, donned her old clothing of the trail. She had been wearing the squaw's holiday outfit. Very shortly, with a hasty farewell to Marie, they were in the dusky street. "Shall I gag you," asked Kut-le, "or will you give me your word of honor to give neither sign nor sound until we get to the mountain, and to keep your face covered with your Navajo?"
Rhoda sighed.
"Very well, I promise," she said.
In a very short time they had reached the end of the little street and were climbing an arroyo up into the mountain. When they reached the piñons Kut-le gave the coyote call. It thrilled Rhoda with the misery of the night of her capture. Almost immediately there was an answering call and close in the shadow of the piñon they found Alchise and the two squaws. Molly ran to Rhoda with a squeal of joy and patted the girl's hand but Alchise and Cesca gave no heed to her greeting.
The ponies were ready and Rhoda swung herself to her saddle, with a thrill at the touch of the muscular little horse. And once more she rode after Kut-le with the mystery of the night trail before her.
The sound of water falling, the cheep of wakening birds, the subtle odor of moisture-drenched soil roused Rhoda from her half sleep on the horse's back at the end of the night's journey. The trail had not been hard, through an endless pine forest for the most part. Kut-le drew rein beside a little waterfall deep in the mountain fastness. Rhoda saw a chaos of rock masses huge and distorted, as if an inconceivably cruel and gigantic hand had juggled with weights seemingly immovable; about these the loveliness of vine and shrub; above them the towering junipers dwarfed by the rocks they shaded; and falling softly over the harsh brown rifts of rock, the liquid green and white of a mountain brook which, as it reached the level, rushed away in a roar of foam.
Rhoda's horse drank thirstily and she stood beside him watching the mystical gray of the dawn lift to the riotous rose of the sunrise. She wondered at the quick throb of her pulse. It was very different from its wonted soft beat. Then she threw herself on her blanket to sleep.
When Rhoda woke, late in the day, Kut-le had spread Marie's cakes and fruit on leaves which he had washed in the brook.
"They are quite clean, I think," he said a little anxiously. "At least the squaws haven't touched them."
Rhoda and Kut-le sat on a rock and ate hungrily. When she had finished Rhoda clasped her hands about her knees. She looked singularly boyish, with her sombrero pushed back from her face and short locks of damp hair curling from beneath the crown.
"Isn't it queer," she said, "that you elude Jack and John DeWitt so easily?"
"The trouble is," said Kut-le, "that you don't appreciate the prowess of your captors."
"Humph!" sniffed Rhoda.
"Listen!" cried Kut-le with sudden enthusiasm. "Once in my boyhood Geronima and about twenty warriors, with twice as many squaws and children, fled to the mountains. They never drew rein until they were one hundred and twenty miles from the reservation. Then for six months they were pursued by two thousand American soldiers and they never lost a man!"
"How many whites were killed?" asked Rhoda.
"About a hundred!"
"I don't understand yet," Rhoda shook her head, "how savages could outwit whites for so long a time."
"But it's not a contest of brains. Whites must travel like whites, with food and rests. The Apache travels like the coyote, living off the country. Your ancestors have been training your brain for a thousand years. Mine have spent centuries of days, twenty-four hours a day, training the body to endure hardships. You have had a glimpse of what the hardships of this country might mean to a white!"
As Kut-le talked, Rhoda sat with her eyes fastened on the rough face of a distant rock. As she watched she saw a thick, leafy bush move up to the rock. Rhoda caught her breath, glanced at the unconscious Kut-le, then back at the bush. It moved slowly back among the trees and after a moment Rhoda saw the undergrowth far beyond move as with a passing breeze. She glanced at the nodding Alchise and the squaws, then smiled and turned to Kut-le.
"Go on with your boasting, Kut-le. It's your one weakness, I think."
Kut-le grinned.
"Well now, honestly, what do you think that a lot of Caucasians can do with an enemy whose existence has always been a fist to fist fight with nature at her cruelest? We have fought with our bare hands and we have won," he continued, half to himself. "No white man or any number of whites can capture me on my own ground!"
"Boaster!" laughed Rhoda.
Just beyond the falls an aspen quivered. John DeWitt stepped into view. Haggard and wild-eyed, he stared at Rhoda. She raised her finger to her lips, but too late. Kut-le too looked up, and raised his gun. Rhoda hurled herself toward him and struck up the barrel. Kut-le dropped the gun and caught Rhoda in his arms.
"The woods are full of them!" he grunted. With one hand across Rhoda's mouth, he ran around the falls and dropped six feet to a narrow back trail.
"My own ground!" Rhoda heard him chuckle.
For many hurrying minutes, Rhoda saw only the passing tree branches black against the evening sky as she lay across Kut-le's breast. The pursuers had made no sound nor had Kut-le broken a single twig. The entire incident might have been a pantomime, with every actor tragically intent.
Having long learned the futility of struggling, Rhoda lay quietly enough, her ears keen to catch the sound of pursuit. Kut-le did not remove his hand from her mouth. But as he dropped rapidly and skilfully down the mountainside he whispered:
"My own ground, you see! It will take them a good while in the dusk to find that back trail. Only a few Indians know it."
But Rhoda's heart was beating high. Let Kut-le boast as he would, she was sure that Jack and John DeWitt were learning to follow the trail. The most vivid picture in her mind was of the utter weariness of John's face. In the past weeks Rhoda had learned how fearful had been the hardships that would bring such weariness to a human face. Tears came to her eyes. No one so weak, so useless as herself, she felt, could be worth such travail.
Silently they moved through the dusk. Rhoda knew that the other Indians must be close behind them, yet no sound betrayed their presence. After a half-hour or so she struggled to be set down. But Kut-le only tightened his hold and it was fully two hours later that he set her on her feet.
"Don't move," he said. "We are on a cañon edge."
Rhoda swung her blanket to her shoulders, for the night was stinging sharp. She was not afraid. She had grown so accustomed to the night trail that she moved unhesitatingly along black rims that had at first paralyzed her with fear.
"Now," said Kut-le, "I'm not going to travel on foot. The only horses within easy distance are some that a bunch of Navajos have in the cañon below here. So we will go down and get them. We will go together because I can't risk coming back for you. We will have to hikeprontoafter we get 'em. Just remember that you are contaminated by the company you are keeping and that if you make any noise, the Navajos will shoot you up, with the rest of us! Keep right behind me."
The little group moved carefully down the cañon trail. In a short time they reached a growth of trees. They stole through these, the only sound Rhoda's panting breaths. Suddenly Kut-le stopped.
"Wait here!" he breathed in Rhoda's ear, and he and Alchise disappeared.
A hand was laid on her arm and Rhoda knew that Molly and Cesca were guarding her. Almost immediately the soft thud of hoofs was upon them. Kut-le seized Rhoda and tossed her to a pony's back.
"It was dead easy!" he whispered. "They were all asleep! I even took a saddle for you! Now hike!"
Rhoda gripped her pony with her knees as the little fellow cantered unerringly through the darkness after Kut-le. She felt a sudden pride and exultation in the security she had developed in the saddle during the travail of her night rides. She knew that no man of her acquaintance could ride a horse as she could now. And with the exultation she was trembling with excitement. She knew that none of them could expect mercy if the Navajos discovered their loss in time to take up the chase. All the eagerness of the gambler who stakes his life on a throw of the dice; all the wild thrill of the chase; all the trembling of the panting, woodland things that hunt and are hunted, were Rhoda's as the night wind rushed past her face. The apathy of illness was gone. Tonight she was as wild a thing as the night's birds that brushed across their trail on sweeping wing.
When they made camp at dawn Rhoda tumbled into her blanket and was asleep before Alchise finished covering their trail. When she woke she found that they were camped in a strange eerie. They were high up on a mountain on a shelf that gave back into a shallow cave. In front, facing the desert, was a heap of rock that formed a natural rampart. A tiny spring bubbled from the cave floor. Here the little party would seem as secure in their dizzy seclusion as eagles of the Andes.
It was barely noon and the mountain air was sweet and exhilarating. Kut-le sat against the rampart, smoking a cigarette, while Molly and Cesca worked over the fire. Rhoda lunched on the tortillas to which Molly had clung through all the vicissitudes of flight.
"Where are the horses?" she asked Kut-le.
"Oh, Alchise took them back. We must stay here a while till your mob of friends disperses. I couldn't feed them and I wanted to pacify the Navajos and get some supplies from them. Alchise will fix it up with them."
And here on this dizzy brink of the desert Kut-le did pause as if for a long, long holiday. The wisdom of the proceeding did not trouble him at all. The call of the desert was an allurement to which he yielded unresistingly, trusting to elude capture through his skill and unfailing good fortune.
To Rhoda the pause was welcome. She still had faith that the longer they camped in one spot the surer would be the pursuers to stumble upon them. Kut-le began to devote himself entirely to Rhoda's amusement. He knew all the plant and animal life of the desert, not only as an Indian but as a college man who had loved biology. By degrees Rhoda's good brain began to respond to his vivid interest and the girl in her stay on the mountain shelf learned the desert as has been given to few whites to learn it. Besides what she learned from the men Rhoda became expert in camp work under Molly's patient teaching. She could kindle the tiny, smokeless fire. She could concoct appetizing messes from the crude food. She could detect good water from bad and could find forage for horses. The crowning pride of her achievements was learning to weave the dish basketry.
They had lived in the mountain niche some three weeks when Alchise and Kut-le left the camp one afternoon, Alchise on a turkey hunt, Kut-le on one of his mysterious trips for supplies. Alchise returned at dusk with a beautiful bird which Rhoda and Molly roasted with enthusiasm. But Kut-le did not appear at supper time as he had promised. When the meal was almost spoiled from waiting, Rhoda and the Indians ate. As the evening wore on, Alchise grew uneasy, but he dared not disobey Kut-le's orders and leave the camp unguarded at night.
Rhoda speculated, torn between hope and fear. Perhaps the searchers had captured Kut-le at last. Perhaps he had given up hope of winning her love and had gone for good. Perhaps, somewhere or other, he was lying badly hurt! The little group sat up much later than usual, Cesca silently smoking her endless cigarettes, Alchise and Molly talking now in Apache, now in English. Rhoda was convinced that they were puzzled and worried.
Even after she had lain down on her blankets Rhoda could not sleep. With Kut-le gone her sense of the camp's security was gone. She rose finally and sat beside Alchise who, rifle in hand, guarded the ledge. There was no moon but the stars were very large and near. Rhoda was growing to know the stars. They were remote in the East; in the desert they become a part of one's existence. The sense of stupendous distance was greater at night than in the daytime. The infinite heavens, stretching depth beyond depth, the faint far spaces of the desert, were as if one looked on the Great Mystery itself.
When dawn came, Alchise wakened Cesca, put the rifle into her hands, and hurried back up over the mountain. The purple shadows had lightened to gray when Rhoda saw Kut-le staggering up the trail from the desert. Rhoda gave a little cry and ran down to meet him.
"Kut-le! What happened to you? We were so worried!"
There was a bloody rag tied just below the young Indian's knee. He paused, supporting himself against a rock. Across his eyes, drawn and haggard with pain, flashed a look of joy that Rhoda, eying the bandage, did not see.
"I was late starting back," he said briefly. "In the darkness a bit of the trail gave way, dropped me into a cañon and laid my leg open. I was unconscious a long time and lost a lot of blood, so it has taken me the rest of the night to get here. Would you mind getting Alchise to help me up the trail?"
"Alchise has gone to look for you. Lean on me," said Rhoda simply.
Despite his weakness, the dark blood flushed the young man's face, while Rhoda's utter unconsciousness of her changed manner brought a smile to his set lips. Not if the torture of dragging himself up the trail were to be ten times greater would he now have availed himself of help from Alchise.
"If you will let me put my arm across your shoulder we can make it," he said as quietly as though his heart were not leaping.
Rhoda's squaring of her slender shoulders was distractingly boyish. Utterly heedless of the pain which each step cost him, Kut-le made his way slowly to the ledge, ordering back the flustered squaws and leaning on Rhoda only enough to feel the tender girlish shoulders beneath the worn blue blouse.
In the camp, Rhoda assumed command while Kut-le lay on his blanket watching her in silent content. She put one of Alchise's two calico shirts on to boil over the breakfast fire. She washed out the nasty cut and bandaged it with strips from the sterilized shirt. She brought Kut-le's breakfast and her own to his blanket side and coaxed the young man to eat, he assuming great indifference merely for the happiness of being urged. Rhoda was so energetic and efficient that the sun was just climbing from behind the far peaks when Kut-le finished his bacon and coffee. The girl stood looking at him, hands on hips, head on one side, with that look in her eyes of superiority, maternity and complacent tenderness which a woman can assume only when she has ministered to the needs of a helpless masculine thing.
"There!" she said with a sigh of satisfaction.
"Rhoda," said Kut-le, hoping that the heavy thumping of his heart did not shake his whole broad chest, "how long ago was it that you were a helpless, dying little girl without strength to cut up your own food? How long since you have served any one but yourself?"
Rhoda drew a quick breath. She stood staring from the Indian to the desert, to her slender body, and back again. She held out her hands and looked at them. They were scratched and brown and did not tremble. Then she looked at the young Indian and he never was to forget the light in her eyes.
"Kut-le!" she cried. "Kut-le! I am well again! I am well again!"
She paced back and forth along the ledge. Through the creamy tan her cheeks flushed richly crimson. Finally she stopped before the Apache.
"You have outraged all my civilized instincts," she said slowly, "yet you have saved my life and given me health. Whatever comes, Kut-le, I never shall forget that!"
"I have changed more than that," said Kut-le quietly. "Where is your old hatred of the desert?"
Rhoda turned to look. At the edge of the distant ranges showed a rim of red. Crimson spokes of fire flashed to the zenith. The sky grew brighter, more translucent, the ranges melted into molten gold. The sun, hot and scarlet, rolled into view. Into Rhoda's heart flooded a sense of infinite splendor, infinite beauty, infinite peace.
"Why!" she gasped to Kut-le, "it is beautiful! It's not terrible! It's unadorned beauty!"
The Indian nodded but did not speak. Rhoda never was to forget that day. Long years after she was to catch the afterglow of that day of her rebirth. Suddenly she realized that never could a human have found health in a setting more marvelous. The realization was almost too much. Kut-le, with sympathy for which she was grateful, did not talk to her much. Once, however, as she brought him a drink and mechanically smoothed his blanket he said softly:
"You who have been served and demanded service all your life, why do you do this?"
Rhoda answered slowly.
"I'm not serving you. I'm trying to pay up some of the debt of my life."
Kut-le was about in a day or so and by the end of the week he was quite himself. He resumed the daily expeditions with Rhoda and Alchise which provided text for the girl's desert learning. Rhoda's old despondency, her old agony of prayer for immediate rescue had given way to a strange conflict of desires. She was eager for rescue, was conscious of a constant aching desire for her own people, and yet the old sense of outrage, of grief, of hopelessness was gone.
Of a sudden she found herself pausing, thrusting back the problems that confronted her while she drank to the full this strange mad joy of life which she felt must leave her when she left the desert. She knew only that the fear of death was gone. That hours of fever and pain were no more. That her mind had found its old poise but with an utterly new view-point of life. Her blood ran red. Her lungs breathed deep. Her eyes saw distances too big for their conception, beauties so deep that her spirit had to expand to absorb them.
The silent nights of stars, the laborious crests that tossed sudden and unspeakable views before the eyes, the eternal cañons that led beneath ranges of surpassing majesty, roused in her a passion of delight that could find expression only in her growing physical prowess. She lived and ate like a splendid boy. Day after day she scaled the ranges with Kut-le and Alchise; tenderly reared creature of an ultracivilization as she was, she learned the intricate lore of the aborigines, learned what students of the dying people would give their hearts to know.
Kut-le wakened Rhoda at dawn one day. She prepared the breakfast of coffee, bacon and tortilla. Alchise shared this eagerly with Rhoda and Kut-le, though already he had eaten with the squaws. The day was still gray when the three set out on a long day's trip in search of game. The way this morning led up a cañon deep and quiet, with the night shadows still dark and cool within it. The air was that of a northern day of June.
Rhoda tramped bravely, up and up, from cactus to bear grass, from bear grass to stunted cedar, from cedar to pines that at last rose triumphant at the crest of a great ridge. Here Rhoda and Kut-le flung themselves to the ground to rest while Alchise prowled about restlessly. Across a hundred miles of desert rose faint snow-capped peaks.
Kut-le watched Rhoda's rapt face for a time. Then, as if unable to keep back the words, he said softly:
"Rhoda! Stay here, always! Marry me and stay here always!"
Rhoda looked at the beautiful pleading eyes. She stirred restlessly; but before she could frame an answer Alchise appeared, followed by a lean old Indian all but toothless who wore a pair of tattered overalls and a gauze shirt. The two Indians stopped before Kut-le, and Alchise jerked a thumb at the stranger.
"Sabeno white talk," he said.
Kut-le passed the stranger a cigarette, which he accepted without comment. A rapid conversation followed between the three Indians.
"He is an Apache," explained Kut-le, finally, to Rhoda. "His name is Injun Tom. He says that Newman and Porter hired him to trail us but he is tired of the job. They foolishly advanced him five dollars. He says they are camping in the valley right below here."
Rhoda sprang to her feet.
"Where are you going?" smiled Kut-le. "He says they are going to shoot me on sight!"
Under her tan Rhoda's face whitened.
"Would they shoot you, Kut-le, even if I told them not to?"
At the sight of the paling face the young man murmured, "You dear!" under his breath. Then aloud, "Not if I were your husband."
"How can I marry a savage?" cried Rhoda.
Kut-le put his hand under the cleft chin and lifted the sweet face till it looked directly into his. His gaze was very deep and clear.
"Am I nothing but a naked savage, Rhoda?" he said. "Am I?"
Rhoda's eyes did not leave his.
"No!" she said softly, under her breath.
Kut-le's eyes deepened. He turned and picked up his rifle.
"Bring your friend back to dinner, Alchise," he said. "Our little holiday must end right here."
They reached the camp at noon and while the squaws made ready for breaking camp, Rhoda sat deep in thought. Before her were the burning sky and desert, with hawk and buzzard circling in the clear blue. Where had the old hatred of Kut-le gone? Whence came this new trust and understanding, this thrill at his touch? Kut-le, who had been watching her adoringly, rose and came to her side. The rampart hid the two from the others. Kut-le took one of Rhoda's hands in his firm fingers and laid his lips against her palm. Rhoda flushed and drew her hand away. But Kut-le again put his hand beneath her cleft chin and lifted her face to his.
Just as the brown face all but touched hers a voice sounded from behind the rampart:
"Hello, you! Where's Kut-le?"