Rhoda dipped her burning face into the water, then lifted it, dripping.

"If only you won't be delirious, John, I can stand the hardships."

DeWitt looked at the girl curiously.

"Was I delirious? And you were alone, leading me across that Hades out there? Rhoda dear, you make me ashamed of myself!"

"I don't see how you were to blame," answered Rhoda stoutly. "Think what you have been doing for me!"

John rose stiffly.

"Do you feel equal to climbing this trail with me, to find where we are, or had you rather stay here?"

"I don't want to stay here alone," answered Rhoda.

Very slowly and weakly they started up the trail. The spring was on a broad stone terrace. Above it rose another terrace weathered and disrupted until in the moonlight it looked like an impregnable castle wall, embattled and embuttressed. But clinging to the seemingly invulnerable fortress was the trail, a snake-like shadow in the moonlight.

"Perhaps we had better stay at the spring until morning," suggested Rhoda, her weak legs flagging.

"Not with the hope of shelter a hundred feet above us," answered John firmly. "This trail is worn six inches into the solid rock. My guess is that there are some inhabitants here. It's queer that they haven't discovered us."

Slowly and without further protest, Rhoda followed DeWitt up the trail. Deep-worn and smooth though it was, they accomplished their task with infinite difficulty. Rhoda, stumbling like a sleep-sodden child, wondered if ever again she was to accomplish physical feats with the magical ease with which Kut-le had endowed her.

"If he were here, I'd know I was to tumble into a comfortable camp," she thought. Then with a remorseful glance at DeWitt's patient back, "What a selfish beast you are, Rhoda Tuttle!"

She reached John's side and together they paused at the top of the trail. Black against the sky, the moon crowning its top with a frost-like radiance, was a huge flat-topped building. Night birds circled about it. From black openings in its front owls hooted. But otherwise there was neither sight nor sound of living thing. The desert far below and beyond lay like a sea of death. Rhoda unconsciously drew nearer to DeWitt.

"Where are the dogs? At Chira the dogs barked all night. Indians always have dogs!"

"It must be very late," whispered DeWitt. "Even the dogs are asleep!"

"And at Chira," went on Rhoda, whispering as did DeWitt, "owls didn't hoot from the windows."

"Let's go closer," suggested John.

Rhoda thrust cold little fingers into his hand.

The doors were empty and forlorn. The terraced walls, built with the patient labor of the long ago, were sagged and decayed. Riot of greasewood crowned great heaps of debris. A loneliness as of the end of the world came upon the two wanderers. Sick and dismayed, they stood in awe before this relic of the past.

"Whoo! Whoo!" an owl's cry sounded from the black window openings.

DeWitt spoke softly.

"Rhoda, it's one of the forgotten cities!"

"Let's go back! Let's go back to the spring!" pleaded Rhoda. "It is so uncanny in the dark!"

"No!" DeWitt rubbed his aching head wearily. "I must contrive some sort of shelter for you. Almost anything is better than another night in the open desert. Come on! We will explore a little."

"Let's wait till morning," begged Rhoda. "I'm so cold and shivery."

"Dear sweetheart, that's just the point. You will be sick if you don't have some sort of shelter. You have suffered enough. Will you sit here and let me look about?"

"No! No! I don't want to be left alone."

Rhoda followed John closely up into the mass of fallen rock.

DeWitt smiled. It appealed to the tenderest part of his nature that the girl who had led him through the terrible experiences of the desert should show fear now that a haven was reached.

"Come on, little girl," he said.

Painfully, for they both were weak and dizzy, they clambered to a gaunt opening in the gray wall. Rhoda clutched John's arm with a little scream as a bat whirred close by them. Within the opening DeWitt scratched one of his carefully hoarded matches. The tiny flare revealed a small adobe-walled room, quite bare save for broken bits of pottery on the floor. John lighted a handful of greasewood and by its brilliant light they examined the floor and walls.

"What a clean, dry little room!" exclaimed Rhoda. "Oh, I am so tired and sleepy!"

"Let's look a little farther before we stop. What's on the other side of this broken wall?"

They picked their way across the litter of pottery and peered into another room, the duplicate of the first.

"How will these do for our respective sleeping-rooms?" asked DeWitt.

Rhoda stared at John with horror in her eyes.

"I'd as soon sleep in a tomb! Let's make a fire outside and sleep under the stars. I'd rather have sleep than food just now."

"It will have to be just a tiny smudge, up behind this debris, where Kut-le can't spot it," answered DeWitt. "I won't mind having a red eye of fire for company. It will help to keep me awake."

"But you must sleep," protested Rhoda.

"But I mustn't," answered John grimly. "I've played the baby act on this picnic as much as I propose to. It is my trick at the wheel."

Too weary to protest further, Rhoda threw herself down with her feet toward the fire and pillowed her head on her arm. DeWitt filled his pipe and sat puffing it, with his arms folded across his knees. Rhoda watched him for a moment or two. She found herself admiring the full forehead, the lines of refinement about the lips that the beard could not fully conceal.

"He's not as handsome as Kut-le," she thought wearily, "but he's—he's—" but before her thought was completed she was asleep.

Rhoda woke at dawn and lay waiting for the stir of the squaws about the morning meal. Then with a start she rose and looked soberly about her. Suddenly she smiled.

"Tenderfoot!" she murmured.

DeWitt lay fast asleep by the ashes of the fire.

"If Kut-le," she thought. Then she stopped abruptly and stamped her foot. "You are not even to think of Kut-le any more!" And with her cleft chin very firm she descended the trail to the spring. When she returned, DeWitt was rising stiffly to his feet.

"Hello!" he cried. "I was good this time. I never closed my eyes till dawn. I'm so hungry I could eat greasewood. How do you feel?"

"Weak with hunger but otherwise very well. Go wash your face, Johnny."

DeWitt grinned and started down the trail obediently. But Rhoda laid a detaining hand on his arm. The sun was but a moment high. All the mesa front lay in purple shadows, though farther out the desert glowed with the yellow light of a new day.

"I think animals come to the spring to drink," said Rhoda. "There were tiny wet footmarks there when I went down to wash my face."

"Bully!" exclaimed John. "Wait now, let's watch."

The two dropped to the ground and peered over the edge of the upper terrace. The spring bubbled forth serenely, followed its shallow trough a short distance, then disappeared into the insatiable floor of the desert. For several moments the two lay watching until at last Rhoda grew restless. DeWitt laid a detaining hand on her arm.

"Hush!" he whispered.

A pair of jack-rabbits loped up the trail, sniffed the air tentatively, then with forelegs in the water drank greedily. DeWitt's right arm stiffened, there were two puffs of smoke and the two kicking rabbits rolled into the spring.

"I'm beginning to have a little self-respect as the man of the party," said DeWitt, as he blew the smoke from his Colt.

Rhoda ran down to the spring and lifted the two wet little bodies. John took them from her.

"If you'll find some place for a table, I'll bring these up in no time."

When DeWitt came up from the spring with the dressed rabbits, he found a little fire glowing between two rocks. Near by on a big flat-topped stone were set forth two earthen bowls, with a brown water-jar in the center. As he stared, Rhoda came out of the building with interested face.

"Look, John! See what I found on a little corner shelf!" She held in her outstretched hand a tiny jar no bigger than a wine-glass. It was of an exquisitely polished black. "Not even an explorer can have been here, or nothing so perfect as this would have been left! What hands do you suppose made this!"

But DeWitt did not answer her question.

"Now, look here, Rhoda, you aren't to do anything like starting a fire and lugging these heavy jars again! You're not with the Indians now. You've got a man to wait on you!"

Rhoda looked at him curiously.

"But I've learned to like to do it!" she protested. "Nobody can roast a rabbit to suit me but myself," and in spite of DeWitt's protests she spitted the rabbits and would not let him tend the fire which she said was too fine an art for his untrained hands. In a short time the rich odor of roasting flesh rose on the air and John watched the pretty cook with admiration mingled with perplexity. Rhoda insisting on cooking a meal! More than that, Rhoda evidently enjoying the job! The idea left him speechless.

An hour after Rhoda had spitted the game, John sighed with contentment as he looked at the pile of bones beside his earthen bowl.

"And they say jacks aren't good eating!" he said. "Why if they had been salted they would have been better than any game I ever ate!"

"You never were so hungry before," said Rhoda. "Still, they were well roasted, now weren't they?"

"Your vanity is colossal, Miss Tuttle," laughed John, "but I will admit that I never saw better roasting." Then he said soberly, "I believe we had better not try the trail again today, Rhoda dear. We don't know where to go and we've no supplies. We'd better get our strength up, resting here today, and tomorrow start in good shape."

Rhoda looked wistfully from the shade of the pueblo out over the desert. She had become very, very tired of this endless fleeing.

"I wish the Newman ranch was just over beyond," she said. "John, what will you do if Kut-le comes on us here?"

DeWitt's forehead burned a painful red.

"I have a shot left in my revolver," he said.

Rhoda walked ever to John and put one hand on his shoulder as he sat looking up at her with somber blue eyes.

"John," she said, "I want you to promise me that you will fire at Kut-le only in the last extremity to keep him from carrying me off, and that you will shoot only as Porter did, to lame and not to kill."

John's jaws came together and he returned the girl's scrutiny with a steel-like glance.

"Why do you plead for him?" he asked finally.

"He saved my life," she answered simply.

John rose and walked up and down restlessly.

"Rhoda, if a white man had done this thing I would shoot him as I would a dog. What do I care for a law in a case like this! We were men long before we had laws. Why should this Indian be let go when he has done what a white would be shot for?"

Rhoda looked at him keenly.

"You talk as if in your heart you knew you were going to kill him because he is an Indian and were trying to justify yourself for it!"

He turned on the girl a look so haunted, so miserable, yet so determined, that her heart sank. For a time there was silence, each afraid to speak. At last Rhoda said coolly:

"Will you get fresh water while I bank in the fire?"

DeWitt's face relaxed. He smiled a little grimly.

"I'll do anything for you but that one thing—promise not to kill the Indian."

"The desert has changed us both, John," said Rhoda. "It has taken the veneer off both of us!"

"Maybe so," replied DeWitt. "I only know that that Apache must pay for the hell you and I have lived through."

"Look at me, John!" cried Rhoda. "Can't you realize that the good Kut-le has done me has been far greater than his affront to me? Do you see how well I am, how strong? Oh, if I could only make you see what a different world I live in! You would have been tied to an invalid, John, if Kut-le hadn't stolen me! Think now of all I can do for you! Of the home I can make, of the work I can do!"

DeWitt answered tersely.

"I'm mighty glad you're well, but only for your own sake and because I can have you longer. I don't want you to work for me. I'll do all the working that's done in our family!"

"But," protested Rhoda, "that's just keeping me lazy and selfish!"

"You couldn't be selfish if you tried. You pay your way with your beauty. When I think of that Apache devil having the joy of you all this time, watching you grow back to health, taking care of you, carrying you, it makes me feel like a cave man. I could kill him with a club! Thank heaven, the lynch law can hold in this forsaken spot! And there isn't a man in the country but will back me up, not a jury that would find me guilty!"

Rhoda sat in utter consternation. The power of the desert to lay bare the human soul appalled her. This was a DeWitt that the East never could have shown her. It sickened her as she realized that no words of hers could sway this man; to realize that she was trying to stay with her feeble feminine hands passions that were as old a world-force as love itself. All her new-found strength seemed inadequate to solve this new problem.



CHAPTER XIX

THE TRAIL AGAIN

For a long time Rhoda sat silently considering her problem and John watched her soberly. Finally she turned to speak. As she did so, she caught on the young man's face a look so weary, so puzzled, so altogether wretched that the girl's heart smote her. This was indeed a poor return for what he had endured for her! Rhoda jumped to her feet with resolution in her eyes. "Are you too tired to explore the ruins?" she asked. DeWitt rose languidly. Rhoda had responded at once to rest and food but John would need a month of care and quiet in which to regain his strength.

"I'll do anything you want me to—in that line!"

Rhoda carefully ignored the last phrase.

"Even if we're half dead, it's too bad to miss the opportunity to examine such a wonderful thing as this. You couldn't find as glorious a setting for a ruin anywhere in Europe."

"Oh, yes, you could; lots of 'em," answered DeWitt. "You can't compare a ruin like this with anything in Europe. What makes European ruins appeal to us is not only their intrinsic beauty but the association of big ideas with them. We know that big thoughts built them and perhaps destroyed them."

"What do you call big thoughts?" asked Rhoda. "Wasn't it just as great for these Pueblo Indians to perform such terrible labor in building this for their families as it was for some old king to work thousands of slaves to death to build him a monument?"

DeWitt laughed.

"Rhoda, you can love the desert, its Indians and its ruins all you want to, if you won't ask me to! I've had all I want of the three of them! Lord, how I hate it all!"

Rhoda looked at him wistfully. If only he could understand the spiritual change in her that was even greater than the physical! If only he could see the beauty of those far lavender hazes! If only he could understand how even now she was heartsick for the night trail where one looked up into the sky as into a shadowy opal! If only he knew the peace that had dwelt with her on the holiday ledge where there were tints and beauties too deep for words! And yet with the wistfulness came a strange sense of satisfaction that all this new part of her must belong forever to Kut-le.

John led the way into the dwelling. All was emptiness and ruin. All that remained of the old life within its walls were wonderful bits of pottery. Only once did DeWitt give evidence of pleasure. He was examining the carefully finished walls of one of the rooms when he called:

"I say, Rhoda, just look at this bit of humanness!"

Rhoda came to him quickly and he pointed low down on the adobe wall where was the perfect imprint of a baby's hand.

"The little rascal got spanked, I'll bet, for putting his hand on the 'dobe before it was dry!" commented John.

Rhoda smiled but said nothing. These departed peoples had become very real and very pitiable to her.

As soon as he could drag Rhoda from the ancient pots, John led the way to the top of the ruin. He was anxious to find if there were more than the one trail leading from the desert. To his great satisfaction he found that the mesa was unscalable except at the point that Rhoda had found as she staggered up from the desert.

"I'm going to guard that trail tonight," he said. "It's just possible, you know, that Kut-le escaped from Porter, though I think if he had he would have been upon us long before this. I've been mighty careless. But my brain is so tired it seems to have been off duty. I could hold that trail single-handed from the upper terrace for a week."

"Just remember," said Rhoda quickly, "that I've asked you not to shoot to kill!"

Again the hard light gleamed in DeWitt's eyes.

"I shall have a few words with him first, then I shall shoot to kill. There is that between that Indian and me which a woman evidently can't understand. I just can't see why you take the stand you do!"

"John dear," cried Rhoda, "put yourself in his place. With all the race prejudice against you that he had, wouldn't you have done as he has?"

"Probably," answered Dewitt calmly. "I also would have expected what he is going to get."

A sudden sense of the bizarre nature of their conversation caused Rhoda to say comically:

"I never knew that you could have such bloody ideas, John!"

DeWitt was glad to turn the conversation.

"I am so only occasionally," he said. "For instance, instead of shooting the rabbit for supper, I'm going to try a figure-four trap."

They returned to their little camp on the upper terrace and Rhoda sat with wistful gray eyes fastened on the desert while John busied himself with the trap-making. He worked with the skill of his country boyhood and the trap was cleverly finished.

"It's evident that I'm not the leader of the expedition any more," said Rhoda, looking at the trap admiringly.

John shook his head.

"I've lost my faith in myself as a hero. It's one thing to read of the desert and think how well you could have managed there, and another thing to be on the spot!"

The day passed slowly. As night drew on the two on the mesa top grew more and more anxious. There was little doubt but that they could live for a number of days at the old pueblo, yet it was evident that the ruin was far from any traveled trail and that chances of discovery were slight except by Kut-le. On the other hand, they were absolutely unprepared for a walking trip across the desert. Troubled and uncertain what to do, they watched the wonder of the sunset. Deeper, richer, more divine grew the colors of the desert, and in one supreme, flaming glory the sun sank from view.

DeWitt with his arm across Rhoda's shoulders spoke anxiously.

"Don't you still think we'd better start tomorrow?"

"Yes," she answered, "I suppose so. What direction shall we take?"

"East," replied DeWitt. "We're bound to strike help if we can keep going long enough in one direction. We'll cook a good supply of rabbits and I'll fix up one of those bowl-like ollas with my handkerchief, so we can carry water in it as well as in the two canteens. I think you had better sleep in the little room there tonight and I'll lie across the end of the trail here."

Rhoda sighed.

"I've nothing better to suggest. As you say, it's all guesswork!"

They set the rabbit trap by the spring, then Rhoda, quite recovered from her nervousness of the night before, entered her little sleeping-room and made ready for the night. The front of the room had so crumbled away that she could see John's dark form by the trail, and she lay down with a sense of security and fell asleep at once.

John paced the terrace for a long hour after Rhoda was asleep, trying to plan every detail for the morrow. He dared not confess even to himself how utterly disheartened he felt in the face of this terrible adversary, the desert. Finally, realizing that he must have rest if Rhoda was not to repeat her previous experience in leading him across the desert he stretched himself on the ground across the head of the trail. He must trust to his nervousness to make him sleep lightly.

How long she had slept Rhoda did not know when she was wakened by a half-muffled oath from DeWitt. She jumped to her feet and ran out to the terrace. Never while life remained to her was she to forget what she saw there. DeWitt and Kut-le were wrestling in each other's grip! Rhoda stood horrified. As the two men twisted about, DeWitt saw the girl and panted:

"Don't stir, Rhoda! Don't call or you'll have his whole bunch up here!"

"Don't worry about that!" exclaimed Kut-le. "You've been wanting to get hold of me. Now we'll fight it out bare-handed and the best man wins."

Rhoda looked wildly down the trail, then ran up to the two men.

"Stop!" she screamed. "Stop!" Then as she caught the look in the men's faces as they glared at each other she cried, "I hate you both, you beasts!"

Her screams carried far in the night air, for in a moment Cesca came panting up the trail. She lunged at DeWitt with catlike fury, but at a sharp word from Kut-le she turned to Rhoda and stood guard beside the girl. Rhoda stood helplessly watching the battle as one watches the horrors of a nightmare.

Kut-le and DeWitt now were fighting as two wolves fight. Both the men were trained wrestlers, but in their fury all their scientific training was forgotten, and rolling over and over on the rocky trail each fought for a hold on the other's throat. With Kut-le was the advantage of perfect condition and superior strength. But DeWitt was fighting for his stolen mate. He was fighting like a cave man who has brooded for months on his revenge, and he was a terrible adversary. He had the sudden strength, the fearful recklessness of a madman. Now rolling on the edge of the terrace, now high against the crumbling pueblo, the savage and the civilized creature dragged each other back and forth. And Rhoda, awed by this display of passions, stood like the First Woman and waited!

Of a sudden Kut-le disentangled himself and with knees on DeWitt's shoulders he clutched at the white man's throat. At the same time, DeWitt gathered together his recumbent body and with a mighty heave he flung Kut-le over his head. Rhoda gave a little cry, thinking the fight was ended; but as Kut-le gained his feet, DeWitt sprang to meet him and the struggle was renewed. Rhoda never had dreamed of a sight so sickening as this of the two men she knew so well fighting for each other's throats with the animal's lust for killing. She did not know what would be Kut-le's course if he gained the mastery, but as she caught glimpses of DeWitt's face with its clenched teeth and terrible look of loathing she knew that if his fingers ever reached Kut-le's throat the Indian could hope for no mercy.

And then she saw DeWitt's face go white and his head drop back.

"Oh!" she screamed. "You've killed him! You've killed him!"

The Indian's voice came in jerks as he eased DeWitt to the ground.

"He's just fainted. He's put up a tremendous fight for a man in his condition!"

As he spoke he was tying DeWitt's hands and ankles with his own and DeWitt's handkerchiefs. Rhoda would have run to DeWitt's aid but Cesca's hand was tight on her arm. Before the girl could plan any action, Kut-le had turned to her and had lifted her in his arms. She fought him wildly.

"I can't leave him so, Kut-le! You will kill all I've learned to feel for you if you leave him so!"

"He'll be all right!" panted Kut-le, running down the trail. "I've got Billy Porter down here to leave with him!"

At the foot of the trail were horses. Gagged and bound to his saddle Billy Porter sat in the moonlight with Molly on guard. Kut-le put Rhoda on a horse, then quickly thrust Porter to the ground, where the man sat helplessly.

"Oh, Billy!" cried Rhoda. "John is on the terrace! Find him! Help him!"

The last words were spoken as Kut-le turned her horse and led at a trot into the desert.



CHAPTER XX

THE RUINED MISSION

Rhoda was so confused that for a moment she could only ease herself to the pony's swift canter and wonder if her encounter with DeWitt had been but a dream after all. A short distance from the pueblo Kut-le rode in beside her. It was very dark, with the heavy blackness that just precedes the dawn, but Rhoda felt that the Indian was looking at her exultingly.

"It seemed as if I never would get Alchise and Injun Tom moved to a friend's campos so that I could overtake you. I will say that that fellow Porter is game to the finish. It took me an hour to subdue him! Now, don't worry about the two of them. With a little work they can loose themselves and help each other to safety. I saw Newman's trail ten miles or so over beyond the pueblo mesa and I told Porter just how to go to pick him up."

Rhoda laughed hysterically.

"No wonder you have such a hold on your Indians! You seem never to fail! I do believe as much of it is luck as ingenuity!"

Kut-le chuckled.

"What a jolt DeWitt will find when he comes to, and finds Porter!"

"You needn't gloat over the situation, Kut-le!" exclaimed Rhoda, half sobbing in her conflict of emotions.

"Oh, you mustn't mind anything I say," returned the young Indian. "I am crazy with joy at just hearing your voice again! Are you really sorry to be with me again? Did DeWitt mean as much to you as ever? Tell me, Rhoda! Say just one kindly thing to me!"

"O Kut-le," cried Rhoda, "I can't! I can't! You must help me to be strong! You—who are the strongest person that I know! Can't you put yourself in my place and realize what a horrible position I am in?"

Kut-le answered slowly.

"I guess I can realize it. But the end is so great, so much worth while that nothing before that matters much, to me! Rhoda, isn't this good—the lift of the horse under your knees—the air rushing past your face—the weave and twist of the trail—don't they speak to you and doesn't your heart answer?"

"Yes," answered Rhoda simply.

The young Indian rode still closer. Dawn was lifting now, and with a gasp Rhoda saw what she had been too agonized to heed on the terrace in the moonlight. Kut-le was clothed again! He wore the khaki suit, the high-laced riding boots of the ranch days; and he wore them with the grace, the debonair ease that had so charmed Rhoda in young Cartwell. That little sense of his difference that his Indian nakedness had kept in Rhoda's subconsciousness disappeared. She stared at his broad, graceful shoulders, at the fine outline of his head which still was bare, and she knew that her decision was going to be indescribably difficult to keep. Kut-le watched the wistful gray eyes tenderly, as if he realized the depth of anguish behind their wistfulness; yet he watched none the less resolutely, as if he had no qualms over the outcome of his plans. And Rhoda, returning his gaze, caught the depth and splendor of his eyes. And that wordless joy of life whose thrill had touched her the first time that she had met young Cartwell rushed through her veins once more. He was the youth, the splendor, the vivid wholesomeness of the desert! He was the heart itself, of the desert.

Kut-le laid his hand on hers.

"Rhoda," softly, "do you remember the moment before Porter interrupted us? Ah, dear one, you will have to prove much to erase the truth of that moment from our hearts! How much longer must I wait for you, Rhoda?"

Rhoda did not speak, but as she returned the young man's gaze there came her rare slow smile of unspeakable beauty and tenderness. Kut-le trembled; but before he could speak Rhoda seemed to see between his face and hers, DeWitt, haggard and exhausted, expending the last remnant of his strength in his fight for her. She put her hands before her face with a little sob.

Kut-le watched her in silence for a moment, then he said in his low rich voice:

"Neither DeWitt nor I want you to suffer over your decision. And DeWitt doesn't want just the shell of you. I have the real you! O Rhoda, the real you will belong to me if you are seven times DeWitt's wife! Can't you realize that forever and ever you are mine, no matter how you fight or what you do?"

But Rhoda scarcely heard him. She was with DeWitt, struggling across the parching sands.

"O Kut-le! Kut-le! What shall I do! What shall I do!"

Kut-le started to answer, then changed his mind.

"You poor, tired little girl," he said. "You have had a fierce time there in the desert. You look exhausted. What did you have to eat and how did you make out crossing to the mesa? By your trail you went miles out of your way."

Rhoda struggled for calm.

"We nearly died the first day," she said. "But we did very well after we reached the mesa."

Kut-le smiled to himself. It was hard even for him to realize that this plucky girl who passed so simply over such an ordeal as he knew she must have endured could be the Rhoda of the ranch. But he said only:

"We'll make for the timber line and let you rest for a while."

At mid-morning they left the desert and began to climb a rough mountain slope. At the pinon line, Kut-le called a halt. Never before had shade seemed so good to Rhoda as it did now. She lay on the pine-needles looking up into the soft green. It was unspeakably grateful to her eyes which had been so long tortured by the desert glare. She lay thus for a long time, her mental pain for a while lost in the access of physical comfort. Shortly Molly, who had been working rapidly, brought her a steaming bowl of stew. Rhoda ate this, then with her head pillowed on her arm she fell asleep.

She was wakened by Molly's touch on her arm. It was late afternoon. Rhoda looked up into the squaw's face and drew a quick hard breath as realization came to her.

"Molly! Molly!" she cried. "I'm in terrible, terrible trouble, Molly!"

The squaw looked worried.

"You no go away! Kut-le heap sorry while you gone!"

But Rhoda scarcely heeded the woman's voice. She rolled over with her hot face in the fragrant needles and groaned.

"O Molly! Molly! I'm in terrible trouble!"

"What trouble? You tell old Molly!"

Rhoda sat up and stared into the deep brown eyes. Just as Kut-le had become to her the splendor of the desert, so had Molly become the brooding wisdom of the desert. With sudden inspiration she grasped the Indian woman's toil-scarred hands.

"Listen, Molly! Before I knew Kut-le, I was going to marry the white man, DeWitt. And after he stole me I hated Kut-le and I hated the desert. And now, O Molly, I love both Kut-le and the desert, and I must marry the white man!"

"Why? You tell Molly why?"

"Because he is white, Molly, like me. Because he loves me so and has done so much for me! But most of all because he is white!"

Molly scowled.

"Because Kut-le is Injun, you no marry him?"

Rhoda nodded miserably.

"Huh! And you think you so big, Kut-le so big that Great Spirit care if you marry white, marry Injun. All Great Spirit care is for every squaw to have papoose. Squaw, she big fool to listen to her head. Squaw, she must always listen to her heart, that is Great Spirit talking. Your heart, it say marry Kut-le!"

Molly paused and looked at the girl, who sat with stormy eyes on the sinking sun. And she forgot her hard-earned wisdom and was just a heart-hungry woman.

"You stay! Stay with Kut-le and old Molly! You so sweet! You like little childs! You lie in old Molly's heart like little girl papoose that never came to Molly. You stay! Always, always, Molly will take care of you!"

Rhoda was deeply touched. This was the cry of the famished motherhood of a dying race. She put her soft cheek on Molly's shoulder and she could no longer see the sun, for her eyes were tear-blinded. Kut-le, standing on the other side of the camp, looked at the picture with deepening eyes; then he crossed and put his hand on Rhoda's shoulder.

"Dear one," he said, "you must eat your supper, then we must take the trail."

Rhoda looked up into the young man's face. She was exquisite in the failing light. For a moment it seemed as if Kut-le must fold her in his arms; but something in her troubled gaze withheld him and he only smiled at her caressingly.

"Before you eat," he said, "come to the edge of the camp and look through the glasses."

Rhoda hurried after him, and stared out over the desert. A short distance out, vivid in the afterglow, moved two figures. She distinguished the short wiry figure of Porter, the gaunt figure of DeWitt, walking with determined strides. Waiting till she could command her voice, Rhoda turned to Kut-le. He was watching her keenly.

"Will they pick up our trail? Are the poor things badly lost?"

"Billy Porter lost! I guess not! And I gave him enough hints so that he ought to join Newman in another twenty-four hours."

Rhoda smiled wanly.

"Sometimes you forget to act like a cold-blooded Indian."

Kut-le gave his familiar chuckle.

"Well, you see, I've been contaminated by my long association with the whites!"

And so again the nights of going. During her waking hours, Rhoda spent the greater part of her time considering arguments that would have weight with Kut-le when the struggle came which she knew was imminent.

If she had suffered before, if the early part of her abduction had been agony, it had been nothing in comparison with what she was enduring in putting Kut-le aside for DeWitt. And, after all, she had no final guide in holding to her resolution save an instinct that told her that her course was the right one. All the arguments that she could put into words against inter-race marriage seemed inadequate. This instinct which was wordless and formless alone remained sufficient.

And with the ill logic of womankind, through all her arguing with herself there flushed one glad thought. Kut-le knew that she loved him, knew that she was suffering in the thought of giving him up! His tender, half sad, half triumphant smile proved that, as did his protective air of ownership.

Rhoda noticed one condition of her keeping to her decision. She was very firm in it at night when the desert was dim. But in the glory of the dawns and the sunsets, her little arguments seemed strangely small. Sitting on a mountainside one afternoon, Rhoda watched a rain-storm sweep across the ranges, across the desert, to the far-lying mesas. Normally odorless, the desert, after the rain, emitted a faint, ineffable odor that teased the girl's fancy as if she verged on the secret of the desert's beauty. Exquisite violet mists rolled back to the mountains. Flashing every rainbow tint from its moistened breast the desert lay as if breathing the very words of the Great Scheme.

Suddenly to Rhoda her resolution seemed small and futile, and for a long hour she revelled in the thought of belonging to the man she loved. And yet as night descended and the infinite reaches of the desert receded into darkness, the spell was broken, and the old doubts and misery returned.

And so again, the nights of going. But the holiday aspect of the flight was gone. Kut-le moved with a grim determination that was not to be misinterpreted. Rhoda knew that they were to reach the Mexican border with all possible speed. The young Indian drove the little party to the limit of its endurance. Rhoda avoided talking to him as much as she could and Kut-le, seeming to understand her mood, left her much to herself.

On the fourth day they camped on a canon edge. After Rhoda had eaten she walked with Kut-le to the far edge and looked down. The canon was very deep and narrow. Some distance away, near where it opened on the desert, lay a heap of ruins.

"Is that another pueblo?" asked Rhoda.

"No, it's an old monastery. Part of the year they have a padre there. I wish I knew if there was one there now."

"Why?" asked Rhoda suspiciously.

"Don't bother your dear head," answered Kut-le. Then he went on, as if half to himself: "There's been an awful lot of fooling on this expedition. Perhaps I ought to have made for the Mexican border the very night I took you." He looked at Rhoda's wide, troubled eyes. "But no, then I would have missed this wonderful desert growth of yours! But now we are going straight over the border where I know a padre that will many us. Then we will make for Europe at once."

The morning sun glinted on the pine-needles. Old Molly hummed a singsong air over the stew-pot. And Rhoda stood with stormy, tear-dimmed eyes and quivering lips.

"It can never, never be, Kut-le!"

"Why not?"

"We can't solve the problems of race adjustment. No love is big enough for that. I have been civilized a thousand years. You have been savage a thousand years. You can't come forward. I can't go backward."

"You know well enough, Rhoda," said Kut-le quietly, "that I am civilized."

"You are externally, perhaps," said the girl. "But you yourself have no proof that at heart you are not as uncivilized as your father or grandfather. Your stealing me shows that. Nothing can change our instinct. You know that you might revert at any time."

Kut-le turned on her fiercely.

"Do you love me, Rhoda?"

Rhoda stood silently, her cleft chin trembling, her deep gray eyes wide and grief-stricken.

"Do you love me—and better than you do DeWitt?" insisted the man,

Suddenly Rhoda lifted her head proudly.

"Yes," she said, "I do love you, better than any one in the world; but I cannot marry you!"

Kut-le took her trembling hands in his.

"Why not, dear one?" he asked.

Still the sun flickered on the pine-needles and still Molly hummed over her stew-pot. Still Rhoda stood looking into the eyes of the man she loved, her scarlet cheeks growing each moment more deeply crimson.

"Because you are an Indian. The instinct in me against such a marriage is so strong that I dare not go against it."

Kut-le's mouth closed in the old way.

"And still you shall marry me, Rhoda!"

"I am a white woman, Kut-le. I can't marry an Indian. The difference is too great!"

Kut-le turned abruptly and walked to the canon edge, looking far out to the desert. Rhoda, panting and half hysterical, watched him. The moment which she had so dreaded had arrived, and she found herself, after all her planning, utterly unprepared to meet it save with hackneyed phrases.

It seemed a long time that Kut-le stood staring away from her. At last Rhoda could bear the silence no longer. She ran to him and put her trembling hand on his arm. He turned his stern young face to her and her heart failed her.

"O Kut-le! Kut-le!" she cried. "If you won't help me to do right, who will? It's not right for us to marry! Just not right! That's all I know about it!"

Kut-le put both hands on her shoulders.

"Look here, Rhoda. What you call the 'right' instinct is just the remnant of the old man-made race hatred in you. It's just a part of the old conceit of the Caucasian."

Rhoda stirred restlessly, but Kut-le held her firmly and went on.

"I tell you, if we're not to go mad, we've got to believe that great things come to us for a purpose. There is no human being who has loved who does not believe that love is the greatest thing that has been given to man. The man who has loved knows that the biggest things in the world have been done for the love of woman. Love is bigger than nations or races. It's human, not white, or black, or yellow. It's above all we can do to tarnish it with our little prejudices. When it comes greatly, it comes supremely."

He lifted the girl's face and looked deeply into her eyes.

"Rhoda, if it has come as greatly to you as it has to me, you will not pause for any sorrow that your coming to me may cost you. You will come, in spite of everything. I believe that if in your smallness and ignorance you refuse this gift that has come to you and me, you will be outraging the greatest force in nature."

Rhoda stood sorrow-stricken and confused. When the deep, quiet voice ceased, she said brokenly:

"I haven't lived in the desert so long as you. The way does not lie so clear to me. If only I had your conviction, I too could be strong and walk the path I saw unhesitatingly. But I see no path!"

"Then," said Kut-le, "because I see, I'll decide for you! O Rhoda, you must believe in me! I have had you in my power and I have kept the faith with you. I am going to take you and marry you. I am going to make this gift that has come to you and me make us the big man and woman that nature needs. Tonight we shall reach the padre who will marry us."

He watched the girl keenly for a moment, then he again turned from her deliberately and walked to the edge of the canon, as if he wanted her to come to her final decision unbiased by his nearness. But he turned back to her with a curious expression on his face.

"Come and take a good-by look, Rhoda! Your friends are below. I hope it will be some time before we see them again!"

Rhoda went to him. Far, far below, she saw little dots of men making camp beyond the monastery near the desert. Suddenly Rhoda sank to her knees with a cry of longing that was heart-breaking.

"O my people! My own people!" she sobbed, crouching upon the canon edge.

Kut-le watched the little figure with inscrutable eyes. Then he lifted the girl to her feet.

"Rhoda, are you going to eat your heart out for your own kind if you marry me? Won't I be sufficient? It hadn't occurred to me that I might not be!"

"You haven't given up your people," answered Rhoda. "You are always going back to them."

"But you aren't really giving them up," urged Kut-le. "It really is I who make the sacrifice of my race!"

"And that is the reason for one of my fears," cried Rhoda. "I am afraid that some day you would find the price too great and that our marriage would be wrecked."

"Even if I went back for a few months each year, would that make you unhappy?" asked Kut-le.

"Kut-le!" exclaimed Rhoda. "I am not talking of externals. I mean that if your longing for your own kind made you lose your love for me. Oh, I can't see any of it straight, but I am afraid!"

"Nonsense, Rhoda! I fought that battle long before I knew you. There is absolutely no danger of my reverting. I am going to spend the rest of my life among the whites even if you shouldn't marry me, Rhoda. Rhoda, I wish I had had time to let you grow to it fully!"

Rhoda stood rigidly. Molly, sensing trouble, hovered restlessly just out of earshot.

"If you married DeWitt," Kut-le went on, "could you forget me? Forget the desert? Forget our days and nights? Forget my arms about you?"

"Oh, no! No!" cried Rhoda. "You know that I shall love you always!"

"And will DeWitt want what you offer him?" Kut-le went on, mercilessly.

Rhoda winced.

"I wish," said Kut-le huskily, "you never will know how I wish that you had come to me freely, feeling that the sacrifice was worth while!"

Rhoda looked at him wonderingly. After all the weeks of iron determination, was the young giant weakening, was his great heart failing him!

"I had thought," he went on, "that you were big enough to stand the test. That after the travail and the heart scourging, you would see—and would come to me freely—strong enough to smile at all your regrets and fears. That thought steeled me to put you through the torture. But if now, at the end, you are coming to me only because you must! Rhoda, I don't want you on those terms."

Rhoda gasped. She felt as one feels when in a dream one falls an unexpected and endless distance. The relief from the pressure of Kut-le's will that had forced her on, for so long, left her weak and aimless.

Yet somehow she found the strength to say:

"Kut-le, we must give each other up! I love you so that I can let you go! Oh, can't you see how I feel about it!"

Again Kut-le looked far off over vista of mountains and canon. His eyes were deep and abstracted, as if he saw into the years ahead with knowledge denied to Rhoda. Then he turned to Rhoda and searched her face with burning gaze. He eyed her hair, her lovely heart-broken face, her slender figure. For a moment his face was tortured by a look of doubt that was heart-shattering. He lifted Rhoda across his chest in the old way and held her to him with passionate tenderness. He laid his face against hers and she heard him whisper:

"O my love! Love of my youth and my manhood!" Then he set her very gently to her feet. "Don't cry," he said. "I can't bear it!"

Rhoda threw her arms above her head in an abandonment of agony.

"Oh, I cannot, cannot bear this!" Then she added more calmly: "I suffer as much as you, Kut-le!"

Again the look of unspeakable grief crossed the young Indian's face, but it immediately became inscrutable. He led Rhoda along the canon edge.

"Do you see that little trail going down?" he said.

"Yes," said Rhoda wonderingly.

"Then go!" said Kut-le quietly.

Rhoda looked up at him blankly.

"Go!" he said sternly. "Go back to your own kind and I will go on, alone. Don't stop to talk any more. Go now!"

Rhoda turned and looked at Cesca squatting by the horses, at Molly hovering near by with anxious eyes. Never to make the dawn camp, again—never to hear Molly humming over the stew-pot! Suddenly Rhoda felt that if she could have Molly with her she would not be so utterly separated from Kut-le.

"Let Molly go with me!" she said. "I love Molly!"

"No!" said Kut-le. "You are to forget the desert and the Indians. Go now!"

With awe and grief too deep for words, Rhoda obeyed the young chief's stern eyes. She clambered down the rough trail to a break in the canon wall, then, clinging with hands and feet, down the sheer side. The tall figure, beautiful in its perfect symmetry, stood immovable, the face never turning from her. Rhoda knew that she never was to forget this picture of him. At the foot of the canon wall she stood long, looking up. Far, far above, the straight figure stood in lonely majesty, gazing at the life for which he had sacrificed so much. Rhoda looked until, tear-blinded, she turned away.



CHAPTER XXI

THE END OF THE TRAIL

The canon was sandy and rough. Rhoda could see the monastery set among olive-trees. Beyond this where the canon opened to the desert she knew that the white men's camp lay, though she could not see it.

She had no fear of losing her way, with the canon walls hemming her in. She still was sobbing softly to herself as she started along the foot of the wall. She tramped steadily for a time, then she stopped abruptly. She would not go on! The sacrifice was too much! She looked back to the canon top. Kut-le had disappeared. Already he must be only a memory to her!

Then of a sudden Rhoda felt a sense of shame that her strength of purpose should be so much less than the Indian's. At least, she could carry in her heart forever the example of his fortitude. It would be like his warm hand guiding and lifting her through the hard days and years to come. Strangely comforted and strengthened by this thought, Rhoda started on through the familiar wilderness of the desert.

This, she thought, was her last moment alone in the desert, for without Kut-le she would never return to it. She watched the gray-green cactus against the painted rock heaps. She watched the brown, tortured crest of the canon against the violet sky. She watched the melting haze above the monastery, the buzzards sliding through the motionless air, the far multi-colored ranges, as if she would etch forever on her memory the world that Kut-le loved. And she knew that, let her body wander where it must, her spirit would forever belong to the desert.

Rhoda passed the monastery, where she thought she saw men among the olive-trees. But she did not stop. She gradually worked out into an easy trail that led toward the open desert.

The little camp at the canon's mouth was preparing to move when Jack Newman jumped excitedly to his feet. Coming toward them through the sand was a boyish figure that moved with a beautiful stride, tireless and swift. As the newcomer drew nearer they saw that she was erect and lithe, slender but full-chested and that her face—

"Rhoda!" shouted John DeWitt.

In a moment, Jack was grasping one of her hands and John DeWitt the other, while Billy Porter and Carlos shook each other's hands excitedly.

"Gee whiz!" cried Jack. "John said you were in superb condition, but I didn't realize that it meant this! Why, Rhoda, if it wasn't for your hair and eyes and the dimple in your chin, I wouldn't know you!"

"Are you all right?" asked DeWitt anxiously. "Where in the world did you come from? Where have you been?"

"Were you hurt much in the fight?" cried Rhoda. "Oh!" looking about at the eager listeners, "that was the most awful thing I ever saw, that fight! And Billy Porter, you are all right, I see. How shall I ever repay you all for what you have done for me!"

"Gosh!" exclaimed Porter. "I'm repaid just by looking at you! If that pison Piute hasn't made monkeys of us all, I'd like to know who has! How did you get away from him?"

"He let me go," answered Rhoda simply.

The men gasped.

"What was the matter with him!" ejaculated Porter, "Was he sick or dying?"

"No," said Rhoda mechanically; "I guess he saw that it was useless."

"And he dropped you in the desert without water or food or horse!" cried DeWitt. "Oh, that Apache cur!"

"No! No!" exclaimed Rhoda. "He dropped me not far from here. We saw the camp and he sent me to it."

The men looked at each other incredulously. Jack Newman's face was puzzled. He knew Kut-le and it was hard to believe that he would give up what he already had won. DeWitt spoke excitedly.

"Then he's still within our reach! Hurry up, friends!"

Rhoda turned swiftly to the gaunt-faced man. Then she spoke very distinctly, with that in her deep gray eyes that stirred each listener with a vague sense of loss and yearning.

"I don't want Kut-le harmed! I shan't tell you anything that will help you locate him. He did me no harm. On the contrary, he made me a well woman, physically and mentally. If I can forgive his effrontery in stealing me, surely you all will grant me this favor to top all that you have done for me."

Porter's under lip protruded with the old obstinate look.

"That fellow's got to be made an example of, Miss Rhoda," he said. "No white that's a man can stand for what he's done. He's bound to be hunted down, you know. If we don't, others will!"

Rhoda turned impatiently to DeWitt.

"John, after all our talk, you must understand! You know what good Kut-le has done me and how big it was of him to let me go. Make them promise to let him alone!"

But there was no answering look of understanding in DeWitt's worn face.

"Rhoda, you haven't any idea what you're asking! It isn't a question of forgiveness! You don't get the point of view that you ought! Why, the whole country is worked up over this thing! The newspapers are full of it. Just as Porter says, the Apache's got to be made an example of. We will hunt him down, if it takes a year!"

So far Jack Newman had said nothing. Rhoda looked at him as if he were her last hope.

"Oh, Jack!" she cried. "He was your friend, your dearest friend! And he sent me back! Why, you never would have got me if he hadn't voluntarily let me go! He is wonderful on the trail!"

"So we found!" said DeWitt grimly.

But Rhoda was watching Jack.

"Rhoda," Jack said at last, "I know how you feel. I know what a bully chap Kut-le is. This just about does me up. But what he's done can't be let go. We've got to punish him!"

"'Punish him!'" repeated Rhoda. "Just what do you mean by that?"

"We mean," answered DeWitt, "that when we find him, I'll shoot him!"

"No!" cried Rhoda. "No! Why he sent me back!"

The three men looked at Rhoda uncomfortably and at each other wonderingly. A woman's magnanimity is never to be understood by a man!

"Are you tired, Rhoda?" asked DeWitt abruptly. "Do you feel able to take to the saddle at once?"

"I'm all right!" exclaimed Rhoda impatiently. "What are your plans?"

DeWitt pointed out across the sand to the canon wall. A line of slender footprints led through the level wastes as plainly as if on new-fallen snow.

"We will follow your trail," he said.

There was silence for an instant in the little camp while the men eyed the girlish face, flushed and vivid beneath the tan. As it had come when DeWitt had rescued her, the old sense of the appalling nature of her experience was returning to her again. With sickening clarity she was getting the men's view-point. The old Rhoda would have protested, would have fought desperately and blindly. The new Rhoda had lived through hours of hopeless battle with circumstance. She had learned the desert's lesson of patience.

"I have thought," she said slowly, "so much of the joy of my return to you! God only knows how the picture of it has kept me alive from day to day. All your joy seems swallowed up in your thirst for revenge. All right, my friends. Only, wherever you go, I go too!"

Billy Porter shook his head with a muttered "Gosh!" as if the ways of women were quite beyond him.

"I think you had better ride on to the ranch with Carlos," said DeWitt, "while we take up Kut-le's trail. This will be no trip for a woman."

"You're foolish!" exclaimed Jack. "We'll not let her out of our sight again. You can't tell what stunt Kut-le is up to!"

"That's right!" said Porter. "It'll be hard on her, but she'd better come with us."

"Don't trouble to discuss the matter," said Rhoda coolly. "I am coming with you. Katherine probably sent some clothing for me, didn't she?"

"Why, yes!" exclaimed Jack. "That was one of the first things she thought of. She sent her own riding things for you. She spoke of the little silk dress you had on and said you hadn't anything appropriate in your trunks for the rough trip you might have to take after we found you."

Jack was talking rapidly, as if to relieve the tension of the situation. He undid a pack that he had kept tied to his saddle during all the long weeks of pursuit.

"We can rig up a dressing-room of blankets in no time," he went on, putting a bundle into Rhoda's hands.

Rhoda stood holding the bundle in silence while all hands set to rigging up her dressing-room. She felt suddenly cool-headed and resourceful. Her mind was forced away from her own sorrow to the solution of another heavy problem. In the little blanket tent she unrolled the bundle and smiled tenderly at the evidence of Katherine's thoughtfulness. There were underwear, handkerchiefs, toilet articles and Katherine's own pretty corduroy divided skirt and Norfolk jacket with a little blouse and Ascot scarf.

Rhoda took off her buckskins and tattered blue shirt slowly, with lips that would quiver. This was the last, the very last of Kut-le! She dressed herself in Katherine's clothes, then folded up the buckskins and shirt. She would keep them, always! When she came out from the tent she stepped awkwardly, for the skirts bothered her, and Jack, waiting nearby, smiled at her. At another time Rhoda would have joined in his amusement, but now she asked soberly:

"Which horse is for me?"

"Rhoda!" cried DeWitt, "I really wouldn't know you! I thought I never could want you anything but ethereal, but—Jack! Isn't she wonderful!"

Jack grinned. Rhoda, tanned and oval-cheeked, and straight of back and shoulder, was not to be compared with the invalid Rhoda.

"Gee!" he said. "Wait till Katherine sees her!"

Rhoda shrugged her shoulders.

"My pleasure in all that is swallowed up by this savage obsession of yours."

John DeWitt led out Rhoda's pony.

"You don't understand, dear," he said. "You can't doubt my heavenly joy at having you safe. But the outrage of it all— That Apache devil!"

"I do understand, John," answered Rhoda wearily. "Don't try to explain again. I know just how you all feel. Only, I will not have Kut-le killed."

"Rhoda," said DeWitt hoarsely, "I shall kill him as I would a yellow dog!"

Rhoda turned away. The line of march was quickly formed. Porter led. Carlos closed the rear. DeWitt and Newman rode on either side of Rhoda. They were not long in reaching the trail down the canon wall. Here they paused, for the rough ascent was impossible for the horses. The men looked questioningly at Rhoda but she volunteered no information. She believed that Kut-le had left the camp at the top long since. If for any reason he had delayed his going, she knew that he had watched every movement in the white camp and could protect himself easily.

"We can leave Carlos with the horses," said Porter, "while we climb up and see where the trail leads."

Rhoda dismounted, still silent, and followed Porter and DeWitt up the trail. Jack following her. The trail had been difficult to descend and was very hard to ascend. There was a dumb purposefulness about the men's movements that sickened Rhoda. She had seen too much of men in this mood of late and she feared them, She knew that all the amenities of civilization had been stripped from them and that she was only pitting her feeble strength against a world-old instinct.

Her heart was beating heavily as they neared the top, but not from the hard climb. She was inured to difficult trails. There was a sheer pull, shoulder high, at the top. The four accomplished it in one breathless group, then stood as if paralyzed.

Sunlight flickered through the pines. Molly and Cesca prepared the trail packs. And Kut-le sat beside the spring, eying his visitors grimly. He looked very cool and well groomed in comparison with his trail-worn adversaries.

DeWitt pulled out his Colt.

"I think I have you, this time," he said.

"Yes?" asked Kut-le, without stirring. "And what are you going to do with me?"

"I'm going to take about a minute to tell you what I think of you, and give you another minute in which to offer up some sort of an Indian prayer. Then I'm going to shoot you!"

Kut-le glanced from DeWitt to Rhoda, thence to Porter and Newman. Porter's under lip protruded. Jack looked sick. Both the men had their hands on their guns. Rhoda moistened her lips to speak, but Kut-le was before her.

"Are you a good shot, DeWitt?" he asked. "Because I know that Jack and Porter are sure in their aim."

"You'll never know whether I am or not," replied DeWitt. "You'd better be thankful that we are shooting you instead of hanging you, as you deserve, you cur! You'd better be glad you're dying! You haven't a white friend left in the country! All your ambition and hard work have come to this because you couldn't change your Indian hide, after all! Now then, say your prayers! Rhoda, cover up your eyes!"

Kut-le rose slowly. The whites noticed with a little pang of shame that he made no attempt to touch his gun which lay on the ground beside him.

"You'd better let Jack and Billy shoot with you," he said quietly. "You won't like to think about the shot that killed me, afterward. It isn't nice, I've heard, the memory of killing a man!"

"I'm shooting an Indian, not a man!" said DeWitt. "Say your prayers!"

The spell of fear that had paralyzed Rhoda snapped. Before Jack or Billy could detain her she ran to DeWitt's side and grasped his arm.

"John! John! Listen to me, one moment! Look at me! In spite of all, look, see what he's made of me, for you to reap the harvest! Look at me! I beg of you, do not shoot him! Let him go! Make him promise to leave the country. Make him promise anything! He keeps promises because he is an Indian! But if you have any love for me, if you care anything for my happiness, don't kill Kut-le! I tell you I will never marry you with his blood on your hands!"

A look curiously hard, curiously suspicious, came to DeWitt's eyes. Without lowering his gun or looking at the girl, he answered:

"You plead too well, Rhoda! I want this Indian to pay for more torture of mine than you can dream of! Get back out of the way! Are you ready, Kut-le?"

Rhoda's slender body was rigid. She moved away from DeWitt until she could encompass the four men in her glance. With arms folded across her arching chest she spoke with a richness in her voice that none of her hearers ever could forget.

"Remember, friends, you have forced me to this! You had me safe, but you thought more of revenge than you did of my safety! John, if you kill Kut-le you will kill the man that I love with all the passion of my soul!"

DeWitt gasped as if he had been struck. Newman and Porter stared dizzily. Only Kut-le stood composed. His eyes with the old look of tragic tenderness were fastened on the girl.

"Are you going to shoot him now, John?"

"Rhoda!" cried DeWitt fiercely. "Rhoda! Do you realize what you are saying?"

"Yes," said Rhoda steadily. "I realize that a force greater than race pride, greater than self love, greater than intelligence or fear, is gripping me! John, I love this man! He and I have lived through experiences together too great for words. He had me in the hollow of his hand but he sent me back to you, his enemy. You say that you love me. But you would not listen to my pleading, you would not grant me the only favor I ever asked you, the granting of which could not have harmed you."

Her listeners did not stir. Rhoda moistened her lips.

"Kut-le—— Think what he sacrificed for me. He gave up his dearest friendships. He gave up his honor and his country and risked his life, for me. And then when he thought the sacrifice would prove too great on my part, he gave me up! I ask you to give him his life, for me. Because, John, and Billy Porter, and Jack, I tell you that I love him!"

"My God!" panted DeWitt. "Rhoda, don't! You don't know what you're saying! Rhoda!"

Rhoda looked off where the afternoon sun lay like the very glory of God upon the chaos of range and desert. Almost—almost the secret of life itself seemed to bare itself to the girl's wide eyes. The white men watched her aghast. There was a desperate, hunted look in DeWitt's tired face. Rhoda turned back.

"I know what I'm saying," she replied. "But I tell you that this thing is bigger than I am! I have fought it, defied it, ignored it. It only grows the stronger! I know that this comes to humans but rarely. Yet it has come to me! It is the greatest force in the world! It is what makes life persist! To most people it comes only in small degree and they call that love! To me, in this boundless country, it has come boundlessly. It is greater than what you know as love. It is greater than I am. I don't know what sorrow or what joy my decision may bring me but—John, I want you to let Kut-le live that I may marry him!"

DeWitt's arm dropped as if dead.

"Rhoda," he repeated, agonizedly, "you don't know what you are saying!"

"Don't I?" asked Rhoda steadily. "Have I fought my fight without coming to know the risk? Don't I know what atavism means, and race alienation, and hunger for my own? But this which has come to me is stronger than all these. I love Kut-le, John, and I ask you to give his life to me!"

Still Kut-le stood motionless, as did Jack and Porter. DeWitt, without taking his eyes from Rhoda's, slowly, very slowly, slipped his Colt back into his belt. For a long moment he gazed at the wonder of the girl's exalted face. Then he passed his hands across his eyes.

"I give up!" he said quietly. Then he turned, walked slowly to the canon edge, and clambered deliberately down the trail.

Jack and Billy stood dazed for a moment longer, then Porter cleared his throat.

"Miss Rhoda, don't do this! Now don't you! Come with us back to the ranch. Just for a month till you get away from this Injun's influence! Come back and talk to Mrs. Newman. Come back and get some other woman's ideas! For God's sake, Miss Rhoda, don't ruin your life this way!"

"When Katherine knows it all, she'll understand and agree with me," replied Rhoda. "Jack, try to remember everything I said, to tell Katherine."

"I tell her!" cried Jack. "Why can't you tell her yourself? What are you planning to do?"

"That is for Kut-le to say," answered Rhoda.

"Rhoda," said Jack, and his voice shook with earnestness, "listen! Listen to me, your old playmate! I know how fascinating Kut-le is. Lord help us, girl, he's been my best friend for years! And in spite of everything, he's my friend still. But, Rhoda, it won't do! It won't work out right. He's a fine man for men. But as a husband to a white woman, he's still an Indian; and after the first, that must always come between you! Think again, Rhoda! I tell you, it won't do!"

Rhoda's voice still was clear and high, still bore the note of exaltation.

"I have thought again and again, Jack. There could be no end to the thinking, so I gave it up!"

Kut-le's eyes were on the girl, inscrutable and calm as the desert itself, but still he did not speak.

Billy Porter wiped his forehead again and again on a cloth that bore no resemblance to a handkerchief.

"I can't put up any kind of an argument. All I can say is I don't see how any one like you could do it, Miss Rhoda! Just think! His folks is Injuns, dirty, blanket Injuns! They scratch themselves from one day's end to the other. They will be your relatives, too! They'll be hanging round you all the time. I'm not a married man but I've noticed when you marry a man you generally marry his whole darn family. I—I—oh, there's no use talking to her! Let's take her away by force, Jack!"

Rhoda caught her breath and instinctively moved toward Kut-le. But Jack did not stir.

"No," he answered; "I've done all the chasing and trying to kidnap that I care about. But, Rhoda, once and for all I tell you that I think you are doing you and yours a deadly wrong!"

"Perhaps I am," replied Rhoda steadily. "I make no pretense of knowing. At any rate, I'm going to stay with Kut-le."

"For heaven's sake, Rhoda," cried Jack, "at least come back to the ranch and let Katherine give you a wedding. She'll never forgive me for leaving you this way!"

Porter turned on Jack savagely.

"Look here!" he shouted. "Are you crazy too! You're talking about her marrying this Apache!"

Jack spoke through his teeth obstinately.

"I've sweated blood over this thing as long as I propose to. If Rhoda wants to marry Kut-le, that's her business. I always did like Kut-le and I always shall. I've done my full duty in trying to get Rhoda back. Now that she says that she cares for him, it's neither your nor my business—nor DeWitt's. But I want them to come back to the ranch with me and let Katherine give them a nice wedding."

"But—but—" spluttered Porter. Then he stopped as the good sense of Jack's attitude suddenly came home to him. "All right," he said sullenly. "I'm like DeWitt. I pass. Only—if you try to take this Injun back to the ranch, he'll never get there alive. He'll be lynched by the first bunch of cowboys or miners we strike. Miss Rhoda nor you can't stop 'em. You want to remember how the whole country is worked up over this!"

Rhoda whitened.

"Do you think that too, Jack and Kut-le?"

For the first time, Jack spoke to Kut-le.

"What do you think, Kut-le?" he said.

"Porter's right, of course," answered Kut-le. "My plan always has been to slip down into Mexico and then go to Paris for a year or two. I've got enough money for that. I've always wanted to do some work in the Sorbonne. By the end of two years I think the Southwest will be willing to welcome us back."

Nothing could have so simplified the situation as Kut-le's calm reference to his plans for carrying on his profession. He stood in his well-cut clothes, not an Indian, but a well-bred, clean-cut man of the world. Even Porter recognized this, and with a sigh he resigned himself to the inevitable.

"You folks better come down to the monastery and be married," he said. "There's a padre down there."

"Gee! What'll I say to Katherine!" groaned Jack.

"Katherine will understand," said Rhoda. "Katherine always loved Kut-le. Even now I can't believe that she has altogether turned against him."

Jack Newman heaved a sigh.

"Well," he said, "Kut-le, will you and Rhoda come down to the monastery with us and be married?" His young niece was solemn.

"Yes," answered Kut-le, "if Rhoda is agreed."

Rhoda's face still wore the look of exaltation.

"I will come!" she said.

Kut-le did not let his glance rest on her, but turned to Billy.

"Mr. Porter," he said courteously, "will you come to my wedding?"

Billy looked dazed. He stared from Kut-le to Rhoda, and Rhoda smiled at him. His last defense was down.

"I'll be there, thanks!" he said.

"There is a side trail that we can take my horses down," said Kut-le.

They all were silent as Kut-le led the way down the side trail and by a circuitous path to the monastery. He made his way up through a rude, grass-grown path to a cloistered front that was in fairly good repair. Here they dismounted and waited while Kut-le pulled a long bell-rope that hung beside a battered door. There was not long to wait before the door opened and a white-faced old padre stood staring in amazement at the little group.

Kut-le talked rapidly, now in Spanish and now in English, and at last the padre turned to Rhoda with a smile.

"And you?" he asked. "You are quite willing?"

"Yes," said Rhoda, though her voice trembled in spite of her.

"And you?" asked the padre, turning to Jack and Billy.

The two men nodded.

"Then enter!" said the padre.

And with Cesca and Molly bringing up the rear, the wedding party followed the padre down a long adobe hallway across a courtyard where palms still shaded a trickling fountain, into a dim chapel, with grim adobe walls and pews hacked and worn by centuries of use.

The padre was excited and pleased.

"If," he said, "you all will sit, I will call my two choir-boys who are at work in the olive orchard. They are not far away. We are always ready to hold service for such as may wish to attend."

He disappeared through the door of the choir loft and returned shortly, followed by two tall Mexican half-breeds, clad in priceless surplices that had been wrought in Spain two centuries before. They lighted some meager candles before the altar and began their chant in soft, well-trained voices.

The padre turned and waited. Kut-le rose and, taking Rhoda's hand, he led her before the aged priest.

To the two white men the scene was unforgetable. The dim old chapel, scene of who could tell what heart-burnings of desert history; the priest of the ancient religion; standing before him the two young people, one of a vanishing and one of a conquering race, both startlingly vivid in the perfection of their beauty; and, looking on, the two wide-eyed squaws with aboriginal wonder in their eyes.

It was but a moment before Kut-le had slipped a ring on Rhoda's finger; but a moment before the priest had pronounced them man and wife.

As the two left the priest, Jack kissed Rhoda solemnly twice.

"Once for Katherine," he said, "and once for me. I don't understand much how it all has come about, but I know Kut-le, and I'm willing to trust you to him."

Kut-le gave Jack a clear look.

"Jack, I'll never forget that speech. If I live long enough, I'll repay you for it."

"And an Indian keeps his promises," said Rhoda softly.

Billy Porter was not to be outdone.

"Now that it's all over with, I'll say that Kut-le is a good fighter and that you are the handsomest couple I ever saw."

Kut-le chuckled.

"Cesca, am I such a heap fool?"

Cesca sniffed.

"White squaws no good! They—"

But Molly elbowed Cesca aside.

"You no listen to her!" she said.

"O Molly! Molly!" cried Rhoda. "You are a woman! I'm glad you were here!" And the men's eyes blurred a little as the Indian woman hugged the white girl to her and crooned over her.

"You no cry! You no cry! When you come back, Molly come to your house, take care of you!"

After a moment Rhoda wiped her eyes, and Kut-le, who had been giving the old padre something that the old fellow eyed with joy, took the girl's hand gently.

"Come!" he said.

At the door the others watched them mount and ride away. The two sat their horses with the grace that comes of long, hard trails.

"Maybe I've done wrong," said Jack. "But I don't feel so. I'm awful sorry for DeWitt."

"I'm awful sorry for DeWitt," agreed Porter, "but I'm sorrier for myself. I'm older than DeWitt a whole lot. He's young enough to get over anything."

When they had ridden out of sight of the monastery, Kut-le pulled in his horse and dismounted. Then he stood looking up into Rhoda's face. In his eyes was the same look of exaltation that made hers wonderful. He put his hand on her knee.

"We've a long ride ahead of us," he said softly. "I want something that I can't have on horseback."

Rhoda laid her hand on his.

"You meant it all, Rhoda? It was not only to save my life?"

"Do you have to ask that?" said Rhoda.

"No!" answered Kut-le simply. "You see I waited for you. I knew that they would bring you back. And if you had not spoken, I would rather have died. I had made up my mind to that. O my love! It has come to us greatly!"

Then, as if the flood, controlled all these months, had burst its bonds, Kut-le lifted Rhoda from her saddle to his arms and laid his lips to hers. For a long moment the two clung to each other as if they knew that life could hold no moment for them so sweet as this. Then they mounted and, side by side, they rode off into the desert sunset.

THE END