Chapter 6

ENTERING THE DESERT KINDERGARTEN

"We'll start now," said Kut-le.

Alchise led out the horses. The squaws each threw an emancipated, sinewy leg across a pony's back and followed Alchise's fluttering shirt up the mountain. Kut-le stood holding the bridle of a sedate little horse on which he had fastened a comfortable high-backed saddle.

"Come, Rhoda," he said. "I'll shorten the stirrups after you are mounted."

Rhoda stood with her back to the wall, her blue-veined hands clutching the rough out-croppings on either side, horror and fear in her eyes.

"I can't ride cross-saddle!" she exclaimed. "I used to be a good horsewoman in the side-saddle. But I'm so weak that even keeping in the side-saddle is out of the question."

"Anything except cross-saddle is utterly out of the question," replied the Indian, "on the sort of trails we have to take. You might as well begin to control your nerves now as later. I'm going to have an expert rider in you by the time you have regained your strength. Come, Rhoda."

The girl turned her face to the afterglow. Remote and pitiless lay the distant crimson ranges. She shuddered and turned back to the young Indian who stood watching her. For the moment all the agony of her situation was concentrated in horror of another night in the saddle.

"Kut-le, I _can't_!"

"Shall I pick you up and carry you over here?" asked Kut-le patiently.

In her weakness and misery, Rhoda's cleft chin quivered. There was only merciless determination in the Indian's face. Slowly the girl walked to his side. He swung her to the saddle, adjusted the stirrups carefully, then fastened her securely to the saddle with a strap about her waist. Rhoda watched him in the silence of utter fear. Having settled the girl to his satisfaction, he mounted his own horse, and Rhoda's pony followed him tractably up the trail.

The trail rose steeply. After the first few dizzy moments, Rhoda, clinging to the saddle with hands and knees, was thankful for the security of her new seat. The scenery was uncanny to her terrorized eyes. To the left were great overhanging walls with cactus growing from every crevice; to the right, depth of cañon toward which she dared not look but only trusted herself prayerfully to her steady little horse.

As the trail led higher and darkness settled, the cold grew intense and Rhoda cowered and shivered. Yet through her fear and discomfort was creeping surprise that her strength had endured even this long. In a spot where the trail widened Kut-le dropped back beside her and she felt the warm folds of a Navajo blanket about her shoulders. Neither she nor the Indian spoke. The madness of the night before, the fear and disgust of the afternoon gave way, slowly, to a lethargy of exhaustion. All thought of her frightful predicament, of her friends' anxiety, of Kut-le's treachery, was dulled by a weariness so great that she could only cling to the saddle and pray for the trail to end.

Kut-le, riding just ahead, glanced back constantly at the girl's dim figure. But Rhoda was beyond pleading or protesting. The trail twisted and undulated on and on. Each moment Rhoda felt less certain of her seat. Each moment the motion of the horse grew more painful. At last a faint odor of pine-needles roused her sinking senses and she opened her heavy eyes. They had left the sickening edge of the cañon and Alchise was leading them into a beautiful growth of pines where the mournful hooting of owls gave a graveyard sadness to the moon-flecked shadows.

Here, in a long aisle of columnar pines, Kut-le called the first halt. Rhoda reeled in her saddle. Before her horse had stopped, Kut-le was beside her, unfastening her waist strap and lifting her to the ground. He pulled the blanket from his own shoulders and Molly stretched it on the soft pine-needles. Rhoda, half delirious, looked up into the young Indian's face with the pathetic unconsciousness of a sick child. He laid her carefully on the blanket. The two squaws hurriedly knelt at Rhoda's side and with clever hands rubbed and manipulated the slender, exhausted body until the girl opened her languid eyes.

Kut-le, while this was being done, stood quietly by the blanket, his fine face stern and intent. When Rhoda opened her eyes, he put aside the two squaws, knelt and raised the girl's head and held a cup of the rich broth to her lips. It was cold, yet it tasted good, and Rhoda finished the cup without protest, then struggled to a sitting position. After a moment Kut-le raised her gently to her feet. Here, however, she pushed him away and walked unsteadily to her horse. Kut-le's hands dropped to his side and he stood in the moonlight watching the frail boyish figure clamber with infinite travail into the saddle.

From the pine wood, the trail led downward. The rubbing and the broth had put new life into Rhoda, and for a little while she kept a clear brain. For the first time it occurred to her that instead of following the Indians so stupidly she ought to watch her chance and at the first opportunity make a wild dash off into the darkness. Kut-le was so sure of her weakness and cowardice that she felt that he would be taken completely by surprise and she might elude him. With a definite purpose in her mind she was able to fight off again and again the blur of weakness that threatened her.

As the trail widened in the descent, Kut-le rode in beside her.

"Feeling better?" he asked cheerfully.

Rhoda made no reply. Such a passion of hatred for the man shook her that words failed her. She turned a white face toward him, the eyes black, the nostrils quivering with passion.

Kut-le laughed softly.

"Hate me, Rhoda! Hate me as much as you wish! That's a heap more hopeful than indifference. I'll bet you aren't thinking of dying of ennui now!"

What fiend, thought Rhoda, ever had induced her to make a friend of this savage! She clung to the pommel of her saddle, her eyes fastened on him. If only he would drop dead as he sat! If only his Indians would turn on him and kill him!

They were riding through the desert now, desert thick-grown with cactus and sage-brush. Suddenly a far away roar came to Rhoda's ears. There was a faint whistle repeated with increasing loudness. Off to the north appeared a light that grew till it threw a dazzling beam on the strange little waiting group. The train passed, a half-dozen dimly lighted Pullmans. The roaring decreased, the whistle sounded lower and lower and the night was silent. Rhoda sat following the last dim light with burning eyes. Kut-le led the way from the difficult going of the desert to the road-bed. As Rhoda saw the long line of rails the panic of the previous night overwhelmed her. Like a mad thing, unmindful of the strap about her waist she threw herself from the saddle and hung against the stolid pony. Kut-le dismounted and undid the strap. The girl dropped to the ties and lay crouched with her face against the steel rail.

"O John! O John DeWitt!" she sobbed.

"Alchise, go ahead with the horses," said Kut-le. "Wait for me at the painted rock."

Then as the Indians became indistinguishable along the track he lifted Rhoda to her feet.

"Walk for a while," he said. "It will rest you. Poor little girl! I wish I could have managed differently but this was best for you. Come, don't be afraid of me!"

Some savage instinct stirred in Rhoda. For the first time in her life she felt an insane joy in anger.

"I'm not afraid of you, you Apache Indian!" she said clearly. "I loathe you! Your touch poisons me! But I'm not afraid of you! I shall choke myself with my bare hands before you shall harm me! And if you keep me long enough I shall try to kill you!"

Kut-le gave a short laugh.

"Listen, Rhoda. Your protests show that you are afraid of me. But you need not be. Your protection lies in the fact that I love you--love you with all the passion of a savage, all the restraint of a Caucasian. I'd rather die than harm you! Why, girl, I'm saving you, not destroying you! Rhoda! Dear one!" He paused and Rhoda could hear his quickened breath. Then he added lightly, "Let's get on with our little stroll!"

Rhoda wrung her hands and groaned. Only to escape--to escape! Suddenly turning, she ran down the track. Kut-le watched her, motionless, until she had run perhaps a hundred yards, then with a few mighty leaps he overtook her and gathered her to his great chest. Moaning, Rhoda lay still.

"Dear," said Kut-le, "don't exert yourself foolishly. If you must escape, lay your plans carefully. Use your brain. Don't act like a child. I love you, Rhoda!"

"I loathe you! I loathe you!" whispered the girl.

"You don't--ah--" He stopped abruptly and set the girl on the ground. They were standing beside a side-track near a desert water-tank. "I've caught my foot in a switch-frog," muttered Kut-le, keeping his hold on Rhoda with one hand while with the other he tugged at his moccasined foot.

Rhoda stood rigid.

"I hear a train!" she cried. "O dear God, I hear a train!" Then, "The other Indians are too far away to reach you before the train does," she added calmly.

"But I'll never loose my grip on you," returned the Indian grimly.

He tore at the imprisoned foot, ripping the moccasin and tearing at the road bed. The rails began to sing. Far down the track they saw a star of light Rhoda's heart stood still. This, then, was to be the end! After all the months of distant menace, death was to be upon her in a moment! This, then, was to be the solution! And with all the horror of what life might mean to her, she cried out with a sob:

"Oh, not this way! Not this way!"

Kut-le gave her a quick push.

"Hurry," he said, "and try to remember good things of me!"

With a cry of joy, Rhoda jumped from the track, then stopped. There flashed across her inner vision the face of young Cartwell, debonair and dark, with unfathomable eyes; young Cartwell who had saved her life when the scorpion had stung her, who had spent hours trying to lead her back to health. Instantly she turned and staggered back to the Indian.

"I can't let a human being die like a trapped animal!" she panted, and she threw herself wildly against him.

Kut-le fell at the unexpected impact of her weight and his foot was freed! He lifted Rhoda, leaped from the track, and the second section of the tourist train thundered into the west.

"You are as fine as I thought you were--" he began. But Rhoda was a limp heap at his feet.

The girl came to her senses partially when Kut-le set her in the saddle and fastened her there with strap and blanket. But happily she was practically unconscious for the hour or two that remained till dawn. Just as day was breaking the Indians made their way across an arroyo and up a long slope to a group of cottonwoods. Here Rhoda was put to bed on a heap of blankets.

Sometime in the afternoon she woke with a clear head. It was the first time in months that she had wakened without a headache. She stared from the shade of the cottonwoods to the distant lavender haze of the desert. There was not a sound in all the world. Mysterious, remote, the desert stared back at her, mocking her little grief. More terrible to her than her danger in Kut-le's hands, more appalling than the death threat that had hung over her so long, was this sense of awful space, of barren nothingness with which the desert oppressed her. Instinctively she turned to look for human companionship. Kut-le and Alchise were not to be seen but Molly nodded beside Rhoda's blankets and the thin hag Cesca was curled in the grass near by, asleep.

"You awake? Heap hungry?" asked Molly suddenly.

Rhoda sat up, groaning at the torturing stiffness of her muscles.

"Where is Kut-le?" she asked.

"Gone get 'em supper. Alchise gone too."

"Molly," Rhoda took the rough brown hand between both her soft cold palms, "Molly, will you help me to run away?"

Molly looked from the clasping fingers up to Rhoda's sweet face. Molly was a squaw, dirty and ignorant. Rhoda was the delicate product of a highly cultivated civilization, egoistic, narrow-viewed, self-centered. And yet Rhoda, looking into Molly's deep brown eyes, saw there that limitless patience and fortitude and gentleness which is woman's without regard to class or color. And not knowing why, the white girl bowed her head on the squaw's fat shoulder and sobbed a little. A strange look came into Molly's face. She was childless and had worked fearfully to justify her existence to her tribe. Few hands had touched hers in tenderness. Few voices had appealed to her for sympathy. Suddenly Molly clasped Rhoda in her strong arms and swayed back and forth with her gently.

"You no cry!" she said. "You no cry, little Sun-head, you no cry!"

"Molly, dear kind Molly, won't you help me to get back to my own people? Suppose it was your daughter that a white man had stolen! O Molly, I want to go home!"

Molly still rocked and spoke in the singsong voice one uses to a sobbing child.

"You no run 'way! Kut-le catch right off! Make it all harder for you!"

Rhoda shivered a little.

"If I once get away, Kut-le never will catch me alive!"

Molly chuckled indulgently.

"How you run? No _sabe_ how eat, how drink, how find the trail! Better stay with Molly."

"I would wait till I thought we were near a town. Won't you help me? Dear, kind Molly, won't you help me?"

"Kut-le kill Molly with cactus torture!"

"But you go with me!" The sobs ceased and Rhoda sat back on her blankets as the idea developed. "You go with me and I'll make you--"

Neither noticed the soft thud of moccasined feet. Suddenly Alchise seized Molly's black hair and with a violent jerk pulled the woman backward. Rhoda forgot her stiffened muscles, forgot her gentle ancestry. She sprang at Alchise with catlike fury and struck his fingers from Molly's hair.

"You fiend! I wish I could shoot you!" she panted, her fingers twitching.

Alchise retreated a step.

"She try help 'em run!" he said sullenly.

"She was not! And no matter if she was! Don't you touch a woman before me!"

A swift shadow crossed the camp and Alchise was hurled six feet away.

"What's the matter!" cried Kut-le. "Has he laid finger on you, Rhoda?" He strode to her side and looked down at her with eyes in which struggled anger and anxiety.

"No!" blazed Rhoda. "But he pulled Molly over backward by her hair!"

"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!" ejaculated 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.