Up this tortuous trail Rhoda staggered, closely followed by DeWitt. At a level spot the girl paused.
"Water, John! Water!" she cried.
The two threw themselves down and drank of the bubbling spring until they could hold no more. Then Rhoda lay down on the sun-warmed rocks and sleep overwhelmed her.
She opened her eyes to stare into a yellow moon that floated liquidly above her. Whether she had slept through a night and a day or whether but a few hours had elapsed since she had staggered to the spring beside which she lay, she could not tell. She lay looking up into the sky languidly, but with clear mind. A deep sigh roused her. DeWitt sat on the other side of the spring, rubbing his eyes.
"Hello!" he said in a hoarse croak. "How did we land here?"
"I led us here sometime in past ages. When or how,quién sabe?" answered Rhoda. "John, we must find food somehow."
"Drink all the water you can, Rhoda." said DeWitt; "it helps some, and I'll pot a rabbit. What a fool I am. You poor girl! More hardships for you!"
Rhoda dipped her burning face into the water, then lifted it, dripping.
"If only you won't be delirious, John, I can stand the hardships."
DeWitt looked at the girl curiously.
"Was I delirious? And you were alone, leading me across that Hades out there? Rhoda dear, you make me ashamed of myself!"
"I don't see how you were to blame," answered Rhoda stoutly. "Think what you have been doing for me!"
John rose stiffly.
"Do you feel equal to climbing this trail with me, to find where we are, or had you rather stay here?"
"I don't want to stay here alone," answered Rhoda.
Very slowly and weakly they started up the trail. The spring was on a broad stone terrace. Above it rose another terrace weathered and disrupted until in the moonlight it looked like an impregnable castle wall, embattled and embuttressed. But clinging to the seemingly invulnerable fortress was the trail, a snake-like shadow in the moonlight.
"Perhaps we had better stay at the spring until morning," suggested Rhoda, her weak legs flagging.
"Not with the hope of shelter a hundred feet above us," answered John firmly. "This trail is worn six inches into the solid rock. My guess is that there are some inhabitants here. It's queer that they haven't discovered us."
Slowly and without further protest, Rhoda followed DeWitt up the trail. Deep-worn and smooth though it was, they accomplished their task with infinite difficulty. Rhoda, stumbling like a sleep-sodden child, wondered if ever again she was to accomplish physical feats with the magical ease with which Kut-le had endowed her.
"If he were here, I'd know I was to tumble into a comfortable camp," she thought. Then with a remorseful glance at DeWitt's patient back, "What a selfish beast you are, Rhoda Tuttle!"
She reached John's side and together they paused at the top of the trail. Black against the sky, the moon crowning its top with a frost-like radiance, was a huge flat-topped building. Night birds circled about it. From black openings in its front owls hooted. But otherwise there was neither sight nor sound of living thing. The desert far below and beyond lay like a sea of death. Rhoda unconsciously drew nearer to DeWitt.
"Where are the dogs? At Chira the dogs barked all night. Indians always have dogs!"
"It must be very late," whispered DeWitt. "Even the dogs are asleep!"
"And at Chira," went on Rhoda, whispering as did DeWitt, "owls didn't hoot from the windows."
"Let's go closer," suggested John.
Rhoda thrust cold little fingers into his hand.
The doors were empty and forlorn. The terraced walls, built with the patient labor of the long ago, were sagged and decayed. Riot of greasewood crowned great heaps of débris. A loneliness as of the end of the world came upon the two wanderers. Sick and dismayed, they stood in awe before this relic of the past.
"Whoo!Whoo!" an owl's cry sounded from the black window openings.
DeWitt spoke softly.
"Rhoda, it's one of the forgotten cities!"
"Let's go back! Let's go back to the spring!" pleaded Rhoda. "It is so uncanny in the dark!"
"No!" DeWitt rubbed his aching head wearily. "I must contrive some sort of shelter for you. Almost anything is better than another night in the open desert. Come on! We will explore a little."
"Let's wait till morning," begged Rhoda. "I'm so cold and shivery."
"Dear sweetheart, that's just the point. You will be sick if you don't have some sort of shelter. You have suffered enough. Will you sit here and let me look about?"
"No! No! I don't want to be left alone."
Rhoda followed John closely up into the mass of fallen rock.
DeWitt smiled. It appealed to the tenderest part of his nature that the girl who had led him through the terrible experiences of the desert should show fear now that a haven was reached.
"Come on, little girl," he said.
Painfully, for they both were weak and dizzy, they clambered to a gaunt opening in the gray wall. Rhoda clutched John's arm with a little scream as a bat whirred close by them. Within the opening DeWitt scratched one of his carefully hoarded matches. The tiny flare revealed a small adobe-walled room, quite bare save for broken bits of pottery on the floor. John lighted a handful of greasewood and by its brilliant light they examined the floor and walls.
"What a clean, dry little room!" exclaimed Rhoda. "Oh, I am so tired and sleepy!"
"Let's look a little farther before we stop. What's on the other side of this broken wall?"
They picked their way across the litter of pottery and peered into another room, the duplicate of the first.
"How will these do for our respective sleeping-rooms?" asked DeWitt.
Rhoda stared at John with horror in her eyes.
"I'd as soon sleep in a tomb! Let's make a fire outside and sleep under the stars. I'd rather have sleep than food just now."
"It will have to be just a tiny smudge, up behind this débris, where Kut-le can't spot it," answered DeWitt. "I won't mind having a red eye of fire for company. It will help to keep me awake."
"But you must sleep," protested Rhoda.
"But I mustn't," answered John grimly. "I've played the baby act on this picnic as much as I propose to. It is my trick at the wheel."
Too weary to protest further, Rhoda threw herself down with her feet toward the fire and pillowed her head on her arm. DeWitt filled his pipe and sat puffing it, with his arms folded across his knees. Rhoda watched him for a moment or two. She found herself admiring the full forehead, the lines of refinement about the lips that the beard could not fully conceal.
"He's not as handsome as Kut-le," she thought wearily, "but he's—he's—" but before her thought was completed she was asleep.
Rhoda woke at dawn and lay waiting for the stir of the squaws about the morning meal. Then with a start she rose and looked soberly about her. Suddenly she smiled.
"Tenderfoot!" she murmured.
DeWitt lay fast asleep by the ashes of the fire.
"If Kut-le," she thought. Then she stopped abruptly and stamped her foot. "You are not even to think of Kut-le any more!" And with her cleft chin very firm she descended the trail to the spring. When she returned, DeWitt was rising stiffly to his feet.
"Hello!" he cried. "I was good this time. I never closed my eyes till dawn. I'm so hungry I could eat greasewood. How do you feel?"
"Weak with hunger but otherwise very well. Go wash your face, Johnny."
DeWitt grinned and started down the trail obediently. But Rhoda laid a detaining hand on his arm. The sun was but a moment high. All the mesa front lay in purple shadows, though farther out the desert glowed with the yellow light of a new day.
"I think animals come to the spring to drink," said Rhoda. "There were tiny wet footmarks there when I went down to wash my face."
"Bully!" exclaimed John. "Wait now, let's watch."
The two dropped to the ground and peered over the edge of the upper terrace. The spring bubbled forth serenely, followed its shallow trough a short distance, then disappeared into the insatiable floor of the desert. For several moments the two lay watching until at last Rhoda grew restless. DeWitt laid a detaining hand on her arm.
"Hush!" he whispered.
A pair of jack-rabbits loped up the trail, sniffed the air tentatively, then with forelegs in the water drank greedily. DeWitt's right arm stiffened, there were two puffs of smoke and the two kicking rabbits rolled into the spring.
"I'm beginning to have a little self-respect as the man of the party," said DeWitt, as he blew the smoke from his Colt.
Rhoda ran down to the spring and lifted the two wet little bodies. John took them from her.
"If you'll find some place for a table, I'll bring these up in no time."
When DeWitt came up from the spring with the dressed rabbits, he found a little fire glowing between two rocks. Near by on a big flat-topped stone were set forth two earthen bowls, with a brown water-jar in the center. As he stared, Rhoda came out of the building with interested face.
"Look, John! See what I found on a little corner shelf!" She held in her outstretched hand a tiny jar no bigger than a wine-glass. It was of an exquisitely polished black. "Not even an explorer can have been here, or nothing so perfect as this would have been left! What hands do you suppose made this!"
But DeWitt did not answer her question.
"Now, look here, Rhoda, you aren't to do anything like starting a fire and lugging these heavy jars again! You're not with the Indians now. You've got a man to wait on you!"
Rhoda looked at him curiously.
"But I've learned to like to do it!" she protested. "Nobody can roast a rabbit to suit me but myself," and in spite of DeWitt's protests she spitted the rabbits and would not let him tend the fire which she said was too fine an art for his untrained hands. In a short time the rich odor of roasting flesh rose on the air and John watched the pretty cook with admiration mingled with perplexity. Rhoda insisting on cooking a meal! More than that, Rhoda evidently enjoying the job! The idea left him speechless.
An hour after Rhoda had spitted the game, John sighed with contentment as he looked at the pile of bones beside his earthen bowl.
"And they say jacks aren't good eating!" he said. "Why if they had been salted they would have been better than any game I ever ate!"
"You never were so hungry before," said Rhoda. "Still, they were well roasted, now weren't they?"
"Your vanity is colossal, Miss Tuttle," laughed John, "but I will admit that I never saw better roasting." Then he said soberly, "I believe we had better not try the trail again today, Rhoda dear. We don't know where to go and we've no supplies. We'd better get our strength up, resting here today, and tomorrow start in good shape."
Rhoda looked wistfully from the shade of the pueblo out over the desert. She had become very, very tired of this endless fleeing.
"I wish the Newman ranch was just over beyond," she said. "John, what will you do if Kut-le comes on us here?"
DeWitt's forehead burned a painful red.
"I have a shot left in my revolver," he said.
Rhoda walked ever to John and put one hand on his shoulder as he sat looking up at her with somber blue eyes.
"John," she said, "I want you to promise me that you will fire at Kut-le only in the last extremity to keep him from carrying me off, and that you will shoot only as Porter did, to lame and not to kill."
John's jaws came together and he returned the girl's scrutiny with a steel-like glance.
"Why do you plead for him?" he asked finally.
"He saved my life," she answered simply.
John rose and walked up and down restlessly.
"Rhoda, if a white man had done this thing I would shoot him as I would a dog. What do I care for a law in a case like this! We were men long before we had laws. Why should this Indian be let go when he has done what a white would be shot for?"
Rhoda looked at him keenly.
"You talk as if in your heart you knew you were going to kill him because he is an Indian and were trying to justify yourself for it!"
He turned on the girl a look so haunted, so miserable, yet so determined, that her heart sank. For a time there was silence, each afraid to speak. At last Rhoda said coolly:
"Will you get fresh water while I bank in the fire?"
DeWitt's face relaxed. He smiled a little grimly.
"I'll do anything for you but that one thing—promise not to kill the Indian."
"The desert has changed us both, John," said Rhoda. "It has taken the veneer off both of us!"
"Maybe so," replied DeWitt. "I only know that that Apache must pay for the hell you and I have lived through."
"Look at me, John!" cried Rhoda. "Can't you realize that the good Kut-le has done me has been far greater than his affront to me? Do you see how well I am, how strong? Oh, if I could only make you see what a different world I live in! You would have been tied to an invalid, John, if Kut-le hadn't stolen me! Think now of all I can do for you! Of the home I can make, of the work I can do!"
DeWitt answered tersely.
"I'm mighty glad you're well, but only for your own sake and because I can have you longer. I don't want you to work for me. I'll do all the working that's done in our family!"
"But," protested Rhoda, "that's just keeping me lazy and selfish!"
"You couldn't be selfish if you tried. You pay your way with your beauty. When I think of that Apache devil having the joy of you all this time, watching you grow back to health, taking care of you, carrying you, it makes me feel like a cave man. I could kill him with a club! Thank heaven, the lynch law can hold in this forsaken spot! And there isn't a man in the country but will back me up, not a jury that would find me guilty!"
Rhoda sat in utter consternation. The power of the desert to lay bare the human soul appalled her. This was a DeWitt that the East never could have shown her. It sickened her as she realized that no words of hers could sway this man; to realize that she was trying to stay with her feeble feminine hands passions that were as old a world-force as love itself. All her new-found strength seemed inadequate to solve this new problem.
For a long time Rhoda sat silently considering her problem and John watched her soberly. Finally she turned to speak. As she did so, she caught on the young man's face a look so weary, so puzzled, so altogether wretched that the girl's heart smote her. This was indeed a poor return for what he had endured for her! Rhoda jumped to her feet with resolution in her eyes. "Are you too tired to explore the ruins?" she asked. DeWitt rose languidly. Rhoda had responded at once to rest and food but John would need a month of care and quiet in which to regain his strength.
"I'll do anything you want me to—in that line!"
Rhoda carefully ignored the last phrase.
"Even if we're half dead, it's too bad to miss the opportunity to examine such a wonderful thing as this. You couldn't find as glorious a setting for a ruin anywhere in Europe."
"Oh, yes, you could; lots of 'em," answered DeWitt. "You can't compare a ruin like this with anything in Europe. What makes European ruins appeal to us is not only their intrinsic beauty but the association of big ideas with them. We know that big thoughts built them and perhaps destroyed them."
"What do you call big thoughts?" asked Rhoda. "Wasn't it just as great for these Pueblo Indians to perform such terrible labor in building this for their families as it was for some old king to work thousands of slaves to death to build him a monument?"
DeWitt laughed.
"Rhoda, you can love the desert, its Indians and its ruins all you want to, if you won't ask me to! I've had all I want of the three of them! Lord, how I hate it all!"
Rhoda looked at him wistfully. If only he could understand the spiritual change in her that was even greater than the physical! If only he could see the beauty of those far lavender hazes! If only he could understand how even now she was heartsick for the night trail where one looked up into the sky as into a shadowy opal! If only he knew the peace that had dwelt with her on the holiday ledge where there were tints and beauties too deep for words! And yet with the wistfulness came a strange sense of satisfaction that all this new part of her must belong forever to Kut-le.
John led the way into the dwelling. All was emptiness and ruin. All that remained of the old life within its walls were wonderful bits of pottery. Only once did DeWitt give evidence of pleasure. He was examining the carefully finished walls of one of the rooms when he called:
"I say, Rhoda, just look at this bit of humanness!"
Rhoda came to him quickly and he pointed low down on the adobe wall where was the perfect imprint of a baby's hand.
"The little rascal got spanked, I'll bet, for putting his hand on the 'dobe before it was dry!" commented John.
Rhoda smiled but said nothing. These departed peoples had become very real and very pitiable to her.
As soon as he could drag Rhoda from the ancient pots, John led the way to the top of the ruin. He was anxious to find if there were more than the one trail leading from the desert. To his great satisfaction he found that the mesa was unscalable except at the point that Rhoda had found as she staggered up from the desert.
"I'm going to guard that trail tonight," he said. "It's just possible, you know, that Kut-le escaped from Porter, though I think if he had he would have been upon us long before this. I've been mighty careless. But my brain is so tired it seems to have been off duty. I could hold that trail single-handed from the upper terrace for a week."
"Just remember," said Rhoda quickly, "that I've asked you not to shoot to kill!"
Again the hard light gleamed in DeWitt's eyes.
"I shall have a few words with him first, then I shall shoot to kill. There is that between that Indian and me which a woman evidently can't understand. I just can't see why you take the stand you do!"
"John dear," cried Rhoda, "put yourself in his place. With all the race prejudice against you that he had, wouldn't you have done as he has?"
"Probably," answered Dewitt calmly. "I also would have expected what he is going to get."
A sudden sense of the bizarre nature of their conversation caused Rhoda to say comically:
"I never knew that you could have suchbloodyideas, John!"
DeWitt was glad to turn the conversation.
"I am so only occasionally," he said. "For instance, instead of shooting the rabbit for supper, I'm going to try a figure-four trap."
They returned to their little camp on the upper terrace and Rhoda sat with wistful gray eyes fastened on the desert while John busied himself with the trap-making. He worked with the skill of his country boyhood and the trap was cleverly finished.
"It's evident that I'm not the leader of the expedition any more," said Rhoda, looking at the trap admiringly.
John shook his head.
"I've lost my faith in myself as a hero. It's one thing to read of the desert and think how well you could have managed there, and another thing to be on the spot!"
The day passed slowly. As night drew on the two on the mesa top grew more and more anxious. There was little doubt but that they could live for a number of days at the old pueblo, yet it was evident that the ruin was far from any traveled trail and that chances of discovery were slight except by Kut-le. On the other hand, they were absolutely unprepared for a walking trip across the desert. Troubled and uncertain what to do, they watched the wonder of the sunset. Deeper, richer, more divine grew the colors of the desert, and in one supreme, flaming glory the sun sank from view.
DeWitt with his arm across Rhoda's shoulders spoke anxiously.
"Don't you still think we'd better start tomorrow?"
"Yes," she answered, "I suppose so. What direction shall we take?"
"East," replied DeWitt. "We're bound to strike help if we can keep going long enough in one direction. We'll cook a good supply of rabbits and I'll fix up one of those bowl-like ollas with my handkerchief, so we can carry water in it as well as in the two canteens. I think you had better sleep in the little room there tonight and I'll lie across the end of the trail here."
Rhoda sighed.
"I've nothing better to suggest. As you say, it's all guesswork!"
They set the rabbit trap by the spring, then Rhoda, quite recovered from her nervousness of the night before, entered her little sleeping-room and made ready for the night. The front of the room had so crumbled away that she could see John's dark form by the trail, and she lay down with a sense of security and fell asleep at once.
John paced the terrace for a long hour after Rhoda was asleep, trying to plan every detail for the morrow. He dared not confess even to himself how utterly disheartened he felt in the face of this terrible adversary, the desert. Finally, realizing that he must have rest if Rhoda was not to repeat her previous experience in leading him across the desert he stretched himself on the ground across the head of the trail. He must trust to his nervousness to make him sleep lightly.
How long she had slept Rhoda did not know when she was wakened by a half-muffled oath from DeWitt. She jumped to her feet and ran out to the terrace. Never while life remained to her was she to forget what she saw there. DeWitt and Kut-le were wrestling in each other's grip! Rhoda stood horrified. As the two men twisted about, DeWitt saw the girl and panted:
"Don't stir, Rhoda! Don't call or you'll have his whole bunch up here!"
"Don't worry about that!" exclaimed Kut-le. "You've been wanting to get hold of me. Now we'll fight it out bare-handed and the best man wins."
Rhoda looked wildly down the trail, then ran up to the two men.
"Stop!" she screamed. "Stop!" Then as she caught the look in the men's faces as they glared at each other she cried, "I hate you both, you beasts!"
Her screams carried far in the night air, for in a moment Cesca came panting up the trail. She lunged at DeWitt with catlike fury, but at a sharp word from Kut-le she turned to Rhoda and stood guard beside the girl. Rhoda stood helplessly watching the battle as one watches the horrors of a nightmare.
Kut-le and DeWitt now were fighting as two wolves fight. Both the men were trained wrestlers, but in their fury all their scientific training was forgotten, and rolling over and over on the rocky trail each fought for a hold on the other's throat. With Kut-le was the advantage of perfect condition and superior strength. But DeWitt was fighting for his stolen mate. He was fighting like a cave man who has brooded for months on his revenge, and he was a terrible adversary. He had the sudden strength, the fearful recklessness of a madman. Now rolling on the edge of the terrace, now high against the crumbling pueblo, the savage and the civilized creature dragged each other back and forth. And Rhoda, awed by this display of passions, stood like the First Woman and waited!
Of a sudden Kut-le disentangled himself and with knees on DeWitt's shoulders he clutched at the white man's throat. At the same time, DeWitt gathered together his recumbent body and with a mighty heave he flung Kut-le over his head. Rhoda gave a little cry, thinking the fight was ended; but as Kut-le gained his feet, DeWitt sprang to meet him and the struggle was renewed. Rhoda never had dreamed of a sight so sickening as this of the two men she knew so well fighting for each other's throats with the animal's lust for killing. She did not know what would be Kut-le's course if he gained the mastery, but as she caught glimpses of DeWitt's face with its clenched teeth and terrible look of loathing she knew that if his fingers ever reached Kut-le's throat the Indian could hope for no mercy.
And then she saw DeWitt's face go white and his head drop back.
"Oh!" she screamed. "You've killed him! You've killed him!"
The Indian's voice came in jerks as he eased DeWitt to the ground.
"He's just fainted. He's put up a tremendous fight for a man in his condition!"
As he spoke he was tying DeWitt's hands and ankles with his own and DeWitt's handkerchiefs. Rhoda would have run to DeWitt's aid but Cesca's hand was tight on her arm. Before the girl could plan any action, Kut-le had turned to her and had lifted her in his arms. She fought him wildly.
"I can't leave him so, Kut-le! You will kill all I've learned to feel for you if you leave him so!"
"He'll be all right!" panted Kut-le, running down the trail. "I've got Billy Porter down here to leave with him!"
At the foot of the trail were horses. Gagged and bound to his saddle Billy Porter sat in the moonlight with Molly on guard. Kut-le put Rhoda on a horse, then quickly thrust Porter to the ground, where the man sat helplessly.
"Oh, Billy!" cried Rhoda. "John is on the terrace! Find him! Help him!"
The last words were spoken as Kut-le turned her horse and led at a trot into the desert.
Rhoda was so confused that for a moment she could only ease herself to the pony's swift canter and wonder if her encounter with DeWitt had been but a dream after all. A short distance from the pueblo Kut-le rode in beside her. It was very dark, with the heavy blackness that just precedes the dawn, but Rhoda felt that the Indian was looking at her exultingly.
"It seemed as if I never would get Alchise and Injun Tom moved to a friend'scamposso that I could overtake you. I will say that that fellow Porter is game to the finish. It took me an hour to subdue him! Now, don't worry about the two of them. With a little work they can loose themselves and help each other to safety. I saw Newman's trail ten miles or so over beyond the pueblo mesa and I told Porter just how to go to pick him up."
Rhoda laughed hysterically.
"No wonder you have such a hold on your Indians! You seem never to fail! I do believe as much of it is luck as ingenuity!"
Kut-le chuckled.
"What a jolt DeWitt will find when he comes to, and finds Porter!"
"You needn't gloat over the situation, Kut-le!" exclaimed Rhoda, half sobbing in her conflict of emotions.
"Oh, you mustn't mind anything I say," returned the young Indian. "I am crazy with joy at just hearing your voice again! Are you really sorry to be with me again? Did DeWitt mean as much to you as ever? Tell me, Rhoda! Say just one kindly thing to me!"
"O Kut-le," cried Rhoda, "I can't! I can't! You must help me to be strong! You—who are the strongest person that I know! Can't you put yourself in my place and realize what a horrible position I am in?"
Kut-le answered slowly.
"I guess I can realize it. But the end is so great, so much worth while that nothing before that matters much, to me! Rhoda, isn't this good—the lift of the horse under your knees—the air rushing past your face—the weave and twist of the trail—don't they speak to you and doesn't your heart answer?"
"Yes," answered Rhoda simply.
The young Indian rode still closer. Dawn was lifting now, and with a gasp Rhoda saw what she had been too agonized to heed on the terrace in the moonlight. Kut-le was clothed again! He wore the khaki suit, the high-laced riding boots of the ranch days; and he wore them with the grace, the debonair ease that had so charmed Rhoda in young Cartwell. That little sense of his difference that his Indian nakedness had kept in Rhoda's subconsciousness disappeared. She stared at his broad, graceful shoulders, at the fine outline of his head which still was bare, and she knew that her decision was going to be indescribably difficult to keep. Kut-le watched the wistful gray eyes tenderly, as if he realized the depth of anguish behind their wistfulness; yet he watched none the less resolutely, as if he had no qualms over the outcome of his plans. And Rhoda, returning his gaze, caught the depth and splendor of his eyes. And that wordless joy of life whose thrill had touched her the first time that she had met young Cartwell rushed through her veins once more. He was the youth, the splendor, the vivid wholesomeness of the desert! He was the heart itself, of the desert.
Kut-le laid his hand on hers.
"Rhoda," softly, "do you remember the moment before Porter interrupted us? Ah, dear one, you will have to prove much to erase the truth of that moment from our hearts! How much longer must I wait for you, Rhoda?"
Rhoda did not speak, but as she returned the young man's gaze there came her rare slow smile of unspeakable beauty and tenderness. Kut-le trembled; but before he could speak Rhoda seemed to see between his face and hers, DeWitt, haggard and exhausted, expending the last remnant of his strength in his fight for her. She put her hands before her face with a little sob.
Kut-le watched her in silence for a moment, then he said in his low rich voice:
"Neither DeWitt nor I want you to suffer over your decision. And DeWitt doesn't want just the shell of you. I have the real you! O Rhoda, the real you will belong to me if you are seven times DeWitt's wife! Can't you realize that forever and ever you are mine, no matter how you fight or what you do?"
But Rhoda scarcely heard him. She was with DeWitt, struggling across the parching sands.
"O Kut-le! Kut-le! What shall I do! What shall I do!"
Kut-le started to answer, then changed his mind.
"You poor, tired little girl," he said. "You have had a fierce time there in the desert. You look exhausted. What did you have to eat and how did you make out crossing to the mesa? By your trail you went miles out of your way."
Rhoda struggled for calm.
"We nearly died the first day," she said. "But we did very well after we reached the mesa."
Kut-le smiled to himself. It was hard even for him to realize that this plucky girl who passed so simply over such an ordeal as he knew she must have endured could be the Rhoda of the ranch. But he said only:
"We'll make for the timber line and let you rest for a while."
At mid-morning they left the desert and began to climb a rough mountain slope. At the piñon line, Kut-le called a halt. Never before had shade seemed so good to Rhoda as it did now. She lay on the pine-needles looking up into the soft green. It was unspeakably grateful to her eyes which had been so long tortured by the desert glare. She lay thus for a long time, her mental pain for a while lost in the access of physical comfort. Shortly Molly, who had been working rapidly, brought her a steaming bowl of stew. Rhoda ate this, then with her head pillowed on her arm she fell asleep.
She was wakened by Molly's touch on her arm. It was late afternoon. Rhoda looked up into the squaw's face and drew a quick hard breath as realization came to her.
"Molly! Molly!" she cried. "I'm in terrible, terrible trouble, Molly!"
The squaw looked worried.
"You no go away! Kut-le heap sorry while you gone!"
But Rhoda scarcely heeded the woman's voice. She rolled over with her hot face in the fragrant needles and groaned.
"O Molly! Molly! I'm in terrible trouble!"
"What trouble? You tell old Molly!"
Rhoda sat up and stared into the deep brown eyes. Just as Kut-le had become to her the splendor of the desert, so had Molly become the brooding wisdom of the desert. With sudden inspiration she grasped the Indian woman's toil-scarred hands.
"Listen, Molly! Before I knew Kut-le, I was going to marry the white man, DeWitt. And after he stole me I hated Kut-le and I hated the desert. And now, O Molly, I love both Kut-le and the desert, and I must marry the white man!"
"Why? You tell Molly why?"
"Because he is white, Molly, like me. Because he loves me so and has done so much for me! But most of all because he is white!"
Molly scowled.
"Because Kut-le is Injun, you no marry him?"
Rhoda nodded miserably.
"Huh! And you think you so big, Kut-le so big that Great Spirit care if you marry white, marry Injun. All Great Spirit care is for every squaw to have papoose. Squaw, she big fool to listen to her head. Squaw, she must always listen to her heart, that is Great Spirit talking. Your heart, it say marry Kut-le!"
Molly paused and looked at the girl, who sat with stormy eyes on the sinking sun. And she forgot her hard-earned wisdom and was just a heart-hungry woman.
"You stay! Stay with Kut-le and old Molly! You so sweet! You like little childs! You lie in old Molly's heart like little girl papoose that never came to Molly. You stay! Always, always, Molly will take care of you!"
Rhoda was deeply touched. This was the cry of the famished motherhood of a dying race. She put her soft cheek on Molly's shoulder and she could no longer see the sun, for her eyes were tear-blinded. Kut-le, standing on the other side of the camp, looked at the picture with deepening eyes; then he crossed and put his hand on Rhoda's shoulder.
"Dear one," he said, "you must eat your supper, then we must take the trail."
Rhoda looked up into the young man's face. She was exquisite in the failing light. For a moment it seemed as if Kut-le must fold her in his arms; but something in her troubled gaze withheld him and he only smiled at her caressingly.
"Before you eat," he said, "come to the edge of the camp and look through the glasses."
Rhoda hurried after him, and stared out over the desert. A short distance out, vivid in the afterglow, moved two figures. She distinguished the short wiry figure of Porter, the gaunt figure of DeWitt, walking with determined strides. Waiting till she could command her voice, Rhoda turned to Kut-le. He was watching her keenly.
"Will they pick up our trail? Are the poor things badly lost?"
"Billy Porter lost! I guess not! And I gave him enough hints so that he ought to join Newman in another twenty-four hours."
Rhoda smiled wanly.
"Sometimes you forget to act like a cold-blooded Indian."
Kut-le gave his familiar chuckle.
"Well, you see, I've been contaminated by my long association with the whites!"
And so again the nights of going. During her waking hours, Rhoda spent the greater part of her time considering arguments that would have weight with Kut-le when the struggle came which she knew was imminent.
If she had suffered before, if the early part of her abduction had been agony, it had been nothing in comparison with what she was enduring in putting Kut-le aside for DeWitt. And, after all, she had no final guide in holding to her resolution save an instinct that told her that her course was the right one. All the arguments that she could put into words against inter-race marriage seemed inadequate. This instinct which was wordless and formless alone remained sufficient.
And with the ill logic of womankind, through all her arguing with herself there flushed one glad thought. Kut-le knew that she loved him, knew that she was suffering in the thought of giving him up! His tender, half sad, half triumphant smile proved that, as did his protective air of ownership.
Rhoda noticed one condition of her keeping to her decision. She was very firm in it at night when the desert was dim. But in the glory of the dawns and the sunsets, her little arguments seemed strangely small. Sitting on a mountainside one afternoon, Rhoda watched a rain-storm sweep across the ranges, across the desert, to the far-lying mesas. Normally odorless, the desert, after the rain, emitted a faint, ineffable odor that teased the girl's fancy as if she verged on the secret of the desert's beauty. Exquisite violet mists rolled back to the mountains. Flashing every rainbow tint from its moistened breast the desert lay as if breathing the very words of the Great Scheme.
Suddenly to Rhoda her resolution seemed small and futile, and for a long hour she revelled in the thought of belonging to the man she loved. And yet as night descended and the infinite reaches of the desert receded into darkness, the spell was broken, and the old doubts and misery returned.
And so again, the nights of going. But the holiday aspect of the flight was gone. Kut-le moved with a grim determination that was not to be misinterpreted. Rhoda knew that they were to reach the Mexican border with all possible speed. The young Indian drove the little party to the limit of its endurance. Rhoda avoided talking to him as much as she could and Kut-le, seeming to understand her mood, left her much to herself.
On the fourth day they camped on a cañon edge. After Rhoda had eaten she walked with Kut-le to the far edge and looked down. The cañon was very deep and narrow. Some distance away, near where it opened on the desert, lay a heap of ruins.
"Is that another pueblo?" asked Rhoda.
"No, it's an old monastery. Part of the year they have a padre there. I wish I knew if there was one there now."
"Why?" asked Rhoda suspiciously.
"Don't bother your dear head," answered Kut-le. Then he went on, as if half to himself: "There's been an awful lot of fooling on this expedition. Perhaps I ought to have made for the Mexican border the very night I took you." He looked at Rhoda's wide, troubled eyes. "But no, then I would have missed this wonderful desert growth of yours! But now we are going straight over the border where I know a padre that will many us. Then we will make for Europe at once."
The morning sun glinted on the pine-needles. Old Molly hummed a singsong air over the stew-pot. And Rhoda stood with stormy, tear-dimmed eyes and quivering lips.
"It can never, never be, Kut-le!"
"Why not?"
"We can't solve the problems of race adjustment. No love is big enough for that. I have been civilized a thousand years. You have been savage a thousand years. You can't come forward. I can't go backward."
"You know well enough, Rhoda," said Kut-le quietly, "that I am civilized."
"You are externally, perhaps," said the girl. "But you yourself have no proof that at heart you are not as uncivilized as your father or grandfather. Your stealing me shows that. Nothing can change our instinct. You know that you might revert at any time."
Kut-le turned on her fiercely.
"Do you love me, Rhoda?"
Rhoda stood silently, her cleft chin trembling, her deep gray eyes wide and grief-stricken.
"Do you love me—and better than you do DeWitt?" insisted the man,
Suddenly Rhoda lifted her head proudly.
"Yes," she said, "I do love you, better than any one in the world; but I cannot marry you!"
Kut-le took her trembling hands in his.
"Why not, dear one?" he asked.
Still the sun flickered on the pine-needles and still Molly hummed over her stew-pot. Still Rhoda stood looking into the eyes of the man she loved, her scarlet cheeks growing each moment more deeply crimson.
"Because you are an Indian. The instinct in me against such a marriage is so strong that I dare not go against it."
Kut-le's mouth closed in the old way.
"And still you shall marry me, Rhoda!"
"I am a white woman, Kut-le. I can't marry an Indian. The difference is too great!"
Kut-le turned abruptly and walked to the cañon edge, looking far out to the desert. Rhoda, panting and half hysterical, watched him. The moment which she had so dreaded had arrived, and she found herself, after all her planning, utterly unprepared to meet it save with hackneyed phrases.
It seemed a long time that Kut-le stood staring away from her. At last Rhoda could bear the silence no longer. She ran to him and put her trembling hand on his arm. He turned his stern young face to her and her heart failed her.
"O Kut-le! Kut-le!" she cried. "If you won't help me to do right, who will? It's not right for us to marry! Just not right! That's all I know about it!"
Kut-le put both hands on her shoulders.
"Look here, Rhoda. What you call the 'right' instinct is just the remnant of the old man-made race hatred in you. It's just a part of the old conceit of the Caucasian."
Rhoda stirred restlessly, but Kut-le held her firmly and went on.
"I tell you, if we're not to go mad, we've got to believe that great things come to us for a purpose. There is no human being who has loved who does not believe that love is the greatest thing that has been given to man. The man who has loved knows that the biggest things in the world have been done for the love of woman. Love is bigger than nations or races. It's human, not white, or black, or yellow. It's above all we can do to tarnish it with our little prejudices. When it comes greatly, it comes supremely."
He lifted the girl's face and looked deeply into her eyes.
"Rhoda, if it has come as greatly to you as it has to me, you will not pause for any sorrow that your coming to me may cost you. You will come, in spite of everything. I believe that if in your smallness and ignorance you refuse this gift that has come to you and me, you will be outraging the greatest force in nature."
Rhoda stood sorrow-stricken and confused. When the deep, quiet voice ceased, she said brokenly:
"I haven't lived in the desert so long as you. The way does not lie so clear to me. If only I had your conviction, I too could be strong and walk the path I saw unhesitatingly. But I see no path!"
"Then," said Kut-le, "because I see, I'll decide for you! O Rhoda, you must believe in me! I have had you in my power and I have kept the faith with you. I am going to take you and marry you. I am going to make this gift that has come to you and me make us the big man and woman that nature needs. Tonight we shall reach the padre who will marry us."
He watched the girl keenly for a moment, then he again turned from her deliberately and walked to the edge of the cañon, as if he wanted her to come to her final decision unbiased by his nearness. But he turned back to her with a curious expression on his face.
"Come and take a good-by look, Rhoda! Your friends are below. I hope it will be some time before we see them again!"
Rhoda went to him. Far, far below, she saw little dots of men making camp beyond the monastery near the desert. Suddenly Rhoda sank to her knees with a cry of longing that was heart-breaking.
"O my people! My own people!" she sobbed, crouching upon the cañon edge.
Kut-le watched the little figure with inscrutable eyes. Then he lifted the girl to her feet.
"Rhoda, are you going to eat your heart out for your own kind if you marry me? Won't I be sufficient? It hadn't occurred to me that I might not be!"
"You haven't given up your people," answered Rhoda. "You are always going back to them."
"But you aren't really giving them up," urged Kut-le. "It really is I who make the sacrifice of my race!"
"And that is the reason for one of my fears," cried Rhoda. "I am afraid that some day you would find the price too great and that our marriage would be wrecked."
"Even if I went back for a few months each year, would that make you unhappy?" asked Kut-le.
"Kut-le!" exclaimed Rhoda. "I am not talking of externals. I mean that if your longing for your own kind made you lose your love for me. Oh, I can't see any of it straight, but I am afraid!"
"Nonsense, Rhoda! I fought that battle long before I knew you. There is absolutely no danger of my reverting. I am going to spend the rest of my life among the whites even if you shouldn't marry me, Rhoda. Rhoda, I wish I had had time to let you grow to it fully!"
Rhoda stood rigidly. Molly, sensing trouble, hovered restlessly just out of earshot.
"If you married DeWitt," Kut-le went on, "could you forget me? Forget the desert? Forget our days and nights? Forget my arms about you?"
"Oh, no! No!" cried Rhoda. "You know that I shall love you always!"
"And will DeWitt want what you offer him?" Kut-le went on, mercilessly.
Rhoda winced.
"I wish," said Kut-le huskily, "you never will know how I wish that you had come to me freely, feeling that the sacrifice was worth while!"
Rhoda looked at him wonderingly. After all the weeks of iron determination, was the young giant weakening, was his great heart failing him!
"I had thought," he went on, "that you were big enough to stand the test. That after the travail and the heart scourging, you would see—and would come to me freely—strong enough to smile at all your regrets and fears. That thought steeled me to put you through the torture. But if now, at the end, you are coming to me only because you must! Rhoda, I don't want you on those terms."
Rhoda gasped. She felt as one feels when in a dream one falls an unexpected and endless distance. The relief from the pressure of Kut-le's will that had forced her on, for so long, left her weak and aimless.
Yet somehow she found the strength to say:
"Kut-le, we must give each other up! I love you so that I can let you go! Oh, can't you see how I feel about it!"
Again Kut-le looked far off over vista of mountains and cañon. His eyes were deep and abstracted, as if he saw into the years ahead with knowledge denied to Rhoda. Then he turned to Rhoda and searched her face with burning gaze. He eyed her hair, her lovely heart-broken face, her slender figure. For a moment his face was tortured by a look of doubt that was heart-shattering. He lifted Rhoda across his chest in the old way and held her to him with passionate tenderness. He laid his face against hers and she heard him whisper:
"O my love! Love of my youth and my manhood!" Then he set her very gently to her feet. "Don't cry," he said. "I can't bear it!"
Rhoda threw her arms above her head in an abandonment of agony.
"Oh, I cannot, cannot bear this!" Then she added more calmly: "I suffer as much as you, Kut-le!"
Again the look of unspeakable grief crossed the young Indian's face, but it immediately became inscrutable. He led Rhoda along the cañon edge.
"Do you see that little trail going down?" he said.
"Yes," said Rhoda wonderingly.
"Then go!" said Kut-le quietly.
Rhoda looked up at him blankly.
"Go!" he said sternly. "Go back to your own kind and I will go on, alone. Don't stop to talk any more. Go now!"
Rhoda turned and looked at Cesca squatting by the horses, at Molly hovering near by with anxious eyes. Never to make the dawn camp, again—never to hear Molly humming over the stew-pot! Suddenly Rhoda felt that if she could have Molly with her she would not be so utterly separated from Kut-le.
"Let Molly go with me!" she said. "I love Molly!"
"No!" said Kut-le. "You are to forget the desert and the Indians. Go now!"
With awe and grief too deep for words, Rhoda obeyed the young chief's stern eyes. She clambered down the rough trail to a break in the cañon wall, then, clinging with hands and feet, down the sheer side. The tall figure, beautiful in its perfect symmetry, stood immovable, the face never turning from her. Rhoda knew that she never was to forget this picture of him. At the foot of the cañon wall she stood long, looking up. Far, far above, the straight figure stood in lonely majesty, gazing at the life for which he had sacrificed so much. Rhoda looked until, tear-blinded, she turned away.