Chapter 7

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 passed 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 masses 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 massaged 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 massaging had so far mitigated had asserted 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 shimmering 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.

"No! You no wash! No use! You just get cold--heap cold!"

"Molly!" called Kut-le's authoritative voice.

Molly went flying toward the packs, from which she returned with a canteen and a tiny pitch-smeared basket. Kut-le followed with a towel. He grinned at Rhoda.

"Molly is possessed with the idea that anything as frail as you would be snuffed out like a candle by a drop of water. You and I each possess a lone lorn towel which we must wash out ourselves till the end of the trip. The squaws don't know when a thing is clean."

Rhoda took the towel silently, and the young Indian, after waiting a minute as if in hope of a word from her, left the girl to her difficult toilet. When Rhoda had finished she picked up the field-glasses that Kut-le had left on her blankets and with her back to the Indians sat down on a rock to watch the desert.

The sordid discomforts of the camp seemed to her unbearable. She hated the blue haze of the desert below and beyond her. She hated the very ponies that Alchise was leading up from water. It was the fourth day since her abduction. Rhoda could not understand why John and the Newmans were so slow to overtake her. She knew nothing as yet of the skill of her abductors. She was like an ignorant child placed in a new world whose very ABC was closed to her. After always having been cared for and protected, after never having known a hardship, the girl suddenly was thrust into an existence whose savage simplicity was sufficient to try the hardiest man.

Supper was eaten in silence, Kut-le finally giving up his attempts to make conversation. It was dusk when they mounted and rode up the mountain. Near the crest a whirling cloud of mist enveloped them. It became desperately cold and Rhoda shivered beneath her Navajo but Kut-le gave no heed to her. He led on and on, the horses slipping, the cold growing every minute more intense. At last there appeared before them a dim figure silhouetted against a flickering light. Kut-le halted his party and rode forward; Rhoda saw the dim figure rise hastily and after a short time Kut-le called back.

"Come ahead!"

The little camp was only an open space at the cañon edge, with a sheepskin shelter over a tiny fire. Beside the fire stood a sheep-herder, a swarthy figure wrapped from head to foot in sheepskins. Over in the darkness by the mountain wall were the many nameless sounds that tell of animals herding for the night. The shepherd greeted them with the perfect courtesy of the Mexican.

"Señors, the camp is yours!"

Kut-le lifted the shivering Rhoda from her horse. The rain was lessening but the cold was still so great that Rhoda huddled gratefully by the little fire under the sheepskin shelter. Kut-le refused the Mexican's offer of tortillas and the man sat down to enjoy their society. He eyed Rhoda keenly.

"Ah! It is a señorita!" Then he gasped. "It is perhaps the Señorita Rhoda Tuttle!"

Rhoda jumped to her feet.

"Yes! Yes! How did you know?"

Kut-le glared at the herder menacingly, but the little fellow did not see. He spoke up bravely, as if he had a message for Rhoda.

"Some people told me yesterday. They look for her everywhere!"

Rhoda's eyes lighted joyfully.

"Who? Where?" she cried.

Kut-le spoke concisely:

"You know nothing!" he said.

The Mexican looked into the Apache's eyes and shivered slightly.

"Nothing, of course, Señor," he replied.

But Rhoda was not daunted.

"Who were they?" she repeated. "What did they say? Where did they go?"

The herder glanced at Rhoda and shook his head.

"_Quién sabe_?"

Rhoda turned to Kut-le in anger.

"Don't be more brutal than you have to be!" she cried. "What harm can it do for this man to give me word of my friends?"

Kut-le's eyes softened.

"Answer the señorita's questions, amigo," he said.

The Mexican began eagerly.

"There were three. They rode up the trail one day ago. They called the dark man Porter, the big blue-eyed one DeWitt, and the yellow-haired one Newman."

Rhoda clasped her hands with a little murmur of relief.

"The blue-eyed one acted as if locoed. They cursed much at a name, Kut-le. But otherwise they talked little. They went that way," pointing back over the trail. "They had found a scarf with a stone tied in it--"

"What's that?" interrupted Kut-le sharply.

Rhoda's eyes shone in the firelight.

"'Not an overturned pebble escapes his eye,'" she said serenely.

"Bully for you!" exclaimed Kut-le, smiling at Rhoda in understanding. "However, I guess we will move on, having gleaned this interesting news!"

He remounted his little party. Rhoda reeled a little but she made no protest. As they took to the trail again the sheep-herder stood by the fire, watching, and Rhoda called to him:

"If you see them again tell them that I'm all right but that they must hurry!"

Rhoda felt new life in her veins after the meeting with the sheep-herder and finished the night's trail in better shape than she had done before. Yet not the next day nor for many days did they sight pursuers. With ingenuity that seemed diabolical, Kut-le laid his course. He seldom moved hurriedly. Indeed, except for the fact that the traveling was done by night, the expedition had every aspect of unlimited leisure.

As the days passed, Rhoda forced herself to the calm of desperation. Slowly she realized that she was in the hands of the masters of the art of flight, an art that the very cruelty of the country abetted. But to her utter astonishment her delirium of physical misery began to lift. Saddle stiffness after the first two weeks left her. Though Kut-le still fastened her to the saddle by the waist strap and rested her for a short time every hour or so during the night's ride, the hours in the saddle ceased to tax her strength. She was surprised to find that she could eat--eat the wretched cooking of the squaws!

At last she laid out a definite course for herself. Every night on the trail and at every camp she tried to leave some mark for the whites--a scratch on pebble or stone, a bit of marked yucca or a twisted cat's-claw. She ceased entirely to speak to Kut-le, treating him with a contemptuous silence that was torture to the Indian though he gave no outward sign.

Molly was her devoted friend and Rhoda derived great comfort from this faithful servitor. Rhoda sat in the camp one afternoon with the two squaws while Kut-le and Alchise were off on a turkey hunt. Some of the girl's pallor had given way to a delicate tan. The dark circles about her eyes had lightened a little. Molly was busily pounding grass-seeds between two stones. Rhoda watched her idly. Suddenly a new idea sent the blood to her thin cheeks.

Why shouldn't she learn to make seed meal, to catch and cook rabbits, to distinguish edible cactus from inedible? Then indeed she would be able to care for herself on the trail! To Rhoda, who never had worked with her hands, who indeed had come to look on manual labor as belonging to inferiors, the idea was revolutionary. For a long time she turned it over in her mind, watching Molly the while. The most violent housewifely task that Rhoda ever had undertaken had been the concocting of chafing-dish messes at school.

"Molly," she said suddenly, "teach me how to do that!"

Molly paused and grinned delightedly.

"All right! You come help poor Molly!"

With Cesca looking on sardonically, Molly poured fresh seeds on her rude metate and showed Rhoda the grinding roll that flattened and broke the little grains. Despite her weak fingers Rhoda took to the work easily. As she emptied out the first handful of meal, a curious sense of pleasure came to her. Squatting before the metate, she looked at the little pile of bruised seeds with the utmost satisfaction. Molly poured more seeds on the metate and Rhoda began again. She was hard at her task, her cheeks flushed with interest, when Kut-le returned. Rhoda did not see the sudden look of pleasure in his eyes.

"You will tire yourself," he said.

Rhoda did not answer, but poured another handful of seed on the metate.

"You'll begin to like the life," he went on, "by the time you are educated enough to leave us." He turned teasingly to Cesca. "You think the white squaw can cross the desert soon by herself?"

Cesca spat disdainfully.

"No! White squaw no good! All time sit, sit, no work! Kut-le heap fool!"

"Oh, Cesca," cried Rhoda, "I'm too sick to work! And see this meal I've made! Isn't it good?"

Cesca glanced disdainfully at the little heap of meal Rhoda had bruised out so painfully.

"Huh!" she grunted. "Feed 'em to the horses. Injuns no eat 'em!"

Rhoda looked from the meal to her slender, tired fingers. Cesca's contempt hurt her unaccountably. In her weakness her cleft chin quivered. She turned to Molly.

"Do you think it's so bad, Molly?"

That faithful friend grunted with rage and aimed a vicious kick at Cesca. Then she put a protecting arm about Rhoda.

"It's heap fine! Cesca just old fool. You love Molly. Let Cesca go to hell!"

Kut-le had been watching the little scene with tender eyes. Now he stooped and lifted Rhoda to her feet, then he raised one of the delicate hands and touched it softly with his lips.

"Leave such work to the squaws, dear! You aren't built for it. Cesca, you old lobster, you make me tired! Go fix the turkeys!"

Cesca rose with dignity, flipped away her cigarette and walked with a sniff over to the cooking-pot. Rhoda drew her hands from the young Indian's clasp and walked to the edge of the camp. The hot pulse that the touch of Kut-le's lips sent through her body startled her.

"I hate him!" she said to herself. "I hate him! I hate him!"

The trail that night was unusually difficult and Rhoda had to be rested frequently. At each stop, Kut-le tried to talk to her but she maintained her silence. They paused at dawn in a pocket formed by the meeting of three divergent cañons. Far, far above the desert as they were, still farther above them stretched the wonderful barren ridges, snow-capped and silent. As Rhoda stood waiting for the squaws to spread her blankets the peaks were lighted suddenly by the rays of the still unseen sun. For one unspeakable instant their snow crowns flashed a translucent scarlet that trembled, shimmered, then melted to a pink, then to a white so pure, so piercing that Rhoda trembled with sudden awe. Then as she looked, the sun rolled into view, blinding her eyes, and she turned to her waiting blankets.

She had slept for several hours when she was wakened by a soft tap on her shoulder. She opened her eyes and would have risen but a voice whispered:

"Hush! Don't move!"