The Heart of the Desert Part 39

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 gla.s.ses."

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 a.s.sociation 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 owners.h.i.+p.

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. Flas.h.i.+ng 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 canon edge. After Rhoda had eaten she walked with Kut-le to the far edge and looked down. The canon 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 canon 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!"