by Zane Grey
Kut-le fell at the unexpected impact of her weight and his foot was freed! He lifted Rhoda, leaped from the track, and the second section of the tourist train thundered into the west.
“You are as fine as I thought you were—” he began. But Rhoda was a limp heap at his feet.
The girl came to her senses partially when Kut-le set her in the saddle and fastened her there with strap and blanket. But happily she was practically unconscious for the hour or two that remained till dawn. Just as day was breaking the Indians made their way across an arroyo and up a long slope to a group of cottonwoods. Here Rhoda was put to bed on a heap of blankets.
Sometime in the afternoon she woke with a clear head. It was the first time in months that she had wakened without a headache. She stared from the shade of the cottonwoods to the distant lavender haze of the desert. There was not a sound in all the world. Mysterious, remote, the desert stared back at her, mocking her little grief. More terrible to her than her danger in Kut-le’s hands, more appalling than the death threat that had hung over her so long, was this sense of awful space, of barren nothingness with which the desert oppressed her. Instinctively she turned to look for human companionship. Kut-le and Alchise were not to be seen but Molly nodded beside Rhoda’s blankets and the thin hag Cesca was curled in the grass near by, asleep.
“You awake? Heap hungry?” asked Molly suddenly.
Rhoda sat up, groaning at the torturing stiffness of her muscles.
“Where is Kut-le?” she asked.
“Gone get ’em supper. Alchise gone too.”
“Molly,” Rhoda took the rough brown hand between both her soft cold palms, “Molly, will you help me to run away?”
Molly looked from the clasping fingers up to Rhoda’s sweet face. Molly was a squaw, dirty and ignorant. Rhoda was the delicate product of a highly cultivated civilization, egoistic, narrow-viewed, self-centered. And yet Rhoda, looking into Molly’s deep brown eyes, saw there that limitless patience and fortitude and gentleness which is woman’s without regard to class or color. And not knowing why, the white girl bowed her head on the squaw’s fat shoulder and sobbed a little. A strange look came into Molly’s face. She was childless and had worked fearfully to justify her existence to her tribe. Few hands had touched hers in tenderness. Few voices had appealed to her for sympathy. Suddenly Molly clasped Rhoda in her strong arms and swayed back and forth with her gently.
“You no cry!” she said. “You no cry, little Sun-head, you no cry!”
“Molly, dear kind Molly, won’t you help me to get back to my own people? Suppose it was your daughter that a white man had stolen! O Molly, I want to go home!”
Molly still rocked and spoke in the singsong voice one uses to a sobbing child.
“You no run ’way! Kut-le catch right off! Make it all harder for you!”
Rhoda shivered a little.
“If I once get away, Kut-le never will catch me alive!”
Molly chuckled indulgently.
“How you run? No sabe how eat, how drink, how find the trail! Better stay with Molly.”
“I would wait till I thought we were near a town. Won’t you help me? Dear, kind Molly, won’t you help me?”
“Kut-le kill Molly with cactus torture!”
“But you go with me!” The sobs ceased and Rhoda sat back on her blankets as the idea developed. “You go with me and I’ll make you—”
Neither noticed the soft thud of moccasined feet. Suddenly Alchise seized Molly’s black hair and with a violent jerk pulled the woman backward. Rhoda forgot her stiffened muscles, forgot her gentle ancestry. She sprang at Alchise with catlike fury and struck his fingers from Molly’s hair.
“You fiend! I wish I could shoot you!” she panted, her fingers twitching.
Alchise retreated a step.
“She try help ’em run!” he said sullenly.
“She was not! And no matter if she was! Don’t you touch a woman before me!”
A swift shadow crossed the camp and Alchise was hurled six feet away.
“What’s the matter!” cried Kut-le. “Has he laid finger on you, Rhoda?” He strode to her side and looked down at her with eyes in which struggled anger and anxiety.
“No!” blazed Rhoda. “But he pulled Molly over backward by her hair!”
“Oh!” in evident relief. “And what was Molly doing?”
“She maybe help ’em run,” said Alchise, coming forward.
The relief in Kut-le’s voice increased Rhoda’s anger.
“No such thing! She was persuading me not to go! Kut-le, you give Alchise orders not to touch Molly again. I won’t have it!”
“Oh, that’s not necessary,” said Kut-le serenely. “Indians are pretty good to their women as a general thing. They average up with the whites, I guess. Molly, get up and help Cesca with these!” He flung some newly killed rabbits at the gaping squaw, who still lay where she had fallen.
Rhoda, trembling and glowering, walked unsteadily up and down beneath the cottonwoods. The details of her new existence, the dirt, the roughness, were beginning to sink in on her. She paced back and forth, lips compressed, eyes black. Kut-le stood with his back against a cottonwood eying the slender figure with frank delight. Now and again he chuckled as he rolled a cigarette with his facile finger. His hands were fine as only an Indian’s can be: strong and sinewy yet supple with slender fingers and almond-shaped nails.
He smoked contentedly with his eyes on the girl. Inscrutable as was his face at a casual glance, had Rhoda observed keenly she might have read much in the changing light of his eyes. There was appreciation of her and love of her and a merciless determination to hold her at all costs. And still as he gazed there was that tragedy in his look which is part and portion of the Indian’s face.
Silence in the camp had continued for some time when a strange young Indian strode up the slope, nodded to the group in the camp, and deliberately rolled himself in a blanket and dropped to sleep. Rhoda stared at him questioningly.
“Alchise’s and Cesca’s son,” said Kut-le. “His job is to follow us at a distance and remove all trace of our trail. Not an overturned pebble misses his eye. I’ll need him only for a day or two.”
“Kut-le,” said Rhoda suddenly, “when are you going to end the farce and let me go?”
The young man smiled.
“You know the way the farce usually ends! The man always gets the girl and they live happily forever after!”
“What do you suppose Jack and Katherine think of you? They have loved and trusted you so!”
For the first time the Indian’s face showed pain.
“My hope is,” he said, “that after they see how happy I am going to make you they will forgive me.”
Rhoda controlled her voice with difficulty.
“Can’t you see what you have done? No matter what the outcome, can you believe that I or any one that loves me can forgive the outrage to me?”
“After we have married and lived abroad for a year or two people will remember only the romance of it!”.
“Heavens!” ejaculated Rhoda. She returned to her angry walking.
Molly was preparing supper. She worked always with one eye on Rhoda, as if she could not see enough of the girl’s fragile loveliness. With her attention thus divided, she stumbled constantly, dropping the pots and spilling the food. She herself was not at all disturbed by her mishaps but, with a grimace and a chuckle, picked up the food. But Cesca was annoyed. She was tending the fire which by a marvel of skill she kept always clear and all but smokeless. At each of Molly’s mishaps, Cesca hurled a stone at her friend’s back with a savage “Me-yah!” that disturbed Molly not at all.
Mercifully night was on the camp by the time the rabbits were cooked and Rhoda ate unconscious of the dirt the food had acquired in the cooking.
When the silent meal was finished, Kut-le pointed to Rhoda’s blankets.
“We will start in half an hour. You must rest during that time.”
Too weary to resent the peremptory tone, Rhoda obeyed. The fire long since had been extinguished and the camp was dark. The Indians were to be located only by faint whispers under the trees. The opportunity seemed providential! Rhoda slipped from her blankets and crept through the darkness away from the camp.
CHAPTER VII
THE FIRST LESSON
After crawling on her hands and knees for several yards, Rhoda rose and started on a run down the long slope to the open desert. But after a few steps she found running impossible, for the slope was a wilderness of rock, thickly grown with cholla and yucca with here and there a thicker growth of cat’s-claw.
Almost at once her hands were torn and bleeding and she thought gratefully for the first time of her buckskin trousers which valiantly resisted all detaining thorns. The way dropped rapidly and after her first wild spurt Rhoda leaned exhausted and panting against a boulder. She had not the vaguest idea of where she was going or of what she was going to do, except that she was going to lose herself so thoroughly that not even Kut-le could find her. After that she was quite willing to trust to fate.
After a short rest she started on, every sense keen for the sound of pursuit, but none came. As the silent minutes passed Rhoda became elated. How easy it was! What a pity that she had not tried before! At the foot of the slope, she turned up the arroyo. Here her course grew heavier. The arroyo was cut by deep ruts and gullies down which the girl slid and tumbled in mad haste only to find rock masses over which she crawled with utmost difficulty. Now and again the stout vamps of her hunting boots were pierced by chollas and, half frantic in her haste, she was forced to stop and struggle to pull out the thorns.
It was not long before the girl’s scant strength was gone, and when after a mad scramble she fell from a boulder to the ground, she was too done up to rise. She lay face to the stars, half sobbing with excitement and disappointment. After a time, however, the sobs ceased and she lay thinking. She knew now that until she was inured to the desert and had a working knowledge of its ways, escape was impossible. She must bide her time and wait for her friends to rescue her. She had no idea how far she had come from the Indian camp. Whether or not Kut-le could find her again she could not guess. If he did not, then unless a white stumbled on her she must die in the desert. Well then, let it be so! The old lethargy closed in on her and she lay motionless and hopeless.
From all sides she heard the night howls of the coyote packs circling nearer and nearer. Nothing could more perfectly interpret the horrible desolation of the desert, Rhoda thought, than the demoniacal, long-drawn laughter of the coyote. How long she lay she neither knew nor cared. But just as she fancied that the coyotes had drawn so near that she could hear their footsteps, a hand was laid on her arm.
“Have you had enough, Rhoda?” asked Kut-le.
“No!” shuddered Rhoda. “I’d rather die here!”
The Indian laughed softly as he lifted her from the ground.
“A good hater makes a good lover, Rhoda,” he said. “I wish I’d had time to let you learn your lesson more thoroughly. I haven’t been twenty-five feet away from you since you left the camp. I wanted you to try your hand at it just so you’d realize what you are up against. But you’ve tired yourself badly.”
Rhoda lay mute in the young man’s arms. She was not thinking of his words but of the first time that the Indian had carried her. She saw John DeWitt’s protesting face, and tears of weakness and despair ran silently down her cheeks. Kut-le strode rapidly and, unhesitatingly over the course she had followed so painfully and in a few moments they were among the waiting Indians.
Kut-le put Rhoda in her saddle, fastened her securely and put a Navajo about her shoulders. The night’s misery was begun. Whether they went up and down mountains, whether they crossed deserts, Rhoda neither knew nor cared. The blind purpose of clinging to the saddle was the one aim of the dreadful night. She was a little light-headed at times and with her head against the horse’s neck, she murmured John DeWitt’s name, or sitting erect she called to him wildly. At such times Kut-le’s fingers tightened and he clinched his teeth, but he did not go to her. When, however, the frail figure drooped silently and inertly against the waist strap he seemed to know even in the darkness. Then and then only he lifted her down, the squaws massaged her wracked body, and she was put in the saddle again. Over and over during the night this was repeated until at dawn Rhoda was barely conscious that after being lifted to the ground she was not remounted but was covered carefully and left in peace.
It was late in the afternoon again when Rhoda woke. She pushed aside her blankets and tried to get up but fell back with a groan. The stiffness of the previous days was nothing whatever to the misery that now held every muscle rigid. The overexertion of three nights in the saddle which the massaging had so far mitigated had asserted itself and every muscle in the girl’s body seemed acutely painful. To lift her hand to her hair, to draw a long breath, to turn her head, was almost impossible.
Rhoda looked dismally about her. The camp this time was on the side of a mountain that lay in a series of mighty ranges, each separated from the other by a narrow strip of desert. White and gold gleamed the snow-capped peaks. Purple and lavender melted the shimmering desert into the lifting mesas. Rhoda threw her arm across her eyes to hide the hateful sight, and moaned in pain at the movement.
Molly ran to her side.
“Your bones heap sick? Molly rub ’em?” she asked eagerly.
“O Molly, if you would!” replied Rhoda gratefully, and she wondered at the skill and gentleness of the Indian woman who manipulated the aching muscles with such rapidity and firmness that in a little while Rhoda staggered stiffly to her feet.
“Molly,” she said, “I want to wash my face.”
Molly puckered up her own face in her effort to understand, and scratched her head.
“Don’t sabe that,” she said.
“Wash my face!” repeated Rhoda in astonishment. “Of course you understand.”
Molly laughed.
“No! You no wash! No use! You just get cold—heap cold!”
“Molly!” called Kut-le’s authoritative voice.
Molly went flying toward the packs, from which she returned with a canteen and a tiny pitch-smeared basket. Kut-le followed with a towel. He grinned at Rhoda.
“Molly is possessed with the idea that anything as frail as you would be snuffed out like a candle by a drop of water. You and I each possess a lone lorn towel which we must wash out ourselves till the end of the trip. The squaws don’t know when a thing is clean.”
Rhoda took the towel silently, and the young Indian, after waiting a minute as if in hope of a word from her, left the girl to her difficult toilet. When Rhoda had finished she picked up the field-glasses that Kut-le had left on her blankets and with her back to the Indians sat down on a rock to watch the desert.
The sordid discomforts of the camp seemed to her unbearable. She hated the blue haze of the desert below and beyond her. She hated the very ponies that Alchise was leading up from water. It was the fourth day since her abduction. Rhoda could not understand why John and the Newmans were so slow to overtake her. She knew nothing as yet of the skill of her abductors. She was like an ignorant child placed in a new world whose very ABC was closed to her. After always having been cared for and protected, after never having known a hardship, the girl suddenly was thrust into an existence whose savage simplicity was sufficient to try the hardiest man.
Supper was eaten in silence, Kut-le finally giving up his attempts to make conversation. It was dusk when they mounted and rode up the mountain. Near the crest a whirling cloud of mist enveloped them. It became desperately cold and Rhoda shivered beneath her Navajo but Kut-l
e gave no heed to her. He led on and on, the horses slipping, the cold growing every minute more intense. At last there appeared before them a dim figure silhouetted against a flickering light. Kut-le halted his party and rode forward; Rhoda saw the dim figure rise hastily and after a short time Kut-le called back.
“Come ahead!”
The little camp was only an open space at the cañon edge, with a sheepskin shelter over a tiny fire. Beside the fire stood a sheep-herder, a swarthy figure wrapped from head to foot in sheepskins. Over in the darkness by the mountain wall were the many nameless sounds that tell of animals herding for the night. The shepherd greeted them with the perfect courtesy of the Mexican.
“Señors, the camp is yours!”
Kut-le lifted the shivering Rhoda from her horse. The rain was lessening but the cold was still so great that Rhoda huddled gratefully by the little fire under the sheepskin shelter. Kut-le refused the Mexican’s offer of tortillas and the man sat down to enjoy their society. He eyed Rhoda keenly.
“Ah! It is a señorita!” Then he gasped. “It is perhaps the Señorita Rhoda Tuttle!”
Rhoda jumped to her feet.
“Yes! Yes! How did you know?”
Kut-le glared at the herder menacingly, but the little fellow did not see. He spoke up bravely, as if he had a message for Rhoda.
“Some people told me yesterday. They look for her everywhere!”
Rhoda’s eyes lighted joyfully.
“Who? Where?” she cried.
Kut-le spoke concisely:
“You know nothing!” he said.
The Mexican looked into the Apache’s eyes and shivered slightly.
“Nothing, of course, Señor,” he replied.
But Rhoda was not daunted.
“Who were they?” she repeated. “What did they say? Where did they go?”
The herder glanced at Rhoda and shook his head.
“Quién sabe?”