Rhoda sprang away from Kut-le and they both ran to the other side of the rampart. Billy Porter, worn and tattered but still looking very well able to hold his own, stood staring into the cave where the squaws eyed him open-mouthed and Alchise, his hand on his rifle, scowled at him aggressively. Porter's eye fell on Injun Tom.
"U-huh! You pison Piute, you! I just nacherally snagged your little game, didn't I?"
"Billy!" cried Rhoda. "O Billy Porter!"
Porter jumped as if at a blow. Rhoda stood against the rock in her boyish clothes, her beautiful braid sweeping her shoulder, her face vivid.
"My God! Miss Rhoda!" cried Billy hoarsely, as he ran toward her with outstretched hands. "Why, you are well! What's happened to you!"
Here Kut-le stepped between the two.
"Hello, Mr. Porter," he said.
Billy stepped back and a look of loathing and anger took the place of the joy that had been in his eyes before.
"You Apache devil!" he growled. "You ain't as smart as you thought you were!"
Rhoda ran forward and would have taken Porter's hand but Kut-le restrained her with his hand on her shoulder.
"Where did you come from, Billy?" cried Rhoda. "Where are the others?"
Billy's face cleared a little at the sound of the girl's voice.
"They are right handy, Miss Rhoda."
"I'll give you a few details, Rhoda," said Kut-le coolly. "You see he is without water and his mouth is black with thirst. He started to trail Injun Tom but got lost and stumbled on us."
Rhoda gave a little cry of pity and running into the cave she brought Billy a brimming cup of water.
"Is that true, Billy?" she asked. "Are the others near here?"
Billy nodded then drained the cup and held it out for more.
"They are just around the corner!" with a glance at Kut-le, who smiled skeptically.
"Oh!" exclaimed Rhoda. "What terrible trouble I have made you all!"
"You made!" said Porter. "Well that's good! Still, that Apache devil doesn't seem to have harmed you. Just the same, he'll get his! If I shot him now, the other Injuns would get me and God knows what would happen to you!"
"Whom do you call an Apache devil?" asked Kut-le. Rhoda never had seen him show such evident anger.
"You, by Judas!" replied Porter, looking into the young Indian's face.
For a strained moment the two eyed each other, hatred glaring at hatred, until Rhoda put a hand on Kut-le's arm. His face cleared at once.
"So that's my reputation now, is it?" he said lightly.
"That'syour reputation!" sneered Billy. "Do you think that'sall? Why, don't you realize that you can't live in your own country again? Don't you know that the whites will hunt you out like you was a rat? Don't you realize that the folks that believed in you and was fond of you has had to give up their faith in you? Don't you understand that you've lost all your white friends? But I suppose that don't mean anything to an Injun!"
A look of sadness passed over Kut-le's face.
"Porter," he said very gently, "I counted on all of that before I did this thing. I thought that the sacrifice was worth while, and I still think so. I'm sorry, for your sake, that you stumbled on us here. We are going to start on the trail shortly and I must send you out to be lost again. I'll let Alchise help you in the job. As you say, I have sacrificed everything else in life; I can't afford to let anything spoil this now. You can rest for an hour. Eat and drink and fill your canteen. Take a good pack of meat and tortillas. You are welcome to it all."
The Indian spoke with such dignity, with such tragic sincerity, that Porter gave him a look of surprise and Rhoda felt hot tears in her eyes. Kut-le turned to the girl.
"You can see that I can't let you talk alone with Porter, but go ahead and say anything you want to in my hearing. Molly, you bring the white man some dinner and fix him some trail grub. Hurry up, now!"
He seated himself on the rampart and lighted a cigarette. Porter sat down meditatively, with his back against the mountain wall. He was discomfited. Kut-le had guessed correctly as to the circumstances of his finding the camp. He had no idea where his friends might have gone in the twenty-four hours since he had left them. When he stumbled on to Kut-le he had had a sudden hope that the Indian might take him captive. The Indian's quiet reception of him nonplussed him and roused his unwilling admiration.
Rhoda sat down beside Porter.
"How is John?" she asked.
"He is pretty good. He has lasted better than I thought he would."
"And Katherine and Jack?" Rhoda's voice trembled as she uttered the names. It was only with the utmost difficulty that she spoke coherently. All her nerves were on the alert for some unexpected action on the part of either Billy or the Indians.
"Jack's all right," said Billy. "We ain't seen Mrs. Jack since the day after you was took, but she's all to the good, of course, except she's been about crazy about you, like the rest of us."
"Oh, you poor, poor people!" moaned Rhoda.
Porter essayed a smile with his cracked lips.
"But, say, you do look elegant, Miss Rhoda. You ain't the same girl!"
Rhoda blushed through her tan.
"I forgot these," she said; "I've worn them so long."
"It ain't the clothes," said Billy, "and it ain't altogether your fine health. It's more—I don't know what it is! It's like the desert!"
"That's what I tell her," said Kut-le.
"Say," said Billy, scowling, "you've got a nerve, cutting in as if this was a parlor conversation you had cut in on casual. Just keep out of this, will you!"
Rhoda flushed.
"Well, as long as he can hear everything, it's a good deal of a farce not to let him talk," she said.
"Farce!" exclaimed Billy. "Say, Miss Rhoda, you ain't sticking up for this ornery Piute, are you?"
Rhoda looked at the calm eyes of the Indian, at the clean-cut intelligence of his face, and she resented Porter's words. She answered him softly but clearly.
"Kut-le did an awful and unforgivable thing in stealing me. No one knows that better than I do. But he has treated me with respect and he has given me back my health. I thank him for that and—and I do respect him!"
Kut-le's eyes flashed with a deep light but he said nothing. Porter stared at the girl with jaw dropped.
"Good Lord!" he cried. "Respect him! Wouldn't that come and get you! Do you mean that you want to stay with that Injun?"
A slow flush covered Rhoda's tanned cheeks. Her cleft chin lifted a little.
"At the very first chance," she replied, "I shall escape."
Porter sighed in great relief.
"That's all right, Miss Rhoda," he said leniently. "Respect him all you want to. I don't see how you can, but women is queer, if you don't mind my saying so. I don't blame you for feeling thankful about your health. You've stood this business better than any of us. Say, that squaw seems to be puttin' all her time on making up my pack. Can't I negotiate for something to eat right now? Tell her not to put pison into it."
Kut-le grinned.
"Maybe Miss Tuttle will fix up something for you, so you can eat without worrying."
"Well, she won't, you know!" growled Porter. "Herwait on me! She ain't no squaw!"
"Oh, but," cried Rhoda, "you don't know how proud I am of my skill! I can run the camp just as well as the squaws." Then, as Porter scowled at Kut-le, "He didn't make me! I wanted to, so as to be able to take care of myself when I escaped. When you and I get away from him," she looked at the silent Indian with an expression of daring that brought a glint of amusement to his eyes, "I'll be able to live off the trail better than you!"
"Gee!" exclaimed Porter admiringly.
"Of course, in one way it's no credit to me at all," Rhoda went on, stirring the rabbit stew she was warming up. "Kut-le—" she paused. Of what use was it to try to explain what Kut-le had done for her!
She toasted fresh tortillas and poured the stew over them and brought the steaming dish to Porter. He tasted of the mess tentatively.
"By Hen!" he exclaimed, and he set upon the stew as if half starved, while Rhoda watched him complacently.
Seeing him apparently thus engrossed, Kut-le turned to speak to Alchise. Instantly Porter dropped the stew, drew a revolver and fired two rapid shots, one catching Alchise in the leg, the other Injun Tom. Before he could get Kut-le the young Indian was upon him.
"Run, Rhoda, run!" yelled Porter, as he went down, under Kut-le.
Rhoda gave one glance at Injun Tom and Alchise writhing with their wounds, at Porter's fingers tightening at Kut-le's throat, then she seized the canteen she had filled for Porter and started madly down the trail. The screaming squaws gave no heed to her.
She ran swiftly, surely, down the rocky way, watching the trail with secondary sense, for every other was strained to catch the sounds from above. But she heard nothing but the screams of the squaws. The trail twisted violently near the desert floor. She sped about one last jutting buttress, then stopped abruptly, one hand on her heaving breast.
A man was running toward the foot of the trail. He, too, stopped abruptly. The girl seemed a marvel of beauty to him. With the curly hair beneath the drooping sombrero, the tanned, flushed face, the parted scarlet lips, the throat and tiny triangle of chest disclosed by the rough blue shirt with one button missing from the top, and the beautiful lithe legs in the clinging buckskins, Rhoda was a wonderful thing to come upon unexpectedly. As John DeWitt took off his hat, his haggard face went white, his stalwart shoulders heaved.
"O John! Dear John DeWitt!" cried Rhoda. "Turn back with me quick! I am running away while Mr. Porter holds Kut-le!"
DeWitt held out his shaking hands to her, unbelieving rapture growing in his eyes.
Rhoda put her hands into the outstretched, shaking palms.
"Rhoda! Sweetheart! Sweetheart!" DeWitt gasped. Then his voice failed him.
For an instant Rhoda leaned against his heaving chest. She felt as if after long wandering in a dream she suddenly had stepped back into life. But it was only for the instant that she paused. Her face was blazing with excitement.
"Come!" she cried. "Come!"
"Take my arm! Or had I better carry you?" exclaimed DeWitt.
"Huh!" sniffed Rhoda. "Just try to keep up with me, that's all!"
DeWitt, despite the need for haste, stopped and stared at the girl, open-mouthed. Then as he realized what superb health she showed in every line of face and body, he cried:
"You are well! You are well! O Rhoda, I never thought to see you this way!"
Rhoda squeezed his fingers joyfully.
"I am so strong! Hurry, John! Hurry!"
"Where are the Indians?" panted DeWitt, running along beside her. "What were those shots?"
"Billy Porter found our camp. He shot Alchise and Injun Tom and he and Kut-le were wrestling as I ran." Then Rhoda hesitated. "Perhaps you ought to go back and help Billy!"
But John pulled her ahead.
"Leave you until I get you to safety? Why, Billy himself would half murder me if I thought of it! Our camp is over there, a three hours' trip." DeWitt pointed to a distant peak. "If we swing around to the left, the Indians won't see us!"
Hand in hand the two settled to a swinging trot. The dreadful fear of pursuit was on them both. It submerged their first joy of meeting, and left them panic-stricken. For many minutes they ran without speaking. At last, when well out into the burning heat of the desert, they could keep up the pace no longer and dropped to a rapid walk. Still there came no sound of pursuit.
"Was Porter hurt?" panted John.
"Not when I left," answered Rhoda.
"I wonder what his plan is?" said John. "He left the camp yesterday to trail Injun Tom. We'll go back for him as quick as I can get you to camp."
Rhoda looked up at DeWitt anxiously.
"You are very tired and worn, John," she said.
"And you!" cried the man, looking down at the girl with the swinging, tireless stride. "What miracle has come to you?"
"I never dreamed that there could be health like this! I—" She stopped, with head to one side. "Do you hear anything? What do you suppose they are doing to each other? Oh, I hope neither of them will get killed!"
"I hope— They have all promised to let me deal with Kut-le!" said DeWitt grimly, pausing to listen intently. But no sound came across the burning sands.
Rhoda started at DeWitt's words. Suddenly her early sense of the appalling nature of her experience returned to her. She looked with new eyes at DeWitt's face. It was not the same face that she had last seen at the Newman ranch. John had the look of a man who has passed through the fire of tragedy. She gripped his burned fingers with both her slender hands.
"O John!" she cried, "I wasn't worth it! I wasn't worth it! Let's get to the camp quickly, so that you can rest! It would take a lifetime of devotion to make up for that look in your face!"
John's quiet manner left him.
"It was a devilish thing for him to do!" he said fiercely. "Heaven help him when I get him!" Then before Rhoda could speak he smiled grimly. "This pace is fearful. If you keep it up you will have sunstroke, Rhoda. And at that, you're standing it better than I!"
They slowed their pace. DeWitt was breathing hard as the burning lava dust bit into his throat.
"I haven't minded the physical discomfort," he went on. "It's the mental torture that's been killing me. We've pushed hot on your trail hour after hour, day in and day out. When they made me rest, I could only lie and listen to you sob for help until—O my love! My love!—"
His voice broke and Rhoda laid her cheek against his arm for a moment.
"I know! O John dear, I know!" she whispered.
They trudged on in silence for a time, both listening for the sound of pursuit. Then DeWitt spoke, as if he forced himself to ask for an answer that he dreaded.
"Rhoda, did they torture you much?"
"No! There was no torture except that of fearful hardships. At first—you know how weak and sick I was, John—at first I just lived in an agony of fear and anger—sort of a nightmare of exhaustion and frenzy. Then at Chira I began to get strong and as my health came, the wonder of it, the—oh, I can't put it into words; Kut-le was—" Rhoda paused, wondering at the reluctance with which she spoke the young Indian's name. "You missed us so narrowly so many times!"
"The Indian had the devil's own luck and we always blundered," said DeWitt. "I have had the feeling lately that my bones would be bleaching on this stretch of Hades before you ever were heard of. Rhoda, if I can get you safely to New York again I'll shoot the first man who says desert to me!"
Rhoda became strangely silent, though she clung to John's hand and now and again lifted it against her cheek. The yellow of the desert reeled in heat waves about them. The deep, intensely deep blue of the sky glowed silently down on them. Never to see them again! Never to waken with the desert stars above her face or to make camp with the crimson dawn blinding her vision! Never to know again the wild thrill of the chase! Finally Rhoda gave herself a mental shake and looked up into John's tired face.
"How did you come to leave the camp, John?" she asked gently.
"It's all been luck," said John. "With the exception of a little trail wisdom that Billy or Carlos raked up once in a while it's just been hit-or-miss luck with us. We suspected that Billy had gone on Injun Tom's trail, so we made camp on the spot so he wouldn't lose us. I stood guard this morning while Jack and Carlos slept and then I thought that that was fool nonsense, as Kut-le never traveled by day. So I started on a hunt along Billy's trail—and here we are!"
"Are there any other people hunting for me?"
"Lord, yes! At first they were fairly walking over each other. But the ranchers had to go back to their work and the curious got tired. Most of those that are left are down along the Mexican border. They thought of course that Kut-le would get off American territory as soon as he could. Must we keep such a pace, Rhoda girl? You will be half dead before we can reach the camp!"
Rhoda smiled.
"I've followed Kut-le's tremendous pace so many miles that I doubt if I shall ever walk like a perfect lady again!"
"I thought that I would go off my head," DeWitt went on, dropping into a walk, "when I saw you there at Dead Man's Mesa and you escaped into that infernal crevice! Gee, Rhoda, I can't believe that this really is you!"
The sun was setting as they climbed through a wide stretch of greasewood to the first rough rock heaps of the mountains. Then DeWitt paused uncertainly.
"Why, this isn't right! I never was here before!"
Rhoda spoke cheerfully.
"Perhaps you have the right mountain but the wrong trail!"
"No! This is altogether wrong. I remember this peak now, with a sort of saw edge to the top. What a chump I am! I distinctly remember seeing this mountain from the trail this morning."
"How did it lie?" asked Rhoda, sitting down on a convenient stone.
"Gee, I can't remember whether to the right or left!"
Rhoda clasped and unclasped her hands nervously.
"I hate to stop. One can't tell what Kut-le is up to!"
DeWitt squared his broad shoulders.
"Don't you worry, little girl. If he does find us he'll have to take us both! We'll just have to rest here for a moment. There's no use starting till we have our sense of direction again."
Rhoda raised her eyebrows. After all the fearful lessons, DeWitt had not yet come to a full realization of the skill and resourcefulness of Kut-le. The girl said nothing, however, but left the leadership to DeWitt. The sun was setting, turning to clear red and pale lavender a distant peak that then merged with the dusk, one could not tell when nor how. Rhoda and DeWitt sat at the foot of an inhospitable crag whose distant top, baring itself to the heavens, was a fearful climb above them.
Rhoda watched the sunset a little wistfully. She must impress on her memory every one that she saw now. She felt that her days in the desert were numbered.
DeWitt shook his empty canteen.
"It was mighty clever of you to bring a canteen. We've got to be careful of the water question. Of course, I'm confident we will reach camp this evening, but you can't be too careful of water anyhow. Lord! Think of Jack Newman's face when we come strolling in! We ought to be back at the ranch in five days."
"Do you know it's going to be strange to talk with Katherine!" exclaimed Rhoda. "She's a white woman, you know!"
DeWitt took both of Rhoda's brown little hands in his.
"I'm not appearing very sympathetic, sweetheart," he said. "But I'm so crazy with joy at having you again and of finding you so well that I don't know what I'm saying."
"John," said Rhoda slowly, "I don't need any sympathy! I tell you that this has been the most wonderful experience that ever came into my life. I have suffered!" Her voice trembled and John's hold on her hands tightened. "God only knows how I have suffered! But I have learned things that were worth the misery!"
DeWitt looked at her wide-eyed.
"You're a wonder!" he exclaimed.
Rhoda laughed softly.
"You ought to hear the Indians' opinion of me! Do you know what I've thought of lots of times lately? You know that place on the Hudson where men go when they are nervous wrecks and the doctor cures them by grilling them mentally and physically clear beyond endurance? Well, that's the sort of cure I've had, except that I've had two doctors, the Indian and the desert!"
DeWitt answered slowly.
"I don't quite see it! But I know one thing. You are about the gamest little thoroughbred I ever heard of!"
The moon was rising and DeWitt watched Rhoda as she sat with her hands clasping her knee in the boyish attitude that had become a habit.
"You are simply fascinating in those clothes, Rhoda. You are like a beautiful slender boy in them."
"They are very comfortable," said Rhoda, in such a sedate matter-of-fact tone despite her blush that DeWitt chuckled. He threw his arm across her shoulder and hugged her to him ecstatically.
"Rhoda! Rhoda! You are the finest ever! I can't believe that this terrible nightmare is over! And to think that instead of finding you all but dead, you are a thousand times more fit than I am myself. Rhoda, just think! You are going to live! To live! You will not be my wife just for a few months, as we thought, but for years and years!"
They stood in silence for a time, each one busy with the picture DeWitt's words had conjured. Then DeWitt emptied the pipe he had been smoking.
"Yonder is our peak, by Jove! It looked just so in the moonlight last night. I didn't recognize it by daylight. If you're rested, we'll start now. You must be dead hungry! I know I am!"
Refreshed and hopeful, they swung out into the wonder of the moonlit desert. They soon settled to each other's pace and with the full moon glowing in their faces they made for the distant peak.
"Now," said John, "tell me the whole story!"
So Rhoda, beginning with the moment of her abduction, told the story of her wanderings, told it simply though omitting no detail. Nothing could have been more dramatic than the quiet voice that now rose, now fell with intensity of feeling. DeWitt did not interrupt her except with a muttered exclamation now and again.
"And the actual sickness was not the worst," Rhoda continued after describing her experiences up to her sickness at Chira; "it was the delirium of fear and anger. Kut-le forced me beyond the limit of my strength. Night after night I was tied to the saddle and kept there till I fainted. Then I was rested only enough to start again. And it angered and frightened me so! I was so sick! I loathed them all so—except Molly. But after Chira a change came. I got stronger than I ever dreamed of being. And I began to understand Kut-le's methods. He had realized that physically and mentally I was at the lowest ebb and that only heroic measures could save me. He had the courage to apply the measures."
"God!" muttered John.
Rhoda scarcely heeded him.
"It was then that I began to see things that I could not see before and to think thoughts that I could not have thought before. It was as if I had climbed a mental peak that made my old highest ideals seem like mere foothills!"
The quiet voice led on and on, stopping at last with Porter's advent that afternoon. Then Rhoda looked up into DeWitt's face. It was drawn and tense. His eyes were black with feeling and his close-pressed lips twitched.
"Rhoda," he said at last, "I thought most of the savage had been civilized out of me. But I tell you now that if ever I get a chance I shall kill that Apache with my bare hands!"
Rhoda laid her hand on DeWitt's arm.
"Kut-le, after all, has done me only a great good, John!"
"But think how he did it! The devil risked killing you! Think what you and we all have suffered! God, Rhoda, think!" And DeWitt threw his arm across his face with a sob that wrenched his shoulders.
Inexpressibly touched, Rhoda stopped and drew John's face down to hers, rubbing it softly with her velvet cheek.
"There, dear, there! I can't bear to see you so! My poor tired boy! You have all but killed yourself for me!"
DeWitt lifted the slender little figure and held it tensely in his arms a moment, then set her gently down.
"A woman's magnanimity is a strange thing," he said.
"Kut-le will suffer," said Rhoda. "He risked everything and has lost. He has neither friends nor country now."
"Much he cares," retorted DeWitt, "except for losing you!"
Rhoda made no answer. She realized that it would take careful pleading on her part to win freedom for Kut-le if ever he were caught. She changed the subject.
"Have you found living off the desert hard? I mean as far as food was concerned?"
"Food hasn't bothered us," answered John. "We've kept well supplied."
Rhoda chuckled.
"Then I can't tempt you to stop and have some roast mice with me?"
"Thank you," answered DeWitt. "Try and control your yearning for them, honey girl. We shall be at camp shortly and have some white man's grub."
"How long since you have eaten, John?" asked Rhoda. She had been watching the tall fellow's difficult and slacking steps for some time.
"Well, not since last night, to tell the truth. You see I was so excited when I struck Porter's trail that I didn't go back to the camp. I just hiked."
"So you are faint with hunger," said Rhoda, "and your feet are blistered, for you have done little tramping in the hot sand before this. John, look at that peak! Are you sure it is the right one?"
DeWitt stared long and perplexedly.
"Rhoda girl," he said, "I don't believe it is, after all. I am the blamedest tenderfoot! But don't you worry. We will find the camp. It's right in this neighborhood."
"I'm not worrying," answered Rhoda stoutly, "except about you. You are shaking with exhaustion while I am as fit as can be."
"Oh, don't bother about me!" exclaimed John. "I'm just a little tired."
But Rhoda was not to be put off.
"How much did you sleep last night?"
"Not much," admitted DeWitt. "I haven't been a heavy sleeper at times ever since you disappeared, strange as that may seem!" Then he grinned. It was pleasant to have Rhoda bully him.
Yet the big fellow actually was sinking with weariness. The fearful hardships that he had undergone had worked havoc with him. Now that the agonizing nerve-strain was lifted he was going to pieces. He stood wavering for a minute, then he slowly sat down in the sand.
Rhoda stood beside him uncertainly and looked from the man to the immovably distant mountain peak. She realized that, in stopping, the risk of recapture was great, yet her desert experiences told her that John must regain some of his strength before the sun caught them. She had little faith that they would tumble upon the camp as easily as John thought, and wanted to prepare for a day of desert heat.
"If we were sure just where the camp lay," she said, "I would go on for help. But as we aren't certain, I'm afraid to be separated from you, John."
John looked up fiercely with his haggard eyes.
"Don't you dare to move six inches from me, Rhoda. It will kill me to lose you now."
"Of course I won't," said Rhoda. "I've had my lesson about losing myself in the desert. But you must have some sleep before we go any farther."
Rhoda spoke with a cheerfulness she did not feel. She looked about for a comfortable resting-place but the desert was barren.
"There's no use trying to find a comfortable bed," she said. "You had better lie down right where you are."
"Honey," said John, "I've no idea of sleeping. It will be time enough for that when we reach camp. But if you think you could stand guard for just ten minutes I will lie flat in the sand and rest. You take my watch and time me."
"That's splendid!" said Rhoda, helping him to clear of rocks and cactus a space long enough to lie in.
"Just ten minutes," said DeWitt, and as he spoke he sank to sleep.
Rhoda stood in the moonlight looking into the man's unconscious face. His new-grown beard gave him a haggard look that was enhanced by the dark circles under his eyes. That wan face touched Rhoda much more than the healthy face of former days. The lines of weariness and pain that never could be fully erased were all for her, she thought with a little catch of her breath. Then with a pitying, affectionate look at the sleeping man came a whimsical smile. Once she had thought no one could equal John in physical vigor. Now she pictured Kut-le's panther strength and endurance, and smiled.
She looked at the watch. Five hours till dawn. She would let John have the whole of that time in which to sleep. His ten minutes would be worse than useless, while to find the camp after the moon had set would be quite out of the question. Her own eyes were wide and sleepless. She sat in the sand beside DeWitt until driven by the cold to pace back and forth. John slept without stirring; the sleep of complete exhaustion. Rhoda was not afraid, nor did she feel lonely. The desert was hers now. There was no wind, but now and again the cactus rustled as if unseen wings had brushed it. The dried heaps of cholla stirred as if unseen paws had pressed them. From afar came the demoniacal laughter of coyotes on their night hunts. But still Rhoda was not afraid.
At first, in the confusion of thoughts that the day's events had crowded on her, her clearest sense was of thankfulness. Then she fell to wondering what had happened to Porter and Kut-le. Suddenly she caught her breath with a shiver. If Porter won there could be but one answer as to Kut-le's fate. John's attitude of mind told that. Rhoda twisted her hands together.
"I will not have him killed!" she whispered. "No! No! I will not have him killed!"
For many minutes she paced back and forth, battling with her fears. Then she suddenly recalled the fact that vengeance was to be saved for John. This uncanny thought comforted her. She had little fear but that she could manage John.
And then in the utter silence of the desert night, staring at the sinking moon, Rhoda asked herself why, when she should have been mad with joy over her own rescue, she was giving all her thoughts to Kut-le's plight! For a moment the question brought a flood of confusion. Then, standing alone in the night beauty of the desert, the girl acknowledged the truth that she had denied even to herself so long. The young Indian's image returned to her endowed with all the dignity of his remarkable physical perfection. She knew now that from the first this physical beauty of his had had a strong appeal to her. She knew now that all his unusual characteristics that at first had seemed so strange to her were the ones that had drawn her to him. His strange mental honesty, his courage, his brutal incisiveness, all had fascinated her. All her days with him returned to her, days of weakness, of anger, then the weeks on the ledge, and the day when she had found the desert, and finally the day just past, to the very moment when Billy Porter had come upon them on the ledge.
Rhoda stood with unseeing eyes while before her inward vision passed a magnificent panorama of the glories through which Kut-le had led her. Chaos of mountain and desert, resplendent with color; cool, sweet depth of cañon; burning height of tortured peak; slope of pungent piñon forest—all wrapped in the haze which is the desert's own.
Rhoda knew the truth; knew that she loved Kut-le! She knew that she loved him with all the passionate devotion for which her rebirth had given her the capacity.
With this acknowledgment, all her calm was swept away. With fingers clasped against her breast, with wide eyes on the brooding night, she wished that she might tell him this that had come to her. If only once more the inscrutable tenderness of his black eyes were upon her! If the deep imperative voice were but sounding in her ears again! If only she could feel now the touch of his powerful arms as he carried her the long sick miles to Chira. Trembling with longing, her gaze fell upon the man sleeping at her feet. She drew a sudden troubled breath. Must she renounce this new rapture of living? Must she?
"Have I found new life in the desert only to lose it?" she whispered. "O Kut-le! Kut-le!"
DeWitt slept on, unmoving, and Rhoda watched him with tragedy-stricken eyes.
"What shall I do!" she whispered, lips quivering, shaking hands twisting together. "Oh, what shall I do!"
She tried to picture a future with Kut-le. She saw his tenderness, his purposefulness, the bigness of his mind and spirit. Then with a cold clutch at her throat came the thought of race barrier, and in a moment Rhoda was plunged into the oldest, the most hopeless, the least solvable of all love's problems. Minute after minute went by and the girl, standing by the sleeping man, fought a fight that shook her slender body and racked her soul. At last she raised her face to the sky.
"I want to do what is right!" she said piteously. "It doesn't matter about me, if only I can decide what is right!" Then after, a pause, "I will marry John! I will!" like a child that has been punished and promises to be good. Still another pause, then, "So that part of me is dead!" and she put her fingers before her eyes and fell to crying, not with the easy tears of a woman but with the deep, agonizing sobs of a man over his dead.
"Kut-le, I wanted you! I wanted you for my mate! If I could have heard you, seen you, felt you once more! Nothing else would have mattered. I wanted you!"
A long hour passed in which Rhoda sat in the sand, limp and quiescent, as though all but wrecked by the storm through which she had passed. Dawn came at last. The air was pregnant with new hope, with a vague uplifting of sense and being that told of the coming of a new day. The east quivered with prismatic colors and suddenly the sun appeared.
Rhoda rose and stooped over DeWitt to smooth the hair back from his forehead.
"Come," she said softly. "It's breakfast time!"
DeWitt sat up bewildered. Then his senses returned.
"Rhoda," he exclaimed, "what do you mean by this!"
Rhoda's smile was a little wan.
"You needed the rest and I didn't!"
DeWitt rose and shook himself like a great dog, then looked at Rhoda wonderingly.
"And you don't look much done up! But you had no right to do such a thing! I told you to give me ten minutes. I feel like a brute. Lie down now and get a little sleep yourself."
"Lie in the sun? Thank you, I'd rather push on to the camp and have some breakfast. How do you feel?"
"Much better! It was fine of you, dear, but it wasn't a fair deal."
"I'll be good from now on!" said Rhoda meekly. "What would you like for breakfast?"
DeWitt looked about him. Already the desert was assuming its brazen aspect.
"Water will be enough for me," he answered, "and nothing else. I am seriously considering a rigid diet for a time."
They both drank sparingly of the water in Rhoda's canteen.
"I have three shots in my Colt," said DeWitt, "but I want to save them for an emergency. But if we don't strike camp pretty soon, I'll try to pot a jack-rabbit."
"We can eat desert mice," said Rhoda. "I know how to catch and cook them!"
"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated DeWitt. "Let's start on at once, if you're not too tired."
So they began the day cheerfully. As the morning wore on and they found no trace of the camp, they began to watch the canteen carefully. Gradually their thirst became so great that the desire for food was quite secondary to it and they made no attempt to hunt for a rabbit. They agreed toward noon to save the last few drops in the canteen until they could no longer do without it.
Hour after hour they toiled in the blinding heat, the strange deep blue of the sky reflecting the brazen light of the desert. In their careful avoiding of the mountain where they had rested at sunset the night before, they gradually worked out into a wide barren space with dunes and rock heaps interchanging.
"This won't do at all," said Dewitt at last, wearily. "We had better try for any old mountain at all in the hope of finding water."
They stood panting, staring at the distant haze of a peak. Trackless and tortuous, the way underfoot was incredibly difficult. Yet the distances melted in ephemeral slopes as lovely in their tints as they were accursed in their reality of cruelty. Rhoda, unaccustomed to day travel, panted and gasped as they walked. But she held her own fairly well, while DeWitt, sick and overstrained at the start, was failing rapidly.
"It's noon now," said John a little thickly. "You had better lie in the shade of that rock for an hour."
"You sleep too!" pleaded Rhoda.
"I'm too hot to sleep. I'll wake you in an hour."
When Rhoda awoke it was to see DeWitt leaning against the rock heap, his lips swollen, his eyes uncertain.
Weak and dizzy herself, she rose and laid her hand on John's, every maternal instinct in her stirring and speaking in her gray eyes.
"Come, dear boy, we mustn't give up so easily."
John lifted the little hand to his cheek.
"I won't give up," he said uncertainly. "I'll take care of you, honey girl!"
"Come on, then!" said Rhoda. "You see that queer bunch of cholla yonder? Let's get as far as that before we stop again!"
With a great effort, DeWitt gathered himself together and, fixing his eyes on the fantastic cactus growth, he plodded desperately through the sand. At the cholla bunch, Rhoda pointed to a jutting lavender rock.
"At that we'll rest for a minute. Come on, John!"
John's sick eyes did not waver but his trembling legs described many circles in their journey to the jutting rock. Distances were so many times what they seemed that Rhoda's little scheme carried them over a mile of desert before DeWitt sank to his knees.
"I'm a sick man," he said huskily as he fell in a limp heap.
Nothing could have appeared more opportunely than this new hardship to take Rhoda's mind off her misery of the night. Nothing could have brought John so near to her as this utter helplessness brought about through his toiling for her. She looked at him with tears of pity in her eyes, while her heart sank with fright. She knew the terrible danger that menaced them. But she closed her lips firmly and looked thoughtfully at the mite of water that remained to them. Then she held the canteen to DeWitt's lips. He pushed it away from him and in another moment or so he rose.
Rhoda, fastening their hopes to another distant cholla, led the way on again. But she too was growing a little light-headed. The distant cactus danced grotesquely and black spots flitted between her and the molten iron over which, her fancy said they traveled. Suddenly she laughed crazily:
"'Twas brillig, and the slythy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe!"
DeWitt laughed hoarsely.
"That's just the way it looks to me, Rhoda. But you're just as crazy as I am."
Rhoda jerked herself together and tried to moisten her lips with her swollen tongue.
"We must take it turn about. When you are crazy I must try to be sane!"
"Good idea!" croaked DeWitt, "only I'm crazy all the time!"
"'O frabjous day! Calloo! Collay!He chortled in his joy!'"
Rhoda patted his hand.
"Poor John! Oh, my poor John! I was not worth all this. You may not have an Apache's strength, but your heart is right!" Two great tears rolled down her cheeks.
DeWitt looked at her seriously.
"You aren't as dry as I am. I haven't enough moisture in me to moisten my eyeballs, let alone cry! I am so cracked and dry that you will have to soak me in the first spring we come to before I'll hold water."
Rhoda laughed weakly and John turned away with a hurt look.
"It's not a joke!" he said.
How long they were, in their staggering, circuitous course, in reaching their goal of cholla, Rhoda never knew. She knew that each heavy foot, tingling and scorched, seemed to drag her back a step for every one that she took forward. She knew that she repeatedly offered the last of their water to John and that he repeatedly refused it, urging it on her. She knew that the pulp of the barrel cactus that she tried to chew turned to bitter sawdust in her mouth and sickened her. Then suddenly, as she struggled to refocus her wandering wits on the cholla, it appeared within touch of her hand.
Afraid to pause, she adopted a new goal in a far mesa, and clutching DeWitt's unresponsive fingers she struggled forward.
And so on and on toward a never nearing goal; now falling, now rising, now pausing to strive to hush Dewitt's cracked voice that wandered aimlessly through all the changes of verse that seemed to his delirium appropriate to the occasion. It seemed to Rhoda that her own brain was reeling as she watched the illimitable space through which they moved. John's voice did not cease.
"Alone! Alone! All, all, alone!Alone on a wide, wide sea!So lonely 'twas that God himself,Scarce seemed there to be!"
"Hush, John! Hush!" pleaded Rhoda.
"Alone! Alone! All, all alone!"
repeated the croaking voice.
"But I'm with you, John!" Rhoda pleaded, but DeWitt rambled on unheeding.
The way grew indescribably rough. The desert floor became a series of sand dunes, a rise and fall of sea-like billows over which they climbed like ants over a new-plowed field. In the hollow of each wave they rested, sinking in the sand, where, breathless and scorching, the air scintillated above their motionless forms. At the crest of each they rested again, the desert wind hurtling the hot sand against their parched skins. Frequently John refused to rise and Rhoda in her half delirium would sink beside him until the mist lifted from her brain and once more the distant mesa forced itself upon her vision.
"Come, John, we will soon be there. We can't keep on this way forever and not reach some place. Please come, dear!"
"'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul—'"
"Perhaps there will be water there! O John, dear John, if you love me, come!"
"I don't love you, little boy! I love Rhoda Tuttle.
"O for a draught of vintage that hath beenCooled a long age in deep delved earth!"
"Please, John! I'm so sick!"
The man, after two or three attempts, staggered to his feet and stood swaying.
"God help me!" he said. "I can do no more!"
"Yes, you can, John! Yes, you can! Perhaps there is a whole fountain of water there on the mesa!"
The glazed look returned to DeWitt's eyes.
"'Or the pitcher be broken at the fountain,'" he muttered, "'or the wheel broken at the cistern—or the pitcher broken at the fountain, or the wheel—'"
Rhoda threw her arm across her eyes.
"Oh, not that, John! I can't bear that one!"
Again, she stood upon the roof at Chira, looking up into Kut-le's face. Again the low wailing of the Indian women and the indescribable depth and hunger of those dear black eyes. Again the sense of protection and content in his nearness.
"O Kut-le! Kut-le!" she moaned.
Instantly sanity returned to John's eyes.
"Why did you say Kut-le?" he demanded thickly.
"Were you thinking of him?"
"Yes," answered Rhoda simply. "Come on, John!"
DeWitt struggled on bravely to the crest of the next dune.
"I hate that Apache devil!" he muttered. "I am going to kill him!"
Rhoda quickly saw the magic of Kut-le's name.
"Why should you want to kill Kut-le?" she asked as Dewitt paused at the top of the next dune. Instantly he started on.
"Because I hate him! I hate him, the devil!"
"See how near the mesa is, John! Only a little way! Kut-le would say we were poor stuff!"
"No doubt! Well, I'll let a gun give him my opinion of him!"
The sand dunes had indeed beaten themselves out against the wall of a giant mesa. Rhoda followed blindly along the wall and stumbled upon a precipitous trail leading upward.