The Heart of the Desert Part 13

"Oh!" in evident relief. "And what was Molly doing?"

"She maybe help 'em run," said Alchise, coming forward.

The relief in Kut-le's voice increased Rhoda's anger.

"No such thing! She was persuading me not to go! Kut-le, you give Alchise orders not to touch Molly again. I won't have it!"

"Oh, that's not necessary," said Kut-le serenely. "Indians are pretty good to their women as a general thing. They average up with the whites, I guess. Molly, get up and help Cesca with these!" He flung some newly killed rabbits at the gaping squaw, who still lay where she had fallen.

Rhoda, trembling and glowering, walked unsteadily up and down beneath the cottonwoods. The details of her new existence, the dirt, the roughness, were beginning to sink in on her. She paced back and forth, lips compressed, eyes black. Kut-le stood with his back against a cottonwood eying the slender figure with frank delight. Now and again he chuckled as he rolled a cigarette with his facile finger. His hands were fine as only an Indian's can be: strong and sinewy yet supple with slender fingers and almond-shaped nails.

He smoked contentedly with his eyes on the girl. Inscrutable as was his face at a casual glance, had Rhoda observed keenly she might have read much in the changing light of his eyes. There was appreciation of her and love of her and a merciless determination to hold her at all costs. And still as he gazed there was that tragedy in his look which is part and portion of the Indian's face.

Silence in the camp had continued for some time when a strange young Indian strode up the slope, nodded to the group in the camp, and deliberately rolled himself in a blanket and dropped to sleep. Rhoda stared at him questioningly.

"Alchise's and Cesca's son," said Kut-le. "His job is to follow us at a distance and remove all trace of our trail. Not an overturned pebble misses his eye. I'll need him only for a day or two."

"Kut-le," said Rhoda suddenly, "when are you going to end the farce and let me go?"

The young man smiled.

"You know the way the farce usually ends! The man always gets the girl and they live happily forever after!"

"What do you suppose Jack and Katherine think of you? They have loved and trusted you so!"

For the first time the Indian's face showed pain.

"My hope is," he said, "that after they see how happy I am going to make you they will forgive me."

Rhoda controlled her voice with difficulty.

"Can't you see what you have done? No matter what the outcome, can you believe that I or any one that loves me can forgive the outrage to me?"

"After we have married and lived abroad for a year or two people will remember only the romance of it!".

"Heavens!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Rhoda. She returned to her angry walking.

Molly was preparing supper. She worked always with one eye on Rhoda, as if she could not see enough of the girl's fragile loveliness. With her attention thus divided, she stumbled constantly, dropping the pots and spilling the food. She herself was not at all disturbed by her mishaps but, with a grimace and a chuckle, picked up the food. But Cesca was annoyed. She was tending the fire which by a marvel of skill she kept always clear and all but smokeless. At each of Molly's mishaps, Cesca hurled a stone at her friend's back with a savage "Me-yah!" that disturbed Molly not at all.

Mercifully night was on the camp by the time the rabbits were cooked and Rhoda ate unconscious of the dirt the food had acquired in the cooking. When the silent meal was finished, Kut-le pointed to Rhoda's blankets.

"We will start in half an hour. You must rest during that time."

Too weary to resent the peremptory tone, Rhoda obeyed. The fire long since had been extinguished and the camp was dark. The Indians were to be located only by faint whispers under the trees. The opportunity seemed providential! Rhoda slipped from her blankets and crept through the darkness away from the camp.

CHAPTER VII

THE FIRST LESSON

After crawling on her hands and knees for several yards, Rhoda rose and started on a run down the long slope to the open desert. But after a few steps she found running impossible, for the slope was a wilderness of rock, thickly grown with cholla and yucca with here and there a thicker growth of cat's-claw.

Almost at once her hands were torn and bleeding and she thought gratefully for the first time of her buckskin trousers which valiantly resisted all detaining thorns. The way dropped rapidly and after her first wild spurt Rhoda leaned exhausted and panting against a boulder.

She had not the vaguest idea of where she was going or of what she was going to do, except that she was going to lose herself so thoroughly that not even Kut-le could find her. After that she was quite willing to trust to fate.

After a short rest she started on, every sense keen for the sound of pursuit, but none came. As the silent minutes pa.s.sed Rhoda became elated. How easy it was! What a pity that she had not tried before!

At the foot of the slope, she turned up the arroyo. Here her course grew heavier. The arroyo was cut by deep ruts and gullies down which the girl slid and tumbled in mad haste only to find rock ma.s.ses over which she crawled with utmost difficulty. Now and again the stout vamps of her hunting boots were pierced by chollas and, half frantic in her haste, she was forced to stop and struggle to pull out the thorns.

It was not long before the girl's scant strength was gone, and when after a mad scramble she fell from a boulder to the ground, she was too done up to rise. She lay face to the stars, half sobbing with excitement and disappointment. After a time, however, the sobs ceased and she lay thinking. She knew now that until she was inured to the desert and had a working knowledge of its ways, escape was impossible.

She must bide her time and wait for her friends to rescue her. She had no idea how far she had come from the Indian camp. Whether or not Kut-le could find her again she could not guess. If he did not, then unless a white stumbled on her she must die in the desert. Well then, let it be so! The old lethargy closed in on her and she lay motionless and hopeless.

From all sides she heard the night howls of the coyote packs circling nearer and nearer. Nothing could more perfectly interpret the horrible desolation of the desert, Rhoda thought, than the demoniacal, long-drawn laughter of the coyote. How long she lay she neither knew nor cared. But just as she fancied that the coyotes had drawn so near that she could hear their footsteps, a hand was laid on her arm.

"Have you had enough, Rhoda?" asked Kut-le.

"No!" shuddered Rhoda. "I'd rather die here!"

The Indian laughed softly as he lifted her from the ground.

"A good hater makes a good lover, Rhoda," he said. "I wish I'd had time to let you learn your lesson more thoroughly. I haven't been twenty-five feet away from you since you left the camp. I wanted you to try your hand at it just so you'd realize what you are up against.

But you've tired yourself badly."

Rhoda lay mute in the young man's arms. She was not thinking of his words but of the first time that the Indian had carried her. She saw John DeWitt's protesting face, and tears of weakness and despair ran silently down her cheeks. Kut-le strode rapidly and, unhesitatingly over the course she had followed so painfully and in a few moments they were among the waiting Indians.

Kut-le put Rhoda in her saddle, fastened her securely and put a Navajo about her shoulders. The night's misery was begun. Whether they went up and down mountains, whether they crossed deserts, Rhoda neither knew nor cared. The blind purpose of clinging to the saddle was the one aim of the dreadful night. She was a little light-headed at times and with her head against the horse's neck, she murmured John DeWitt's name, or sitting erect she called to him wildly. At such times Kut-le's fingers tightened and he clinched his teeth, but he did not go to her. When, however, the frail figure drooped silently and inertly against the waist strap he seemed to know even in the darkness. Then and then only he lifted her down, the squaws ma.s.saged her wracked body, and she was put in the saddle again. Over and over during the night this was repeated until at dawn Rhoda was barely conscious that after being lifted to the ground she was not remounted but was covered carefully and left in peace.

It was late in the afternoon again when Rhoda woke. She pushed aside her blankets and tried to get up but fell back with a groan. The stiffness of the previous days was nothing whatever to the misery that now held every muscle rigid. The overexertion of three nights in the saddle which the ma.s.saging had so far mitigated had a.s.serted itself and every muscle in the girl's body seemed acutely painful. To lift her hand to her hair, to draw a long breath, to turn her head, was almost impossible.

Rhoda looked dismally about her. The camp this time was on the side of a mountain that lay in a series of mighty ranges, each separated from the other by a narrow strip of desert. White and gold gleamed the snow-capped peaks. Purple and lavender melted the s.h.i.+mmering desert into the lifting mesas. Rhoda threw her arm across her eyes to hide the hateful sight, and moaned in pain at the movement.

Molly ran to her side.

"Your bones heap sick? Molly rub 'em?" she asked eagerly.

"O Molly, if you would!" replied Rhoda gratefully, and she wondered at the skill and gentleness of the Indian woman who manipulated the aching muscles with such rapidity and firmness that in a little while Rhoda staggered stiffly to her feet.

"Molly," she said, "I want to wash my face."

Molly puckered up her own face in her effort to understand, and scratched her head.

"Don't _sabe_ that," she said.

"Wash my face!" repeated Rhoda in astonishment. "Of course you understand."

Molly laughed.