The Western Romance MEGAPACK ®: 20 Classic Tales

by Zane Grey

  Rhoda turned to Kut-le in anger.

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

  Kut-le’s eyes softened.

  “Answer the señorita’s questions, amigo,” he said.

  The Mexican began eagerly.

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

  Rhoda clasped her hands with a little murmur of relief.

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

  “What’s that?” interrupted Kut-le sharply.

  Rhoda’s eyes shone in the firelight.

  “‘Not an overturned pebble escapes his eye,’” she said serenely.

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

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

  “If you see them again tell them that I’m all right but that they must hurry!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Molly paused and grinned delightedly.

  “All right! You come help poor Molly!”

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

  “You will tire yourself,” he said.

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

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

  Cesca spat disdainfully.

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

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

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

  “Huh!” she grunted. “Feed ’em to the horses. Injuns no eat ’em!”

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

  “Do you think it’s so bad, Molly?”

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

  “It’s heap fine! Cesca just old fool. You love Molly. Let Cesca go to hell!”

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

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

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

  “I hate him!” she said to herself. “I hate him! I hate him!”

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

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

  “Hush! Don’t move!”

  CHAPTER VIII

  A BROADENING HORIZON

  Rhoda lay stiffly, her heart beating wildly. Kut-le and the squaws, each a muffled, blanketed figure, lay sleeping some distance away. Old Alchise stood on solitary guard at the edge of the camp with his back to her.

  “Make as if you wanted to shift your blankets toward the cat’s-claw bush behind you!” went on the whispered voice.

  Obediently, Rhoda sat erect. Alchise turned slowly to light a cigarette out of the wind. Rhoda yawned, rose sleepily, looked under her blanket and shook her, head irritably, then dragged her blankets toward the neighboring cat’s-claw. Again she settled herself to sleep. Alchise turned back to his view of the desert.

  “I’m behind the bush here,” whispe
red the voice. “I’m a prospector. Saw you make camp. I don’t know where any of the search parties are but if you can crawl round to me I’ll guarantee to get you to ’em somehow. Slip out of your blankets and leave ’em, rounded up as if you was still under ’em. Quick now and careful!”

  Rhoda, her eyes never leaving Alchise’s impassive back, drew herself silently and swiftly from her blankets and with a clever touch or two rounded them. Then she crept around the cat’s-claw, where a man squatted, his eyes blazing with excitement. He put up a sinewy, hand to pull her from sight when, without warning, Rhoda sneezed.

  Instantly there was the click of a rifle and Alchise shouted:

  “Stop!”

  “Confound it!” growled the man, rising to full view, “why didn’t you swallow it!”

  “I couldn’t!” replied Rhoda indignantly. “You don’t suppose I wanted to!”

  She turned toward the camp. Alchise was standing stolidly covering them with his rifle. Kut-le was walking coolly toward them, while the squaws sat gaping.

  “Well!” exclaimed Kut-le. “What can we do for you, Jim?”

  The stranger, a rough tramp-like fellow in tattered overalls, wiped his face, on which was a week’s stubble.

  “I’d always thought you was about white, Cartwell,” he said, “but I see you’re no better than the rest of them. What are you going to do with me?”

  Kut-le eyed his unbidden guest speculatively.

  “Well, we’ll have something to eat first. I don’t like to think on an empty stomach. Come over to my blanket and sit down, Jim.”

  Ignoring Rhoda, who was watching him closely, Kut-le seated himself on his blanket beside Jim and offered him a cigarette, which was refused.

  “I don’t want no favors from you, Cartwell.” His voice was surly. There was something more than his rough appearance that Rhoda disliked about the man but she didn’t know just what it was. Kut-le’s eyes narrowed, but he lighted his own cigarette without replying. “You’re up to a rotten trick and you know it, Cartwell,” went on Jim. “You take my advice and let me take the girl back to her friends and you make tracks down into Mexico as fast as the Lord’ll let you.”

  Kut-le shifted the Navajo that hung over his naked shoulders. He gave a short laugh that Rhoda had never heard from him before.

  “Let her go with you, Jim Provenso! You know as well as I do that she is safer with an Apache! Anything else?”

  “Yes, this else!” Jim’s voice rose angrily. “If ever we get a chance at you, we’ll hang you sky high, see? This may go with Injuns but not with whites, you dirty pup!”

  Suddenly Kut-le rose and, dropping his blanket, stood before the white man in his bronze perfection.

  “Provenso, you aren’t fit to look at a decent woman! Don’t put on dog just because you belong to the white race. You’re disreputable, and you know it. Don’t speak to Miss Tuttle again; you are too rotten!”

  The prospector had risen and stood glaring at Kut-le.

  “I’ll kill you for that yet, you dirty Injun!” he shouted.

  “Shucks!” sniffed the Indian. “You haven’t the nerve to injure anything but a woman!”

  Jim’s face went purple.

  “For two bits I’d knock your block off, right now.”

  “There isn’t a cent in the camp.” Kut-le turned to Rhoda. “You get the point of the conversation, I hope?”

  Rhoda’s eyes were blazing. She had gotten the point, and yet—Jim was a white man! Anything white was better than an Indian.

  “I’d take my chances with Mr. Provenso,” she said, joyfully conscious that nothing could have hurt Kut-le more than this reply.

  Kut-le’s lips stiffened.

  “Lunch is ready,” he said.

  “None of your grub for mine,” remarked Jim. “What are you going to do with me?”

  “Alchise!” called Kut-le. “Eat something, then take this fellow out and lose him. Take the rest of the day to it. You know the next camp!”

  Then he folded his arms across his chest and waited for Alchise to finish his meal. Jim stood in sullen silence for a minute. Then he seated himself on a nearby rock.

  “No, you don’t,” he said. “If you get me out of here, you’ll have to use force.”

  Kut-le shrugged his shoulders.

  “A gun at your back will move you!”

  Rhoda was looking at the white man’s face with a great longing. He was rough and ugly, but he was of her own breed. Suddenly the longing for her own that she was beginning to control surged to her lips.

  “I can’t bear this!” she cried. “I’m going mad! I’m going mad!”

  All the camp turned startled faces toward the girl, and Rhoda recovered her self-possession. She ran to Kut-le and laid her hand on his arm, lifting a lovely, pleading face to his.

  “O Kut-le! Kut-le!” in the tone that she had used to Cartwell. “Can’t you see that it’s no use? He is white, Kut-le! Let me go with him! Let me go back to my own people! O Kut-le, let me go! O let me go!”

  Kut-le looked down at the hand on his arm. Rhoda was too excited to notice that his whole body shook at this unwonted touch. His voice was caressing but his face remained inscrutable.

  “Dear girl,” he answered, “he is not your kind! He might originally have been of your color, but now he’s streaked with yellow. Let him go. You are safer here with me!”

  Rhoda turned from him impatiently.

  “It’s quite useless,” she said to Jim; “no pleading or threat will move him. But I do thank you—” her voice breaking a little. “Go back with Alchise and tell them to come for me quickly!”

  Some responsive flash of sympathy came to Jim’s bleared eyes.

  Rhoda stood watching Alchise marshall him out of the camp. She moaned helplessly:

  “O my people, my own people!” and Kut-le eyed her with unfathomable gaze.

  As soon as lunch was finished, camp was broken. All the rest of the day and until toward midnight they wound up a wretched trail that circled the mountain ranges, For hours, Kut-le did not speak to Rhoda. These days of Rhoda’s contempt were very hard on him. The touch of her hand that morning, the old note in her voice, still thrilled him. At midnight as they watched the squaws unroll her blankets, he touched her shoulder.

  “Dear,” he said, in his rich voice, “it is in you to love me if only I am patient. And—God, but it’s worth all the starvation in the meantime! Won’t you say good-night to me, Rhoda?”

  Rhoda looked at the stalwart figure in the firelight. The young eyes so tragic in their youth, the beautiful mouth, sad in its firm curves, were strangely appealing. Just for an instant the horrors of the past weeks vanished.

  “Good-night!” said Rhoda. Then she rolled herself in her blankets and slept. By the next morning, however, the old repulsion had returned and she made no response to Kut-le’s overtures.

  Day succeeded day now, until Rhoda lost all track of time. Endlessly they crossed desert and mountain ridges. Endlessly they circled through dusky cañon and sun-baked arroyo. Always Rhoda looked forward to each new camping-place with excitement. Here, the rescuers might stumble upon them! Always she started at each unexpected shadow along the trail. Always she thrilled at a wisp of smokelike cloud beyond the cañon edge. Always she felt a quiver of certainty at sudden break of twig or fall of stone. But the days passed and gradually hope changed to desperation.

  The difficulties of the camp life would have been unbearable to her had not her natural fortitude and her intense pride come to her rescue. The estimate of her that Kut-le had so mercilessly presented to her the first day of her abduction returned to her more and more clearly as the days wore on. At first she thought of them only with scorn. Then as her loneliness increased and she was forced back upon herself she grew to wonder what in her had gi
ven the Indian such an opinion. There was something in the nakedness of the desert, something in its piercing austerity that forced her to truthfulness with herself. Little by little she found herself trying to acquire Kut-le’s view of her.

  Her liking for Molly grew. She spent long afternoons with the squaw, picking up desert lore.

  “Do you like to work, Molly?” she asked the squaw one afternoon, as she sorted seed for Molly to bruise.

  “What else to do?” asked Molly. “Sit with hands folded on stomach, so? No! Still hands make crazy head. Now you work with your hands you no so sorry in head, huh?”

  Rhoda thought for a moment. There was a joy in the rude camp tasks that she had assumed that she never had found in golf or automobiling. She nodded, then said wistfully:

  “You think I’m no good at all, don’t you, Molly?”

  Molly shrugged her shoulders.

  “Me not got papooses. You not got papooses. Molly and you no good! Molly is heap strong. What good is that? When she die she no has given her strength to tribe, no done any good that will last. You are heap beautiful. What good is that? You no give your face to your tribe. What good are you? Molly and you might as well die tomorrow. Work, have papooses, die. That all squaws are for. Great Spirit says so. Squaw’s own heart says so.”

  Rhoda sat silently looking at the squaw’s squat figure, the toil-scarred fingers, the good brown eyes out of which looked a woman’s soul. Vaguely Rhoda caught a point of view that made her old ideals seem futile. She smoothed the Indian woman’s hands.

  “I sometimes think you are a bigger woman than I am, Molly,” she said humbly.

  “You are heap good to look at.” Molly spoke wistfully. “Molly heap homely. You think that makes any difference to the Great Spirit?”

  Rhoda’s eyes widened, a little. Did it make any difference? After all, what counted with the Great Spirit? She stared at the barren ranges that lifted mute peaks to the silent heavens. Always, always the questions and so vague the answers! Suddenly Rhoda knew that her beauty had counted greatly with her all her life, had given her her sense of superiority to the rest of the world. Rhoda squirmed. She hated this faculty of the Indians and the desert to make her seem small. She never had felt so with her own kind. Her own kind! Would she never again know the deference, the gentleness, the loving tenderness of her own people? Rhoda forgot Molly’s wistful question.