"You been much sick," the woman went on, "much sick," stooping to straighten Rhoda's blanket.

"Where am I?" asked Rhoda.

"At Chira. You eat breakfast?"

Rhoda caught the woman's hand.

"Who are you?" she asked. "You have been very good to me."

"Me Marie," replied the woman.

"Where are Kut-le and the others?"

"Kut-le here. Others in mountain. You much sick, three days."

Rhoda sighed. Would this kaleidoscope of misery never end!

"I am very tired of it all," she said. "I think it would have been kinder if you had let me die. Will you help me to get back to my white friends?"

Marie shook her head.

"Kut-le friend. We take care Kut-le's squaw."

Rhoda turned wearily on her side.

"Go away and let me sleep," she said.



CHAPTER XII

THE CROSSING TRAILS

As Kut-le, with Rhoda in his arms, disappeared into the mesa fissure, John DeWitt threw himself from his horse and was at the opening before the others had more than brought their horses to their haunches.

He was met by Alchise's rifle, with Alchise entirely hidden from view. For a moment the four men stood panting and speechless. The encounter had been so sudden, so swift that they could not believe their senses. Then Billy Porter uttered an oath that reverberated from the rocky wall.

"They will get to the top!" he cried. "Jack, you and DeWitt get up there! Carlos and I will hold this!"

The two men mounted immediately and galloped along the mesa wall, looking for an ascent. Neither of them spoke but both were breathing hard, and through his blistered skin DeWitt's cheeks glowed feverishly. For a mile up and down from the fissure the wall was a blank, except for a single wide split which did not come within fifty feet of the ground. After over half an hour of frantic search, DeWitt found, nearly three miles from the fissure, a rough spot where the wall gave back in a few narrow crumbling ledges.

"We'll have to leave the horses," he said, "and try that."

Jack nodded tensely. They dismounted, pulled the reins over the horses' heads and started up the wall, John leading, carefully. One bitter lesson the desert was teaching him: haste in the hot country spells ruin! So, though Rhoda's voice still rang in his ears, though the sight of the slender boyish figure struggling in Kut-le's arms still ravished his eyes, he worked carefully.

The ascent was all but impossible. The few jutting ledges were so narrow that foothold was precarious, so far apart that only the slight backward slant of the wall made it possible for them to flatten their bodies against the crumbling brown rock and thus keep from falling. They toiled desperately, silently. After an hour of utmost effort, they reached the top, and with an exclamation of exultation started in the direction of the fissure. But their exultation was short-lived. The great split that stopped fifty feet from the desert floor cut them off from the main mesa. They ran hastily along its edge but at no point was it to be crossed. Shortly DeWitt left Jack to follow it back and he hastened to the mesa front where he made a perilous descent and returned with the horses to Porter.

That gentleman forced John to eat some breakfast while Carlos rode hastily to scour the mesa front to the west. Porter and the Mexican had captured two of the horses and the burro that the Indians had left. The other horses had run out into the desert back to the last spring they had camped at, Porter said. To DeWitt's great disappointment, the horses carried only blankets, and the burro was loaded with bacon and flour. There were none of Rhoda's personal belongings. The animals were in good condition, however, and the men annexed them to their outfit gladly.

John was torn betwixt hope and bitter disappointment.

"Do you think they could climb out of the fissure?" he asked half a dozen times, then without waiting for an answer, "Did you see her face, Billy? I had just a glimpse! Didn't she look well! Just that one glance has put new life in me! I know we will get her! Even this cursed desert isn't wide enough to keep me from her! God help that Indian when I get him!"

Porter kept his eyes on Alchise's rifle which had never wavered in the past three hours.

"I've a notion to shoot the barrel off that thing just for luck!" he growled. "John, sit down! You will need all the strength you've got and then some before you catch that Injun!"

"What are you going to do?" asked John, seating himself in the sand some few feet from the fissure.

"The big probability is," said Billy, "that they are in the crack. It would be just about impossible for a girl to climb out of one of 'em. If they have got out, though, it's just a matter of finding their trail again. We'll have 'em! It's just this chance crack that saved 'em. If you're rested, ride along the west wall and try for the top again."

For the next five hours, Porter guarded the mesa front alone. It was nearing six o'clock when Jack returned, exhausted and disappointed. He had followed the great split back until the mesa top became so cut and striated with mighty fissures that progress was impossible.

"Isn't it the devil's own luck," he growled to Porter as he ate, "that we should have let him get into that one crack! What next! Unless they are still in there, we've lost them and are just losing time squatting here."

As he spoke, there was a sound of voices in the fissure. The two men cocked their rifles as John and Carlos emerged from the opening. John was scowling and breathless.

"Lost 'em as usual, by our infernal stupidity," he panted, while Carlos dropped his empty canteen and lifted Porter's to his lips. "I rode round to the south of the mesa. There are a couple of possible ascents there. I found Carlos making one. We followed a dozen fissures before we located this one. We got into it about a mile back from here. Here's a basket we found at the bottom in a burlap bag."

He tossed one of Cesca's pitch baskets at Billy, then threw himself in the sand.

"They were down off the mesa, I bet," he went on, "before we fools found the way up, and it was easy for the chap they left guarding the entrance to avoid us. The mesa is covered with big rocks."

"He got away within the last half-hour then," said Billy, "for I didn't stir from this spot until the burro started to eat the grub pack, and I naturally had to wrestle with him. And no human being could a got out the front even then."

"God! What a country!" groaned DeWitt. "The Indians outwit us at every step!"

"Well," Jack answered dejectedly, "tell us what we could have done differently."

"I'm not blaming any one," replied John.

Billy Porter rose briskly.

"You boys quit your kicking. The scent is still warm. You fellows get a couple of hours' sleep while I take the horses back to Coyote Hole for water. By daylight we got to be on the south side of the mesa to pick up the trail."

Billy's businesslike manner heartened Jack and John DeWitt. They turned in beside Carlos, who already was sleeping.

Dawn found them examining the ascents on the south side of the mesa but they found no traces and as the sun came well up they followed the only possible way toward the mountains. At noon they found a low spring in a pocket between mesa and mountain. Kut-le was growing either defiant or careless, for he had left a heap of ashes and a pile of half-eaten desert mice. Very much cheered they allowed the horses a fair rest. They found no further traces of camp or trail that day and made camp that night in the open desert.

At dawn they were crossing a heavily wooded mountain. The sun had not yet risen when they heard a sound of singing.

"What's that?" asked DeWitt sharply, as the four pulled up their horses.

"A medicine cry," answered Jack. "We must be near some medicine-man's campos."

"Come on," cried DeWitt, "we'll quiz them!"

"Hold up, you chump!" exclaimed Billy. "If you rush in on a cry that way you are apt not to come back again. You've got to go at 'em careful. Let me do the talking."

They rode toward the sound of the chant and shortly a dingy campos came into view. An Indian buck made his way from the doorway toward them.

"Who is sick, friend?" asked Billy.

"Old buck," said the Indian.

"Apache?" said Billy.

The Indian nodded.

"You sabe Apache named Kut-le?"

The buck shook his head, but Billy went on patiently.

"Yes, you sabe him. He old Ke-say's son. Apache chief's son. He run off with white squaw. We want squaw, we no hurt him. Squaw sick, no good for Injun. You tell, have money." Billy displayed a silver dollar.

The Indian brightened.

"Long time 'go, some Injun say he sabe Kut-le. Some Injun say he all same white man. Some Injun say he heap smart." He looked at Billy inquiringly, and Billy nodded approval. DeWitt swallowed nervously. "Come two, three day 'go," the buck went on, his eyes on the silver dollar, "big Injun, carry white squaw, go by here very fast. He go that way all heap fast." The buck pointed south.

"Did he speak to you? What did he say?" cried DeWitt.

But the Indian lapsed into silence and refused to speak more. Porter felt well rewarded for his efforts and tossed the dollar to the Indian.

"Gee!" said Billy, as they started elated down the mountain. "I wish we could overtake him before he outfits again. That poverty-stricken lot couldn't have had any horses here for him to use. I'll bet he makes for the nearest ranch where he could steal a good bunch. That would be at Kelly's, sixty miles south of here. We'll hike for Kelly's!"

This idea did not meet with enthusiastic approval from the other three but as no one had a better suggestion to make, the trail to Kelly's was taken. It seemed to John Dewitt that Billy relied little on science and much on intuition in trailing the Indians. At first, considering Porter's early boasts about his skill, DeWitt was much disappointed by the old-timer's haphazard methods. But after a few weeks' testing of the terrible hardships of the desert, after a few demonstrations of the Apache's cleverness, John had concluded that intuition was the most reliable weapon that the whites could hope to discover with which to offset the Indian's appalling skill and knowledge.

It was an exhausted quartet with its string of horses that drew up at Kelly's dusty corral. Dick Kelly, a stocky Irishman, greeted the strangers pleasantly. When, however, he learned their names he rose to the occasion as only an Irishman can.

"You gentlemen are at the end of your rope, wid the end frayed at that!" he said. "Now come in for a few hours' rest and the Chinaman will cook you the best meal he knows how."

"Lord, no!" cried Billy. "We're so close on the track now that we can hang on to the end. If you've had no trace here we'll just double back and start from the mountains again!"

By this time a dozen cowboys and ranch hands were gathered about the newcomers. Every one knew about Rhoda's disappearance. Every one knew about every man in the little search party. In the flicker of the lanterns the men looked pityingly at DeWitt's haggard face.

"Say," said a tall, lank cowman, "if you'll go in and sleep till daylight, usn'll scour this part of the desert with a fine-tooth comb. So you all won't lose a minute by taking a little rest. An' if we find the Injun we'll string him up and save you the trouble."

DeWitt spoke for the first time.

"If you find the Indian," he said succinctly, "he's mine!"

There was a moment's silence in the crowd. These men were familiar with elemental passion. DeWitt's feeling was perfectly correct in their eyes. The pause came as each pictured himself in DeWitt's place with the image of the delicate Eastern girl suffering who knew what torments constantly before him.

"If Mr. Kelly can arrange for that," said Jack, "I guess it will about save our lives. I'd like a chance to write a letter to my wife."

"You ought to go back to the ditch, Jack," said DeWitt, "Porter and I will manage somehow."

Jack gave DeWitt a strange look.

"Rhoda's a lifelong friend of mine. She was stolen from my home by my friend whom I told her she could trust. Katherine and the foreman can run the ranch."

By the time that the four had washed themselves, Kelly had his men dotted over the surrounding desert. For the first time in weeks, the searchers sat down at a table. DeWitt, Porter and Newman were in astonishing contrast to the three who had dined at the Newman ranch the night of Cartwell's introduction to Porter. Their khaki clothes had gradually been replaced by nondescript garments picked up at various ranches. DeWitt and Porter boasted of corduroy trousers, while Jack wore overalls. On the other hand, Jack wore a good blue flannel shirt, while the other two displayed only faded gingham garments that might have answered to almost any name. All of them were a deep mahogany color, with chapped, split lips and bleached hair, while DeWitt's eyes were badly inflamed from sun-glare and sand-storm.

They ate silently. Dick Kelly, sitting at the head of the table, plied them with food and asked few questions. DeWitt's shaking hands told him that questions were torture to the poor fellow. After the meal Kelly led them to bed at once, and they slept without stirring until four o'clock in the morning, when the Chinaman called them. Breakfast was steaming on the table.

"Now," said Kelly, as his guests ate, "the boys didn't get a smell for ye, but we've a suggestion. Have you been through the Pueblo country yet?"

"No," said Porter.

"Well," the host went on, "Chira is the only place round here except my ranch where he could get a new outfit. He's part Pueblo, you know, too. I'd start for there if I was you."

Carlos entered to hear this suggestion.

"I've got a friend at Chira," he said, "who might help us. He's a half-breed."

The tired men took eagerly to this forlorn hope. With all the population of the ranch, including the cook, gathered to wish them Godspeed, the four started off before the sun had more than tinted the east. Kelly had offered them anything on the ranch, from himself, his cook and his cowboys, to the choice of his horses. His guests left as much heartened by his cheerfulness and good will as they were by the actual physical comforts he had given them.

The trail to Chira was long and hard. They reached the little town at dusk and Carlos set out at once in search of his friend, Philip. He found him easily. He was half Mexican, half Pueblo. He and Carlos chatted briskly in hybrid Spanish while the Americans watched the horses wade in the little river. Visitors were so common in Chira that the newcomers attracted little or no attention.

Carlos finally turned from his friend.

"Philip does not know anything about it. He says for us to come to his house while he finds out anything. His wife is a good cook."

The thought of a hot meal was pleasant to the Americans. They followed gladly to Philip's adobe rooms. Here the half-breed left them to his wife and disappeared. He was gone perhaps an hour when he returned with a bit of cloth in his hand, which he handed to Carlos with a few rapid sentences. Carlos gave the scrap of cloth to DeWitt, who looked at it eagerly then gave a cry of joy. It was Rhoda's handkerchief.

"He found a little girl washing her doll with it at the river," said Carlos. "She said she found it blowing along the street this morning."

"Come on!" cried Jack, making for the door.

"Come on where?" said Billy. "If they are in the village, you don't want to get away very far. And if they ain't, which way are you going?"

"Ask Philip where to go, Carlos," said DeWitt.

He held the little moist handkerchief in his hand tightly while his heart beat heavily. Once more hope was soaring high.

Philip thought deeply, then he and Carlos talked rapidly together.

"Philip says," reported Carlos, "that you must go out and watch along the river front so that if they have not gone you can catch them if they try. He and I will go visit every family as if I wanted to buy an outfit."

Darkness had settled on the little town when the three Americans took up their vigil opposite the open face of the Pueblo along the river. All that night they stood on guard but not a human being crossed their line of patrol.



CHAPTER XIII

AN INTERLUDE

Late in the afternoon, Rhoda woke. Kut-le stood beside her. His expression was half eager, half tender.

"How do you feel now?" he asked.

"Quite well," answered Rhoda. "Will you call Marie? I want to dress."

"You must rest in bed today," replied the Indian. "Tomorrow will be soon enough for you to get up."

Rhoda looked at the young man with irritation.

"Can't you learn that I am not a squaw? That it maddens me to be ordered about? That every time you do you alienate me more, if possible?"

"You do foolish stunts," said Kut-le calmly, "and I have to put you right."

Rhoda moaned.

"Oh, how long, how long must I endure this! How could they be so stupid as to let you slip through their fingers so!"

Kut-le's mouth became a narrow seam.

"As soon as I can get you into the Sierra Madre, I shall marry you. You are practically a well woman now. But I am not going to hurry overmuch. You are going to love me first and you are going to love this life first. Then we will go to Paris until the storm has passed."

Rhoda did not seem to hear him. She tossed her arms restlessly.

"Please send Marie to me," she said finally. "You will permit me to eat something perhaps?"

Kut-le left the room at once. In a short time he returned with Marie, who bore a steaming bowl which he himself flanked with a dish of luscious melon. The woman propped Rhoda adroitly to a sitting position and Kut-le gravely balanced the bowl against the girl's knees. The stew which the bowl contained was delicious, and Rhoda ate it to the last drop. She ate in silence, while Kut-le watched her with unspeakable longing in his eyes. The room was almost dark when the simple meal was finished. Marie brightened the fire and smoothed Rhoda's blankets.

"Kut-le go now," said the Pueblo woman. "You rest. In morning, Marie bring white squaw some clothes."

Rhoda was glad to pillow her head on her arm but it was long before she slept. She tried to piece together her faint and distorted recollection of the occurrences since the morning when the mesa had risen through the dawn. But her only clear picture was of John DeWitt's wild face as she disappeared into the fissure. She recalled its look of agony and sobbed a little to herself as she realized what torture he and the Newmans must have endured since her disappearance. And yet she was very hopeful. If her friends could come as close to her as they did before the mesa, they must be learning Kut-le's methods. Surely the next time luck would not play so well for the Indian.

Rhoda woke in the morning to the sound of song. Marie knelt on the ground before a sloping slab of stone and patiently kneeded corn with a smaller stone. Her song, a quaint repetition of short mellow syllables pleased Rhoda's sensitive ear and she lay listening. When Marie saw Rhoda's wide eyes she came to the girl's side.

"You feel good now?" she queried.

"Yes, much better. I want to get up."

The Indian woman nodded.

"Marie clean white squaw's clothes. White squaw wear Marie's. Now Marie help you wash."

Rhoda smiled.

"You are not an Apache if you want me to bathe!"

Marie answered indignantly.

"Marie is Pueblo squaw!"

The clothes that Marie brought, Rhoda thought very attractive. There was a soft wool underdress of creamiest tint. Over this Marie pulled, fastening it at one shoulder, a gay, many-colored overdress which, like the one she herself wore, reached to the knees. Rhoda pulled on her own high laced boots which had been neatly mended. Then the two turned their attention to the neglected braid of hair.

When it was loosened and hung in tangled masses nearly to Rhoda's knees, Marie's delight in its loveliness knew no expression. She fetched a queer battered old comb which she washed and then proceeded with true feminine rapture to comb the wonderful waving locks. In the midst of this Kut-le entered. He gazed on Rhoda's new disguise with delight. Indeed her delicate face, above the many-hued garment, was like a harebell growing in a gaudy nasturtium bed.

"We can only let you on the roof," said Kut-le, who was carrying Rhoda's sombrero.

Rhoda made no reply but when Marie had plaited her hair in a rippling braid she followed Kut-le up the short ladder. Her sense of cleanliness after the weeks of disorder was delightful. As she stepped on the flat-topped roof and the sweet clear air filled her lungs she felt as if reborn. With Navajo blankets, Kut-le had contrived an awning that not only made a bit of shade but precluded view from below. The rich tints of the blankets were startlingly picturesque against the yellow gray of the adobe. Rhoda, dropped luxuriantly to the heap of blankets and turned her face toward the mountain, many-colored and bare toward the base, deep-cloaked with pinon, oak and Juniper on the uplands. From its base flowed the little river, gurgling over its shallow bed of stone and rich with green along its flat banks. Close beside the river was the Pueblo village, the many-terraced buildings, on one of the roofs of which Rhoda sat.

Kut-le, stretched on the roof near by, smoked cigarette after cigarette as he watched the girl's quiet face, but he did not speak. For three or four hours the two sat thus in silence. Just as the sun sank behind the mountain, a bell clanged and then fell to tolling softly. Then Kut-le broke his silence.

"That's the bell of the old mission. Some one has been buried, I guess. We can look. There are no tourists now."

There was a sound of wailing: a deep mournful sound that caught Rhoda's heart to her throat and blanched her face. It was the sound of the grief of primitive man, the cry of the forlorn and broken-hearted, uncloaked by convention. It touched a primitive chord of response in Rhoda that set her to trembling. Surely, when the world was young she too had wept so. Surely she too had voiced a poignant, unbearable loss in just such a wild outpouring of grief!

They moved to the edge of the terrace and looked below into the street. Down the rocky way a line of Indians was bearing hand-mills and jars and armloads of ornaments.

"They will take those to the 'killing place' and break them that the dead owner may have them afterward," explained Kut-le softly. "It always makes me think of a verse in the Bible. I can't recall the words exactly though."

Rhoda glanced up into the dark face with a look of appreciation.

"'And the grinders shall cease because they are few!'" she said, "'and those that look out of the windows be darkened. And the doors shall be shut in the street when the sound of the grinding is low, because man goeth to his long home and mourners go about the street.'"

"And there is something else," murmured Kut-le, "about 'the silver cord.'"

"'Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken or the pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit to God who gave it.'"

They stood in silence again. The wailing died into the distance. The sun touched to molten gold the heavy shadows of the mountain arroyos. Rhoda was deeply moved by the scene below her. She felt as if she had been thrust back through the ages to look upon the sorrow of some little Judean town. The little rocky street, the vivid robes, the weird, dying wail, the broken ornaments and utensils that some folded tired hands would use no more, and, above all, the simple unquestioning faith, roused in her a sudden longing for a life that she never had known. For a long time she stood in thought. As darkness fell she roused herself.

"Let me go back to my room," she said.

As they turned, neither noticed that Rhoda's little handkerchief, which she had carried through all her experiences, fluttered from her sleeve to the street.

Again it was long before Rhoda slept. Through her window there floated the sound of song, the evening singing of Indian lads in the village street. There was a vibrant quality in their voices that Rhoda could liken only to the music of stringed instruments. There was neither the mellow smoothness of the negro voice nor the flute-like sweetness of the white, yet the voices compassed all the mystical appealing quality of violin notes.

The music woke in Rhoda a longing for she knew not what. It seemed to her as if she were peering past a misty veil into the childhood of the world to whose simple beauty and delights civilization had made her alien. The vibrating voices chanted slower and slower. Rhoda stirred uneasily. To be free again as these voices were free! Not to long for the civilization she had left but for open skies and trails! To be free again!

As the voices melted into silence, a guitar was touched softly under Rhoda's window and Kut-le's voice rose in La Golondrina:

"Whither so swiftly flies the timid swallow? What distant bourne seeks her untiring wing? To reach her nest what needle does she follow When darkness wraps the poor wee storm-tossed thing?"

Rhoda stirred restlessly and threw her arms above her head.

"To build her nest near to my couch I'll call her! Why go so far dark and strange skies to seek? Safe would she be, no evil should befall her, For I'm an exile sad, too sad to weep!"

Mist-like floated across Rhoda's mind a memory of the trail with voice of mating bird at dawn, with stars and the night wind and the open way. And going before, always Kut-le—Kut-le of the unfathomable eyes, of the merry smile, of the gentle touch. The music merged itself into Rhoda's dreams.

She spent the following day on the roof. Curled on her Navajo she watched the changing tones on the mountains and listened to the soft voices of the Pueblo women in the street below. Naked brown babies climbed up and down the ladders and paddled in the shallow river Indian women with scarlet shawls across their shoulders filled their ollas at the river and stood gossiping, the brimming ollas on their heads. In the early morning the men had trudged to the alfalfa and melon fields and returned at sundown to be greeted joyfully by the women and children.

Kut-le spent the day at Rhoda's side. They talked but little, though Rhoda had definitely abandoned her rule of silence toward the Indian. Her mind during most of the day was absorbed in wondering why she so enjoyed watching the life in this Indian town and why she was not more impatient to be gone.

As the sun dropped behind the mountain Marie appeared on the roof, her black eyes very bright.

"Half-breed Philip find white squaw's handkerchief. Give to white men, maybe! Marie see Philip get handkerchief from little girl."

Kut-le gave Rhoda an inscrutable look, but she did not tell him that she shared his surprise.

"Well," said Kut-le calmly, "maybe we had better mosey along."

They descended to find Marie hastily doing up a bundle of bread and fruit. While Kut-le went for blankets Rhoda, at Marie's request, donned her old clothing of the trail. She had been wearing the squaw's holiday outfit. Very shortly, with a hasty farewell to Marie, they were in the dusky street. "Shall I gag you," asked Kut-le, "or will you give me your word of honor to give neither sign nor sound until we get to the mountain, and to keep your face covered with your Navajo?"

Rhoda sighed.

"Very well, I promise," she said.

In a very short time they had reached the end of the little street and were climbing an arroyo up into the mountain. When they reached the pinons Kut-le gave the coyote call. It thrilled Rhoda with the misery of the night of her capture. Almost immediately there was an answering call and close in the shadow of the pinon they found Alchise and the two squaws. Molly ran to Rhoda with a squeal of joy and patted the girl's hand but Alchise and Cesca gave no heed to her greeting.

The ponies were ready and Rhoda swung herself to her saddle, with a thrill at the touch of the muscular little horse. And once more she rode after Kut-le with the mystery of the night trail before her.

The sound of water falling, the cheep of wakening birds, the subtle odor of moisture-drenched soil roused Rhoda from her half sleep on the horse's back at the end of the night's journey. The trail had not been hard, through an endless pine forest for the most part. Kut-le drew rein beside a little waterfall deep in the mountain fastness. Rhoda saw a chaos of rock masses huge and distorted, as if an inconceivably cruel and gigantic hand had juggled with weights seemingly immovable; about these the loveliness of vine and shrub; above them the towering junipers dwarfed by the rocks they shaded; and falling softly over the harsh brown rifts of rock, the liquid green and white of a mountain brook which, as it reached the level, rushed away in a roar of foam.

Rhoda's horse drank thirstily and she stood beside him watching the mystical gray of the dawn lift to the riotous rose of the sunrise. She wondered at the quick throb of her pulse. It was very different from its wonted soft beat. Then she threw herself on her blanket to sleep.

When Rhoda woke, late in the day, Kut-le had spread Marie's cakes and fruit on leaves which he had washed in the brook.

"They are quite clean, I think," he said a little anxiously. "At least the squaws haven't touched them."

Rhoda and Kut-le sat on a rock and ate hungrily. When she had finished Rhoda clasped her hands about her knees. She looked singularly boyish, with her sombrero pushed back from her face and short locks of damp hair curling from beneath the crown.

"Isn't it queer," she said, "that you elude Jack and John DeWitt so easily?"

"The trouble is," said Kut-le, "that you don't appreciate the prowess of your captors."

"Humph!" sniffed Rhoda.

"Listen!" cried Kut-le with sudden enthusiasm. "Once in my boyhood Geronima and about twenty warriors, with twice as many squaws and children, fled to the mountains. They never drew rein until they were one hundred and twenty miles from the reservation. Then for six months they were pursued by two thousand American soldiers and they never lost a man!"

"How many whites were killed?" asked Rhoda.

"About a hundred!"

"I don't understand yet," Rhoda shook her head, "how savages could outwit whites for so long a time."

"But it's not a contest of brains. Whites must travel like whites, with food and rests. The Apache travels like the coyote, living off the country. Your ancestors have been training your brain for a thousand years. Mine have spent centuries of days, twenty-four hours a day, training the body to endure hardships. You have had a glimpse of what the hardships of this country might mean to a white!"

As Kut-le talked, Rhoda sat with her eyes fastened on the rough face of a distant rock. As she watched she saw a thick, leafy bush move up to the rock. Rhoda caught her breath, glanced at the unconscious Kut-le, then back at the bush. It moved slowly back among the trees and after a moment Rhoda saw the undergrowth far beyond move as with a passing breeze. She glanced at the nodding Alchise and the squaws, then smiled and turned to Kut-le.

"Go on with your boasting, Kut-le. It's your one weakness, I think."

Kut-le grinned.

"Well now, honestly, what do you think that a lot of Caucasians can do with an enemy whose existence has always been a fist to fist fight with nature at her cruelest? We have fought with our bare hands and we have won," he continued, half to himself. "No white man or any number of whites can capture me on my own ground!"

"Boaster!" laughed Rhoda.

Just beyond the falls an aspen quivered. John DeWitt stepped into view. Haggard and wild-eyed, he stared at Rhoda. She raised her finger to her lips, but too late. Kut-le too looked up, and raised his gun. Rhoda hurled herself toward him and struck up the barrel. Kut-le dropped the gun and caught Rhoda in his arms.

"The woods are full of them!" he grunted. With one hand across Rhoda's mouth, he ran around the falls and dropped six feet to a narrow back trail.

"My own ground!" Rhoda heard him chuckle.



CHAPTER XIV

THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD

For many hurrying minutes, Rhoda saw only the passing tree branches black against the evening sky as she lay across Kut-le's breast. The pursuers had made no sound nor had Kut-le broken a single twig. The entire incident might have been a pantomime, with every actor tragically intent.

Having long learned the futility of struggling, Rhoda lay quietly enough, her ears keen to catch the sound of pursuit. Kut-le did not remove his hand from her mouth. But as he dropped rapidly and skilfully down the mountainside he whispered:

"My own ground, you see! It will take them a good while in the dusk to find that back trail. Only a few Indians know it."

But Rhoda's heart was beating high. Let Kut-le boast as he would, she was sure that Jack and John DeWitt were learning to follow the trail. The most vivid picture in her mind was of the utter weariness of John's face. In the past weeks Rhoda had learned how fearful had been the hardships that would bring such weariness to a human face. Tears came to her eyes. No one so weak, so useless as herself, she felt, could be worth such travail.

Silently they moved through the dusk. Rhoda knew that the other Indians must be close behind them, yet no sound betrayed their presence. After a half-hour or so she struggled to be set down. But Kut-le only tightened his hold and it was fully two hours later that he set her on her feet.

"Don't move," he said. "We are on a canon edge."

Rhoda swung her blanket to her shoulders, for the night was stinging sharp. She was not afraid. She had grown so accustomed to the night trail that she moved unhesitatingly along black rims that had at first paralyzed her with fear.

"Now," said Kut-le, "I'm not going to travel on foot. The only horses within easy distance are some that a bunch of Navajos have in the canon below here. So we will go down and get them. We will go together because I can't risk coming back for you. We will have to hike pronto after we get 'em. Just remember that you are contaminated by the company you are keeping and that if you make any noise, the Navajos will shoot you up, with the rest of us! Keep right behind me."

The little group moved carefully down the canon trail. In a short time they reached a growth of trees. They stole through these, the only sound Rhoda's panting breaths. Suddenly Kut-le stopped.

"Wait here!" he breathed in Rhoda's ear, and he and Alchise disappeared.

A hand was laid on her arm and Rhoda knew that Molly and Cesca were guarding her. Almost immediately the soft thud of hoofs was upon them. Kut-le seized Rhoda and tossed her to a pony's back.

"It was dead easy!" he whispered. "They were all asleep! I even took a saddle for you! Now hike!"

Rhoda gripped her pony with her knees as the little fellow cantered unerringly through the darkness after Kut-le. She felt a sudden pride and exultation in the security she had developed in the saddle during the travail of her night rides. She knew that no man of her acquaintance could ride a horse as she could now. And with the exultation she was trembling with excitement. She knew that none of them could expect mercy if the Navajos discovered their loss in time to take up the chase. All the eagerness of the gambler who stakes his life on a throw of the dice; all the wild thrill of the chase; all the trembling of the panting, woodland things that hunt and are hunted, were Rhoda's as the night wind rushed past her face. The apathy of illness was gone. Tonight she was as wild a thing as the night's birds that brushed across their trail on sweeping wing.

When they made camp at dawn Rhoda tumbled into her blanket and was asleep before Alchise finished covering their trail. When she woke she found that they were camped in a strange eerie. They were high up on a mountain on a shelf that gave back into a shallow cave. In front, facing the desert, was a heap of rock that formed a natural rampart. A tiny spring bubbled from the cave floor. Here the little party would seem as secure in their dizzy seclusion as eagles of the Andes.

It was barely noon and the mountain air was sweet and exhilarating. Kut-le sat against the rampart, smoking a cigarette, while Molly and Cesca worked over the fire. Rhoda lunched on the tortillas to which Molly had clung through all the vicissitudes of flight.

"Where are the horses?" she asked Kut-le.

"Oh, Alchise took them back. We must stay here a while till your mob of friends disperses. I couldn't feed them and I wanted to pacify the Navajos and get some supplies from them. Alchise will fix it up with them."

And here on this dizzy brink of the desert Kut-le did pause as if for a long, long holiday. The wisdom of the proceeding did not trouble him at all. The call of the desert was an allurement to which he yielded unresistingly, trusting to elude capture through his skill and unfailing good fortune.

To Rhoda the pause was welcome. She still had faith that the longer they camped in one spot the surer would be the pursuers to stumble upon them. Kut-le began to devote himself entirely to Rhoda's amusement. He knew all the plant and animal life of the desert, not only as an Indian but as a college man who had loved biology. By degrees Rhoda's good brain began to respond to his vivid interest and the girl in her stay on the mountain shelf learned the desert as has been given to few whites to learn it. Besides what she learned from the men Rhoda became expert in camp work under Molly's patient teaching. She could kindle the tiny, smokeless fire. She could concoct appetizing messes from the crude food. She could detect good water from bad and could find forage for horses. The crowning pride of her achievements was learning to weave the dish basketry.

They had lived in the mountain niche some three weeks when Alchise and Kut-le left the camp one afternoon, Alchise on a turkey hunt, Kut-le on one of his mysterious trips for supplies. Alchise returned at dusk with a beautiful bird which Rhoda and Molly roasted with enthusiasm. But Kut-le did not appear at supper time as he had promised. When the meal was almost spoiled from waiting, Rhoda and the Indians ate. As the evening wore on, Alchise grew uneasy, but he dared not disobey Kut-le's orders and leave the camp unguarded at night.

Rhoda speculated, torn between hope and fear. Perhaps the searchers had captured Kut-le at last. Perhaps he had given up hope of winning her love and had gone for good. Perhaps, somewhere or other, he was lying badly hurt! The little group sat up much later than usual, Cesca silently smoking her endless cigarettes, Alchise and Molly talking now in Apache, now in English. Rhoda was convinced that they were puzzled and worried.

Even after she had lain down on her blankets Rhoda could not sleep. With Kut-le gone her sense of the camp's security was gone. She rose finally and sat beside Alchise who, rifle in hand, guarded the ledge. There was no moon but the stars were very large and near. Rhoda was growing to know the stars. They were remote in the East; in the desert they become a part of one's existence. The sense of stupendous distance was greater at night than in the daytime. The infinite heavens, stretching depth beyond depth, the faint far spaces of the desert, were as if one looked on the Great Mystery itself.

When dawn came, Alchise wakened Cesca, put the rifle into her hands, and hurried back up over the mountain. The purple shadows had lightened to gray when Rhoda saw Kut-le staggering up the trail from the desert. Rhoda gave a little cry and ran down to meet him.

"Kut-le! What happened to you? We were so worried!"

There was a bloody rag tied just below the young Indian's knee. He paused, supporting himself against a rock. Across his eyes, drawn and haggard with pain, flashed a look of joy that Rhoda, eying the bandage, did not see.

"I was late starting back," he said briefly. "In the darkness a bit of the trail gave way, dropped me into a canon and laid my leg open. I was unconscious a long time and lost a lot of blood, so it has taken me the rest of the night to get here. Would you mind getting Alchise to help me up the trail?"

"Alchise has gone to look for you. Lean on me," said Rhoda simply.

Despite his weakness, the dark blood flushed the young man's face, while Rhoda's utter unconsciousness of her changed manner brought a smile to his set lips. Not if the torture of dragging himself up the trail were to be ten times greater would he now have availed himself of help from Alchise.

"If you will let me put my arm across your shoulder we can make it," he said as quietly as though his heart were not leaping.

Rhoda's squaring of her slender shoulders was distractingly boyish. Utterly heedless of the pain which each step cost him, Kut-le made his way slowly to the ledge, ordering back the flustered squaws and leaning on Rhoda only enough to feel the tender girlish shoulders beneath the worn blue blouse.

In the camp, Rhoda assumed command while Kut-le lay on his blanket watching her in silent content. She put one of Alchise's two calico shirts on to boil over the breakfast fire. She washed out the nasty cut and bandaged it with strips from the sterilized shirt. She brought Kut-le's breakfast and her own to his blanket side and coaxed the young man to eat, he assuming great indifference merely for the happiness of being urged. Rhoda was so energetic and efficient that the sun was just climbing from behind the far peaks when Kut-le finished his bacon and coffee. The girl stood looking at him, hands on hips, head on one side, with that look in her eyes of superiority, maternity and complacent tenderness which a woman can assume only when she has ministered to the needs of a helpless masculine thing.

"There!" she said with a sigh of satisfaction.

"Rhoda," said Kut-le, hoping that the heavy thumping of his heart did not shake his whole broad chest, "how long ago was it that you were a helpless, dying little girl without strength to cut up your own food? How long since you have served any one but yourself?"

Rhoda drew a quick breath. She stood staring from the Indian to the desert, to her slender body, and back again. She held out her hands and looked at them. They were scratched and brown and did not tremble. Then she looked at the young Indian and he never was to forget the light in her eyes.

"Kut-le!" she cried. "Kut-le! I am well again! I am well again!"

She paced back and forth along the ledge. Through the creamy tan her cheeks flushed richly crimson. Finally she stopped before the Apache.

"You have outraged all my civilized instincts," she said slowly, "yet you have saved my life and given me health. Whatever comes, Kut-le, I never shall forget that!"

"I have changed more than that," said Kut-le quietly. "Where is your old hatred of the desert?"

Rhoda turned to look. At the edge of the distant ranges showed a rim of red. Crimson spokes of fire flashed to the zenith. The sky grew brighter, more translucent, the ranges melted into molten gold. The sun, hot and scarlet, rolled into view. Into Rhoda's heart flooded a sense of infinite splendor, infinite beauty, infinite peace.

"Why!" she gasped to Kut-le, "it is beautiful! It's not terrible! It's unadorned beauty!"

The Indian nodded but did not speak. Rhoda never was to forget that day. Long years after she was to catch the afterglow of that day of her rebirth. Suddenly she realized that never could a human have found health in a setting more marvelous. The realization was almost too much. Kut-le, with sympathy for which she was grateful, did not talk to her much. Once, however, as she brought him a drink and mechanically smoothed his blanket he said softly:

"You who have been served and demanded service all your life, why do you do this?"

Rhoda answered slowly.

"I'm not serving you. I'm trying to pay up some of the debt of my life."

Kut-le was about in a day or so and by the end of the week he was quite himself. He resumed the daily expeditions with Rhoda and Alchise which provided text for the girl's desert learning. Rhoda's old despondency, her old agony of prayer for immediate rescue had given way to a strange conflict of desires. She was eager for rescue, was conscious of a constant aching desire for her own people, and yet the old sense of outrage, of grief, of hopelessness was gone.

Of a sudden she found herself pausing, thrusting back the problems that confronted her while she drank to the full this strange mad joy of life which she felt must leave her when she left the desert. She knew only that the fear of death was gone. That hours of fever and pain were no more. That her mind had found its old poise but with an utterly new view-point of life. Her blood ran red. Her lungs breathed deep. Her eyes saw distances too big for their conception, beauties so deep that her spirit had to expand to absorb them.

The silent nights of stars, the laborious crests that tossed sudden and unspeakable views before the eyes, the eternal canons that led beneath ranges of surpassing majesty, roused in her a passion of delight that could find expression only in her growing physical prowess. She lived and ate like a splendid boy. Day after day she scaled the ranges with Kut-le and Alchise; tenderly reared creature of an ultracivilization as she was, she learned the intricate lore of the aborigines, learned what students of the dying people would give their hearts to know.

Kut-le wakened Rhoda at dawn one day. She prepared the breakfast of coffee, bacon and tortilla. Alchise shared this eagerly with Rhoda and Kut-le, though already he had eaten with the squaws. The day was still gray when the three set out on a long day's trip in search of game. The way this morning led up a canon deep and quiet, with the night shadows still dark and cool within it. The air was that of a northern day of June.

Rhoda tramped bravely, up and up, from cactus to bear grass, from bear grass to stunted cedar, from cedar to pines that at last rose triumphant at the crest of a great ridge. Here Rhoda and Kut-le flung themselves to the ground to rest while Alchise prowled about restlessly. Across a hundred miles of desert rose faint snow-capped peaks.

Kut-le watched Rhoda's rapt face for a time. Then, as if unable to keep back the words, he said softly:

"Rhoda! Stay here, always! Marry me and stay here always!"

Rhoda looked at the beautiful pleading eyes. She stirred restlessly; but before she could frame an answer Alchise appeared, followed by a lean old Indian all but toothless who wore a pair of tattered overalls and a gauze shirt. The two Indians stopped before Kut-le, and Alchise jerked a thumb at the stranger.

"Sabe no white talk," he said.

Kut-le passed the stranger a cigarette, which he accepted without comment. A rapid conversation followed between the three Indians.

"He is an Apache," explained Kut-le, finally, to Rhoda. "His name is Injun Tom. He says that Newman and Porter hired him to trail us but he is tired of the job. They foolishly advanced him five dollars. He says they are camping in the valley right below here."

Rhoda sprang to her feet.

"Where are you going?" smiled Kut-le. "He says they are going to shoot me on sight!"

Under her tan Rhoda's face whitened.

"Would they shoot you, Kut-le, even if I told them not to?"

At the sight of the paling face the young man murmured, "You dear!" under his breath. Then aloud, "Not if I were your husband."

"How can I marry a savage?" cried Rhoda.

Kut-le put his hand under the cleft chin and lifted the sweet face till it looked directly into his. His gaze was very deep and clear.

"Am I nothing but a naked savage, Rhoda?" he said. "Am I?"

Rhoda's eyes did not leave his.

"No!" she said softly, under her breath.

Kut-le's eyes deepened. He turned and picked up his rifle.

"Bring your friend back to dinner, Alchise," he said. "Our little holiday must end right here."

They reached the camp at noon and while the squaws made ready for breaking camp, Rhoda sat deep in thought. Before her were the burning sky and desert, with hawk and buzzard circling in the clear blue. Where had the old hatred of Kut-le gone? Whence came this new trust and understanding, this thrill at his touch? Kut-le, who had been watching her adoringly, rose and came to her side. The rampart hid the two from the others. Kut-le took one of Rhoda's hands in his firm fingers and laid his lips against her palm. Rhoda flushed and drew her hand away. But Kut-le again put his hand beneath her cleft chin and lifted her face to his.

Just as the brown face all but touched hers a voice sounded from behind the rampart:

"Hello, you! Where's Kut-le?"



CHAPTER XV

AN ESCAPE

Rhoda sprang away from Kut-le and they both ran to the other side of the rampart. Billy Porter, worn and tattered but still looking very well able to hold his own, stood staring into the cave where the squaws eyed him open-mouthed and Alchise, his hand on his rifle, scowled at him aggressively. Porter's eye fell on Injun Tom.

"U-huh! You pison Piute, you! I just nacherally snagged your little game, didn't I?"

"Billy!" cried Rhoda. "O Billy Porter!"

Porter jumped as if at a blow. Rhoda stood against the rock in her boyish clothes, her beautiful braid sweeping her shoulder, her face vivid.

"My God! Miss Rhoda!" cried Billy hoarsely, as he ran toward her with outstretched hands. "Why, you are well! What's happened to you!"

Here Kut-le stepped between the two.

"Hello, Mr. Porter," he said.

Billy stepped back and a look of loathing and anger took the place of the joy that had been in his eyes before.

"You Apache devil!" he growled. "You ain't as smart as you thought you were!"

Rhoda ran forward and would have taken Porter's hand but Kut-le restrained her with his hand on her shoulder.

"Where did you come from, Billy?" cried Rhoda. "Where are the others?"

Billy's face cleared a little at the sound of the girl's voice.

"They are right handy, Miss Rhoda."

"I'll give you a few details, Rhoda," said Kut-le coolly. "You see he is without water and his mouth is black with thirst. He started to trail Injun Tom but got lost and stumbled on us."

Rhoda gave a little cry of pity and running into the cave she brought Billy a brimming cup of water.

"Is that true, Billy?" she asked. "Are the others near here?"

Billy nodded then drained the cup and held it out for more.

"They are just around the corner!" with a glance at Kut-le, who smiled skeptically.

"Oh!" exclaimed Rhoda. "What terrible trouble I have made you all!"

"You made!" said Porter. "Well that's good! Still, that Apache devil doesn't seem to have harmed you. Just the same, he'll get his! If I shot him now, the other Injuns would get me and God knows what would happen to you!"

"Whom do you call an Apache devil?" asked Kut-le. Rhoda never had seen him show such evident anger.

"You, by Judas!" replied Porter, looking into the young Indian's face.

For a strained moment the two eyed each other, hatred glaring at hatred, until Rhoda put a hand on Kut-le's arm. His face cleared at once.

"So that's my reputation now, is it?" he said lightly.

"That's your reputation!" sneered Billy. "Do you think that's all? Why, don't you realize that you can't live in your own country again? Don't you know that the whites will hunt you out like you was a rat? Don't you realize that the folks that believed in you and was fond of you has had to give up their faith in you? Don't you understand that you've lost all your white friends? But I suppose that don't mean anything to an Injun!"

A look of sadness passed over Kut-le's face.

"Porter," he said very gently, "I counted on all of that before I did this thing. I thought that the sacrifice was worth while, and I still think so. I'm sorry, for your sake, that you stumbled on us here. We are going to start on the trail shortly and I must send you out to be lost again. I'll let Alchise help you in the job. As you say, I have sacrificed everything else in life; I can't afford to let anything spoil this now. You can rest for an hour. Eat and drink and fill your canteen. Take a good pack of meat and tortillas. You are welcome to it all."

The Indian spoke with such dignity, with such tragic sincerity, that Porter gave him a look of surprise and Rhoda felt hot tears in her eyes. Kut-le turned to the girl.

"You can see that I can't let you talk alone with Porter, but go ahead and say anything you want to in my hearing. Molly, you bring the white man some dinner and fix him some trail grub. Hurry up, now!"

He seated himself on the rampart and lighted a cigarette. Porter sat down meditatively, with his back against the mountain wall. He was discomfited. Kut-le had guessed correctly as to the circumstances of his finding the camp. He had no idea where his friends might have gone in the twenty-four hours since he had left them. When he stumbled on to Kut-le he had had a sudden hope that the Indian might take him captive. The Indian's quiet reception of him nonplussed him and roused his unwilling admiration.

Rhoda sat down beside Porter.

"How is John?" she asked.

"He is pretty good. He has lasted better than I thought he would."

"And Katherine and Jack?" Rhoda's voice trembled as she uttered the names. It was only with the utmost difficulty that she spoke coherently. All her nerves were on the alert for some unexpected action on the part of either Billy or the Indians.

"Jack's all right," said Billy. "We ain't seen Mrs. Jack since the day after you was took, but she's all to the good, of course, except she's been about crazy about you, like the rest of us."

"Oh, you poor, poor people!" moaned Rhoda.

Porter essayed a smile with his cracked lips.

"But, say, you do look elegant, Miss Rhoda. You ain't the same girl!"

Rhoda blushed through her tan.

"I forgot these," she said; "I've worn them so long."

"It ain't the clothes," said Billy, "and it ain't altogether your fine health. It's more—I don't know what it is! It's like the desert!"

"That's what I tell her," said Kut-le.

"Say," said Billy, scowling, "you've got a nerve, cutting in as if this was a parlor conversation you had cut in on casual. Just keep out of this, will you!"

Rhoda flushed.

"Well, as long as he can hear everything, it's a good deal of a farce not to let him talk," she said.

"Farce!" exclaimed Billy. "Say, Miss Rhoda, you ain't sticking up for this ornery Piute, are you?"

Rhoda looked at the calm eyes of the Indian, at the clean-cut intelligence of his face, and she resented Porter's words. She answered him softly but clearly.

"Kut-le did an awful and unforgivable thing in stealing me. No one knows that better than I do. But he has treated me with respect and he has given me back my health. I thank him for that and—and I do respect him!"

Kut-le's eyes flashed with a deep light but he said nothing. Porter stared at the girl with jaw dropped.

"Good Lord!" he cried. "Respect him! Wouldn't that come and get you! Do you mean that you want to stay with that Injun?"

A slow flush covered Rhoda's tanned cheeks. Her cleft chin lifted a little.

"At the very first chance," she replied, "I shall escape."

Porter sighed in great relief.

"That's all right, Miss Rhoda," he said leniently. "Respect him all you want to. I don't see how you can, but women is queer, if you don't mind my saying so. I don't blame you for feeling thankful about your health. You've stood this business better than any of us. Say, that squaw seems to be puttin' all her time on making up my pack. Can't I negotiate for something to eat right now? Tell her not to put pison into it."

Kut-le grinned.

"Maybe Miss Tuttle will fix up something for you, so you can eat without worrying."

"Well, she won't, you know!" growled Porter. "Her wait on me! She ain't no squaw!"

"Oh, but," cried Rhoda, "you don't know how proud I am of my skill! I can run the camp just as well as the squaws." Then, as Porter scowled at Kut-le, "He didn't make me! I wanted to, so as to be able to take care of myself when I escaped. When you and I get away from him," she looked at the silent Indian with an expression of daring that brought a glint of amusement to his eyes, "I'll be able to live off the trail better than you!"

"Gee!" exclaimed Porter admiringly.

"Of course, in one way it's no credit to me at all," Rhoda went on, stirring the rabbit stew she was warming up. "Kut-le—" she paused. Of what use was it to try to explain what Kut-le had done for her!

She toasted fresh tortillas and poured the stew over them and brought the steaming dish to Porter. He tasted of the mess tentatively.

"By Hen!" he exclaimed, and he set upon the stew as if half starved, while Rhoda watched him complacently.

Seeing him apparently thus engrossed, Kut-le turned to speak to Alchise. Instantly Porter dropped the stew, drew a revolver and fired two rapid shots, one catching Alchise in the leg, the other Injun Tom. Before he could get Kut-le the young Indian was upon him.

"Run, Rhoda, run!" yelled Porter, as he went down, under Kut-le.

Rhoda gave one glance at Injun Tom and Alchise writhing with their wounds, at Porter's fingers tightening at Kut-le's throat, then she seized the canteen she had filled for Porter and started madly down the trail. The screaming squaws gave no heed to her.

She ran swiftly, surely, down the rocky way, watching the trail with secondary sense, for every other was strained to catch the sounds from above. But she heard nothing but the screams of the squaws. The trail twisted violently near the desert floor. She sped about one last jutting buttress, then stopped abruptly, one hand on her heaving breast.

A man was running toward the foot of the trail. He, too, stopped abruptly. The girl seemed a marvel of beauty to him. With the curly hair beneath the drooping sombrero, the tanned, flushed face, the parted scarlet lips, the throat and tiny triangle of chest disclosed by the rough blue shirt with one button missing from the top, and the beautiful lithe legs in the clinging buckskins, Rhoda was a wonderful thing to come upon unexpectedly. As John DeWitt took off his hat, his haggard face went white, his stalwart shoulders heaved.

"O John! Dear John DeWitt!" cried Rhoda. "Turn back with me quick! I am running away while Mr. Porter holds Kut-le!"

DeWitt held out his shaking hands to her, unbelieving rapture growing in his eyes.



CHAPTER XVI

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."



CHAPTER XVII

THE HEART'S OWN BITTERNESS

"I'm not worrying," answered Rhoda stoutly, "except about you. You are shaking with exhaustion while I am as fit as can be."

"Oh, don't bother about me!" exclaimed John. "I'm just a little tired."

But Rhoda was not to be put off.

"How much did you sleep last night?"

"Not much," admitted DeWitt. "I haven't been a heavy sleeper at times ever since you disappeared, strange as that may seem!" Then he grinned. It was pleasant to have Rhoda bully him.

Yet the big fellow actually was sinking with weariness. The fearful hardships that he had undergone had worked havoc with him. Now that the agonizing nerve-strain was lifted he was going to pieces. He stood wavering for a minute, then he slowly sat down in the sand.

Rhoda stood beside him uncertainly and looked from the man to the immovably distant mountain peak. She realized that, in stopping, the risk of recapture was great, yet her desert experiences told her that John must regain some of his strength before the sun caught them. She had little faith that they would tumble upon the camp as easily as John thought, and wanted to prepare for a day of desert heat.

"If we were sure just where the camp lay," she said, "I would go on for help. But as we aren't certain, I'm afraid to be separated from you, John."

John looked up fiercely with his haggard eyes.

"Don't you dare to move six inches from me, Rhoda. It will kill me to lose you now."

"Of course I won't," said Rhoda. "I've had my lesson about losing myself in the desert. But you must have some sleep before we go any farther."

Rhoda spoke with a cheerfulness she did not feel. She looked about for a comfortable resting-place but the desert was barren.

"There's no use trying to find a comfortable bed," she said. "You had better lie down right where you are."

"Honey," said John, "I've no idea of sleeping. It will be time enough for that when we reach camp. But if you think you could stand guard for just ten minutes I will lie flat in the sand and rest. You take my watch and time me."

"That's splendid!" said Rhoda, helping him to clear of rocks and cactus a space long enough to lie in.

"Just ten minutes," said DeWitt, and as he spoke he sank to sleep.

Rhoda stood in the moonlight looking into the man's unconscious face. His new-grown beard gave him a haggard look that was enhanced by the dark circles under his eyes. That wan face touched Rhoda much more than the healthy face of former days. The lines of weariness and pain that never could be fully erased were all for her, she thought with a little catch of her breath. Then with a pitying, affectionate look at the sleeping man came a whimsical smile. Once she had thought no one could equal John in physical vigor. Now she pictured Kut-le's panther strength and endurance, and smiled.

She looked at the watch. Five hours till dawn. She would let John have the whole of that time in which to sleep. His ten minutes would be worse than useless, while to find the camp after the moon had set would be quite out of the question. Her own eyes were wide and sleepless. She sat in the sand beside DeWitt until driven by the cold to pace back and forth. John slept without stirring; the sleep of complete exhaustion. Rhoda was not afraid, nor did she feel lonely. The desert was hers now. There was no wind, but now and again the cactus rustled as if unseen wings had brushed it. The dried heaps of cholla stirred as if unseen paws had pressed them. From afar came the demoniacal laughter of coyotes on their night hunts. But still Rhoda was not afraid.

At first, in the confusion of thoughts that the day's events had crowded on her, her clearest sense was of thankfulness. Then she fell to wondering what had happened to Porter and Kut-le. Suddenly she caught her breath with a shiver. If Porter won there could be but one answer as to Kut-le's fate. John's attitude of mind told that. Rhoda twisted her hands together.

"I will not have him killed!" she whispered. "No! No! I will not have him killed!"

For many minutes she paced back and forth, battling with her fears. Then she suddenly recalled the fact that vengeance was to be saved for John. This uncanny thought comforted her. She had little fear but that she could manage John.

And then in the utter silence of the desert night, staring at the sinking moon, Rhoda asked herself why, when she should have been mad with joy over her own rescue, she was giving all her thoughts to Kut-le's plight! For a moment the question brought a flood of confusion. Then, standing alone in the night beauty of the desert, the girl acknowledged the truth that she had denied even to herself so long. The young Indian's image returned to her endowed with all the dignity of his remarkable physical perfection. She knew now that from the first this physical beauty of his had had a strong appeal to her. She knew now that all his unusual characteristics that at first had seemed so strange to her were the ones that had drawn her to him. His strange mental honesty, his courage, his brutal incisiveness, all had fascinated her. All her days with him returned to her, days of weakness, of anger, then the weeks on the ledge, and the day when she had found the desert, and finally the day just past, to the very moment when Billy Porter had come upon them on the ledge.

Rhoda stood with unseeing eyes while before her inward vision passed a magnificent panorama of the glories through which Kut-le had led her. Chaos of mountain and desert, resplendent with color; cool, sweet depth of canon; burning height of tortured peak; slope of pungent pinon forest—all wrapped in the haze which is the desert's own.

Rhoda knew the truth; knew that she loved Kut-le! She knew that she loved him with all the passionate devotion for which her rebirth had given her the capacity.

With this acknowledgment, all her calm was swept away. With fingers clasped against her breast, with wide eyes on the brooding night, she wished that she might tell him this that had come to her. If only once more the inscrutable tenderness of his black eyes were upon her! If the deep imperative voice were but sounding in her ears again! If only she could feel now the touch of his powerful arms as he carried her the long sick miles to Chira. Trembling with longing, her gaze fell upon the man sleeping at her feet. She drew a sudden troubled breath. Must she renounce this new rapture of living? Must she?

"Have I found new life in the desert only to lose it?" she whispered. "O Kut-le! Kut-le!"

DeWitt slept on, unmoving, and Rhoda watched him with tragedy-stricken eyes.

"What shall I do!" she whispered, lips quivering, shaking hands twisting together. "Oh, what shall I do!"

She tried to picture a future with Kut-le. She saw his tenderness, his purposefulness, the bigness of his mind and spirit. Then with a cold clutch at her throat came the thought of race barrier, and in a moment Rhoda was plunged into the oldest, the most hopeless, the least solvable of all love's problems. Minute after minute went by and the girl, standing by the sleeping man, fought a fight that shook her slender body and racked her soul. At last she raised her face to the sky.

"I want to do what is right!" she said piteously. "It doesn't matter about me, if only I can decide what is right!" Then after, a pause, "I will marry John! I will!" like a child that has been punished and promises to be good. Still another pause, then, "So that part of me is dead!" and she put her fingers before her eyes and fell to crying, not with the easy tears of a woman but with the deep, agonizing sobs of a man over his dead.

"Kut-le, I wanted you! I wanted you for my mate! If I could have heard you, seen you, felt you once more! Nothing else would have mattered. I wanted you!"

A long hour passed in which Rhoda sat in the sand, limp and quiescent, as though all but wrecked by the storm through which she had passed. Dawn came at last. The air was pregnant with new hope, with a vague uplifting of sense and being that told of the coming of a new day. The east quivered with prismatic colors and suddenly the sun appeared.

Rhoda rose and stooped over DeWitt to smooth the hair back from his forehead.

"Come," she said softly. "It's breakfast time!"

DeWitt sat up bewildered. Then his senses returned.

"Rhoda," he exclaimed, "what do you mean by this!"

Rhoda's smile was a little wan.

"You needed the rest and I didn't!"

DeWitt rose and shook himself like a great dog, then looked at Rhoda wonderingly.

"And you don't look much done up! But you had no right to do such a thing! I told you to give me ten minutes. I feel like a brute. Lie down now and get a little sleep yourself."

"Lie in the sun? Thank you, I'd rather push on to the camp and have some breakfast. How do you feel?"

"Much better! It was fine of you, dear, but it wasn't a fair deal."

"I'll be good from now on!" said Rhoda meekly. "What would you like for breakfast?"

DeWitt looked about him. Already the desert was assuming its brazen aspect.

"Water will be enough for me," he answered, "and nothing else. I am seriously considering a rigid diet for a time."

They both drank sparingly of the water in Rhoda's canteen.

"I have three shots in my Colt," said DeWitt, "but I want to save them for an emergency. But if we don't strike camp pretty soon, I'll try to pot a jack-rabbit."

"We can eat desert mice," said Rhoda. "I know how to catch and cook them!"

"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated DeWitt. "Let's start on at once, if you're not too tired."

So they began the day cheerfully. As the morning wore on and they found no trace of the camp, they began to watch the canteen carefully. Gradually their thirst became so great that the desire for food was quite secondary to it and they made no attempt to hunt for a rabbit. They agreed toward noon to save the last few drops in the canteen until they could no longer do without it.

Hour after hour they toiled in the blinding heat, the strange deep blue of the sky reflecting the brazen light of the desert. In their careful avoiding of the mountain where they had rested at sunset the night before, they gradually worked out into a wide barren space with dunes and rock heaps interchanging.

"This won't do at all," said Dewitt at last, wearily. "We had better try for any old mountain at all in the hope of finding water."

They stood panting, staring at the distant haze of a peak. Trackless and tortuous, the way underfoot was incredibly difficult. Yet the distances melted in ephemeral slopes as lovely in their tints as they were accursed in their reality of cruelty. Rhoda, unaccustomed to day travel, panted and gasped as they walked. But she held her own fairly well, while DeWitt, sick and overstrained at the start, was failing rapidly.

"It's noon now," said John a little thickly. "You had better lie in the shade of that rock for an hour."

"You sleep too!" pleaded Rhoda.

"I'm too hot to sleep. I'll wake you in an hour."

When Rhoda awoke it was to see DeWitt leaning against the rock heap, his lips swollen, his eyes uncertain.

Weak and dizzy herself, she rose and laid her hand on John's, every maternal instinct in her stirring and speaking in her gray eyes.

"Come, dear boy, we mustn't give up so easily."

John lifted the little hand to his cheek.

"I won't give up," he said uncertainly. "I'll take care of you, honey girl!"

"Come on, then!" said Rhoda. "You see that queer bunch of cholla yonder? Let's get as far as that before we stop again!"

With a great effort, DeWitt gathered himself together and, fixing his eyes on the fantastic cactus growth, he plodded desperately through the sand. At the cholla bunch, Rhoda pointed to a jutting lavender rock.

"At that we'll rest for a minute. Come on, John!"

John's sick eyes did not waver but his trembling legs described many circles in their journey to the jutting rock. Distances were so many times what they seemed that Rhoda's little scheme carried them over a mile of desert before DeWitt sank to his knees.

"I'm a sick man," he said huskily as he fell in a limp heap.

Nothing could have appeared more opportunely than this new hardship to take Rhoda's mind off her misery of the night. Nothing could have brought John so near to her as this utter helplessness brought about through his toiling for her. She looked at him with tears of pity in her eyes, while her heart sank with fright. She knew the terrible danger that menaced them. But she closed her lips firmly and looked thoughtfully at the mite of water that remained to them. Then she held the canteen to DeWitt's lips. He pushed it away from him and in another moment or so he rose.

Rhoda, fastening their hopes to another distant cholla, led the way on again. But she too was growing a little light-headed. The distant cactus danced grotesquely and black spots flitted between her and the molten iron over which, her fancy said they traveled. Suddenly she laughed crazily:

"'Twas brillig, and the slythy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe!"

DeWitt laughed hoarsely.

"That's just the way it looks to me, Rhoda. But you're just as crazy as I am."

Rhoda jerked herself together and tried to moisten her lips with her swollen tongue.

"We must take it turn about. When you are crazy I must try to be sane!"

"Good idea!" croaked DeWitt, "only I'm crazy all the time!"

"'O frabjous day! Calloo! Collay! He chortled in his joy!'"

Rhoda patted his hand.

"Poor John! Oh, my poor John! I was not worth all this. You may not have an Apache's strength, but your heart is right!" Two great tears rolled down her cheeks.

DeWitt looked at her seriously.

"You aren't as dry as I am. I haven't enough moisture in me to moisten my eyeballs, let alone cry! I am so cracked and dry that you will have to soak me in the first spring we come to before I'll hold water."

Rhoda laughed weakly and John turned away with a hurt look.

"It's not a joke!" he said.

How long they were, in their staggering, circuitous course, in reaching their goal of cholla, Rhoda never knew. She knew that each heavy foot, tingling and scorched, seemed to drag her back a step for every one that she took forward. She knew that she repeatedly offered the last of their water to John and that he repeatedly refused it, urging it on her. She knew that the pulp of the barrel cactus that she tried to chew turned to bitter sawdust in her mouth and sickened her. Then suddenly, as she struggled to refocus her wandering wits on the cholla, it appeared within touch of her hand.

Afraid to pause, she adopted a new goal in a far mesa, and clutching DeWitt's unresponsive fingers she struggled forward.

And so on and on toward a never nearing goal; now falling, now rising, now pausing to strive to hush Dewitt's cracked voice that wandered aimlessly through all the changes of verse that seemed to his delirium appropriate to the occasion. It seemed to Rhoda that her own brain was reeling as she watched the illimitable space through which they moved. John's voice did not cease.

"Alone! Alone! All, all, alone! Alone on a wide, wide sea! So lonely 'twas that God himself, Scarce seemed there to be!"

"Hush, John! Hush!" pleaded Rhoda.

"Alone! Alone! All, all alone!"

repeated the croaking voice.

"But I'm with you, John!" Rhoda pleaded, but DeWitt rambled on unheeding.

The way grew indescribably rough. The desert floor became a series of sand dunes, a rise and fall of sea-like billows over which they climbed like ants over a new-plowed field. In the hollow of each wave they rested, sinking in the sand, where, breathless and scorching, the air scintillated above their motionless forms. At the crest of each they rested again, the desert wind hurtling the hot sand against their parched skins. Frequently John refused to rise and Rhoda in her half delirium would sink beside him until the mist lifted from her brain and once more the distant mesa forced itself upon her vision.

"Come, John, we will soon be there. We can't keep on this way forever and not reach some place. Please come, dear!"

"'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul—'"

"Perhaps there will be water there! O John, dear John, if you love me, come!"

"I don't love you, little boy! I love Rhoda Tuttle.

"O for a draught of vintage that hath been Cooled a long age in deep delved earth!"

"Please, John! I'm so sick!"

The man, after two or three attempts, staggered to his feet and stood swaying.

"God help me!" he said. "I can do no more!"

"Yes, you can, John! Yes, you can! Perhaps there is a whole fountain of water there on the mesa!"

The glazed look returned to DeWitt's eyes.

"'Or the pitcher be broken at the fountain,'" he muttered, "'or the wheel broken at the cistern—or the pitcher broken at the fountain, or the wheel—'"

Rhoda threw her arm across her eyes.

"Oh, not that, John! I can't bear that one!"

Again, she stood upon the roof at Chira, looking up into Kut-le's face. Again the low wailing of the Indian women and the indescribable depth and hunger of those dear black eyes. Again the sense of protection and content in his nearness.

"O Kut-le! Kut-le!" she moaned.

Instantly sanity returned to John's eyes.

"Why did you say Kut-le?" he demanded thickly.

"Were you thinking of him?"

"Yes," answered Rhoda simply. "Come on, John!"

DeWitt struggled on bravely to the crest of the next dune.

"I hate that Apache devil!" he muttered. "I am going to kill him!"

Rhoda quickly saw the magic of Kut-le's name.

"Why should you want to kill Kut-le?" she asked as Dewitt paused at the top of the next dune. Instantly he started on.

"Because I hate him! I hate him, the devil!"

"See how near the mesa is, John! Only a little way! Kut-le would say we were poor stuff!"

"No doubt! Well, I'll let a gun give him my opinion of him!"

The sand dunes had indeed beaten themselves out against the wall of a giant mesa. Rhoda followed blindly along the wall and stumbled upon a precipitous trail leading upward.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE FORGOTTEN CITY

Up this tortuous trail Rhoda staggered, closely followed by DeWitt. At a level spot the girl paused.

"Water, John! Water!" she cried.

The two threw themselves down and drank of the bubbling spring until they could hold no more. Then Rhoda lay down on the sun-warmed rocks and sleep overwhelmed her.

She opened her eyes to stare into a yellow moon that floated liquidly above her. Whether she had slept through a night and a day or whether but a few hours had elapsed since she had staggered to the spring beside which she lay, she could not tell. She lay looking up into the sky languidly, but with clear mind. A deep sigh roused her. DeWitt sat on the other side of the spring, rubbing his eyes.

"Hello!" he said in a hoarse croak. "How did we land here?"

"I led us here sometime in past ages. When or how, quien sabe?" answered Rhoda. "John, we must find food somehow."

"Drink all the water you can, Rhoda." said DeWitt; "it helps some, and I'll pot a rabbit. What a fool I am. You poor girl! More hardships for you!"