The Heart of the Desert Part 15

"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 h.e.l.l!"

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 canons. 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 m.u.f.fled, 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," whispered 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 impa.s.sive 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.