Chapter 16

ADRIFT IN THE DESERT

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."