The Heart of the Desert Part 16

"Shucks!" sniffed the Indian. "You haven't the nerve to injure anything but a woman!"

Jim's face went purple.

"For two bits I'd knock your block off, right now."

"There isn't a cent in the camp." Kut-le turned to Rhoda. "You get the point of the conversation, I hope?"

Rhoda's eyes were blazing. She had gotten the point, and yet--Jim was a white man! Anything white was better than an Indian.

"I'd take my chances with Mr. Provenso," she said, joyfully conscious that nothing could have hurt Kut-le more than this reply.

Kut-le's lips stiffened.

"Lunch is ready," he said.

"None of _your_ grub for mine," remarked Jim. "What are you going to do with me?"

"Alchise!" called Kut-le. "Eat something, then take this fellow out and lose him. Take the rest of the day to it. You know the next camp!"

Then he folded his arms across his chest and waited for Alchise to finish his meal. Jim stood in sullen silence for a minute. Then he seated himself on a nearby rock.

"No, you don't," he said. "If you get me out of here, you'll have to use force."

Kut-le shrugged his shoulders.

"A gun at your back will move you!"

Rhoda was looking at the white man's face with a great longing. He was rough and ugly, but he was of her own breed. Suddenly the longing for her own that she was beginning to control surged to her lips.

"I can't bear this!" she cried. "I'm going mad! I'm going mad!"

All the camp turned startled faces toward the girl, and Rhoda recovered her self-possession. She ran to Kut-le and laid her hand on his arm, lifting a lovely, pleading face to his.

"O Kut-le! Kut-le!" in the tone that she had used to Cartwell. "Can't you see that it's no use? He is white, Kut-le! Let me go with him!

Let me go back to my own people! O Kut-le, let me go! O let me go!"

Kut-le looked down at the hand on his arm. Rhoda was too excited to notice that his whole body shook at this unwonted touch. His voice was caressing but his face remained inscrutable.

"Dear girl," he answered, "he is not your kind! He might originally have been of your color, but now he's streaked with yellow. Let him go. You are safer here with me!"

Rhoda turned from him impatiently.

"It's quite useless," she said to Jim; "no pleading or threat will move him. But I do thank you--" her voice breaking a little. "Go back with Alchise and tell them to come for me quickly!"

Some responsive flash of sympathy came to Jim's bleared eyes.

Rhoda stood watching Alchise marshall him out of the camp. She moaned helplessly:

"O my people, my own people!" and Kut-le eyed her with unfathomable gaze.

As soon as lunch was finished, camp was broken. All the rest of the day and until toward midnight they wound up a wretched trail that circled the mountain ranges, For hours, Kut-le did not speak to Rhoda.

These days of Rhoda's contempt were very hard on him. The touch of her hand that morning, the old note in her voice, still thrilled him. At midnight as they watched the squaws unroll her blankets, he touched her shoulder.

"Dear," he said, in his rich voice, "it is in you to love me if only I am patient. And--G.o.d, but it's worth all the starvation in the meantime! Won't you say good-night to me, Rhoda?"

Rhoda looked at the stalwart figure in the firelight. The young eyes so tragic in their youth, the beautiful mouth, sad in its firm curves, were strangely appealing. Just for an instant the horrors of the past weeks vanished.

"Good-night!" said Rhoda. Then she rolled herself in her blankets and slept. By the next morning, however, the old repulsion had returned and she made no response to Kut-le's overtures.

Day succeeded day now, until Rhoda lost all track of time. Endlessly they crossed desert and mountain ridges. Endlessly they circled through dusky canon and sun-baked arroyo. Always Rhoda looked forward to each new camping-place with excitement. Here, the rescuers might stumble upon them! Always she started at each unexpected shadow along the trail. Always she thrilled at a wisp of smokelike cloud beyond the canon edge. Always she felt a quiver of certainty at sudden break of twig or fall of stone. But the days pa.s.sed and gradually hope changed to desperation.

The difficulties of the camp life would have been unbearable to her had not her natural fort.i.tude and her intense pride come to her rescue.

The estimate of her that Kut-le had so mercilessly presented to her the first day of her abduction returned to her more and more clearly as the days wore on. At first she thought of them only with scorn. Then as her loneliness increased and she was forced back upon herself she grew to wonder what in her had given the Indian such an opinion. There was something in the nakedness of the desert, something in its piercing austerity that forced her to truthfulness with herself. Little by little she found herself trying to acquire Kut-le's view of her.

Her liking for Molly grew. She spent long afternoons with the squaw, picking up desert lore.

"Do you like to work, Molly?" she asked the squaw one afternoon, as she sorted seed for Molly to bruise.

"What else to do?" asked Molly. "Sit with hands folded on stomach, so?

No! Still hands make crazy head. Now you work with your hands you no so sorry in head, huh?"

Rhoda thought for a moment. There was a joy in the rude camp tasks that she had a.s.sumed that she never had found in golf or automobiling.

She nodded, then said wistfully:

"You think I'm no good at all, don't you, Molly?"

Molly shrugged her shoulders.

"Me not got papooses. You not got papooses. Molly and you no good!

Molly is heap strong. What good is that? When she die she no has given her strength to tribe, no done any good that will last. You are heap beautiful. What good is that? You no give your face to your tribe. What good are you? Molly and you might as well die tomorrow.

Work, have papooses, die. That all squaws are for. Great Spirit says so. Squaw's own heart says so."

Rhoda sat silently looking at the squaw's squat figure, the toil-scarred fingers, the good brown eyes out of which looked a woman's soul. Vaguely Rhoda caught a point of view that made her old ideals seem futile. She smoothed the Indian woman's hands.

"I sometimes think you are a bigger woman than I am, Molly," she said humbly.

"You are heap good to look at." Molly spoke wistfully. "Molly heap homely. You think that makes any difference to the Great Spirit?"

Rhoda's eyes widened, a little. Did it make any difference? After all, what counted with the Great Spirit? She stared at the barren ranges that lifted mute peaks to the silent heavens. Always, always the questions and so vague the answers! Suddenly Rhoda knew that her beauty had counted greatly with her all her life, had given her her sense of superiority to the rest of the world. Rhoda squirmed. She hated this faculty of the Indians and the desert to make her seem small. She never had felt so with her own kind. Her own kind! Would she never again know the deference, the gentleness, the loving tenderness of her own people? Rhoda forgot Molly's wistful question.

"O Molly!" she cried. "I can't stand this! I want my own people! I want my own people!"

Molly's eyes filled with tears.

"No! No cry, little Sun-streak!" she pleaded, putting an arm around Rhoda and holding her to her tenderly. "Any peoples that loves you is your own peoples. Kut-le loves you. Molly loves you. We your peoples too!"

"No! No! Never!" sobbed Rhoda. "Molly, if you love me, take me back to my own kind! You shall never leave me, Molly! I do love you. You are an Indian but somehow I have a feeling for you I never had for any one else."