The Heart of the Desert Part 20

"Hold 'em, Alchise!" he said briefly as he ran.

Alchise, with rifle c.o.c.ked, stopped by the opening. The fissure widened immediately into a narrow pa.s.sageway. High, high above them rolled a strip of pink and blue morning sky. Before them was a seemingly interminable crevice along which the squaws scuttled. As Rhoda watched them they disappeared around a sudden curve. When Kut-le reached this point with his burden, the squaws were climbing like monkeys up the wall which here gave back, roughly, ending the fissure in a rude chimney which it seemed to Rhoda only a bear or an Apache could have climbed. Kut-le set Rhoda on her feet. She looked up into his face mockingly. To her mind she was as good as rescued. But the young Apache seemed in no wise hurried or excited.

"Our old friends seem to want something!" he commented with his boyish grin.

"What are you going to do now?" asked Rhoda, with calm equal to the Apache's.

"I can't carry you up this wall," suggested Kut-le.

"Very well!" returned Rhoda pleasantly. "I am quite willing that you should leave me here."

Kut-le's eyes glittered.

"Rhoda, you must climb this wall with me!"

"I won't!" replied Rhoda laconically.

"Then I shall force you to," said the Indian, shifting his rifle and prodding Rhoda ever so gently with the barrel.

Rhoda gave Kut-le a look of scorn that he was not soon to forget and slowly mounted the first broken ledge. The wall was composed of a series of jutting rocks and of ledges that barely offered hand or foot hold. Up and up and up! Kut-le was now beside her, now above her, now lifting, now pulling. Half-way to the top, Rhoda stopped, dizzy and afraid. Kneeling on the ledge above, with one hand thrust down to lift her, Kut-le looked into her eyes almost pleadingly. That handsome face so close to hers affected Rhoda strangely.

"Don't be afraid," whispered Kut-le. "Nothing can happen to you while I am taking care of you."

Rhoda looked into his eyes proudly.

"I am not afraid," she said, reaching for a fresh handhold with trembling fingers.

The jutting rocks were sharp. Kut-le from his ledge saw Rhoda look at her hold then turn white. Her nails were torn to the quick and bleeding. She swayed with only an atom of gravity lacking to send her to death below. Instantly Kut-le was back beside her, his sinewy hand between her shoulders, supporting and lifting her to the ledge above.

As they neared the top the broken surface became p.r.i.c.kly with cactus and Rhoda winced with misery as the thorns pierced and tore her flesh.

But finally, in what actually had been an incredibly short time, they emerged on the plateau, where the two squaws huddled high above the pursuers.

"They think they have you now!" said Kut-le, as Rhoda dropped panting to the ground. "We must move out of here before they investigate the mesa top."

He allowed, however, a few minutes' breathing spell for Rhoda. She sat quietly, though her gray eyes were brilliant with excitement. It seemed to her but a matter of a few hours now when she would be with her own. Yet she could not but notice with that curious observance of detail which comes at moments of intensest excitement the varied colors of the distances that opened before her. The great mesa on which she sat was a mighty peninsula of chalcedony that stretched into the desert. It was patched by rocks of lavender, of yellow, and of green, and belled over by the intensity of the morning blue above.

"Come!" said Kut-le. "There will be little rest for us today."

Rhoda rose, took a few staggering steps, then sat down.

"I can't start yet," she said. "I'm too worn out."

Kut-le's expression was amused while it was impatient.

"I suppose you may be sleepy, but I think you can walk a little way.

Hurry, Rhoda! Hurry!"

Rhoda sat staring calmly into the palpitating blue above.

"I hate to have you carry me," she said after a moment, "but I don't feel at all like walking!"

Her tired face was irresistibly lovely as she looked up at the Apache, but by an effort he remained obdurate.

"You must walk as long as you can," he insisted. "We have got to hustle today!"

"I really don't feel like hustling!" sighed Rhoda.

"Rhoda!" cried Kut-le impatiently, "get up and walk after me! Cesca, see that the white squaw keeps moving!" and he handed his rifle to the brown hag who took it with evident pleasure. Molly ran forward as if to protest but at a look from Kut-le she dropped back.

Rhoda rose slowly, with her lower lip caught between her teeth. She followed silently after Kut-le, Cesca and the rifle at her shoulder and Molly in the rear. It seemed to the girl that of all the strange scenes through which the past weeks had carried her this was of all the most unreal. All about her was a world of vivid rock heaps so intensely colored that she doubted her vision. Away to the south lay the boundless floor of the desert, a purple and gold infinity that rolled into the horizon. Far to the north mountains were faintly blue in the yellow sunlight.

Kut-le headed straight for the mountains. His pace was swift and unrelenting. Almost immediately Rhoda felt the debilitating effects of overheat. The sun, now sailing high, burned through her flannel shirt until her flesh was blistered beneath it. The light on the brilliantly colored rocks made her eyes blink with pain. Before long she was parched with thirst and faint with hunger. This was her first experience in tramping for any distance under the desert sun. But Kut-le kept the pace long after the two squaws were half leading, half carrying the girl.

Rhoda had long since learned the uselessness of protesting. She kept on until the way danced in reeling colors before her eyes. Then without a sound she dropped in the scant shadow of a rock. At the cry from Molly, Kut-le turned, and after one glance at Rhoda's white face and limp figure he knelt in the sand and lifted the drooping, yellow head. Molly unslung her canteen and forced a few drops of water between Rhoda's lips. Then she tenderly chafed the small hands and the delicate throat and Rhoda opened her eyes. Immediately Kut-le lifted her in his arms and the flight was resumed.

At short intervals during the morning, Rhoda walked, but for the most part Kut-le packed her as dispa.s.sionately as if she had been a lame puppy. He held her across his broad chest as if her fragile weight were nothing. Lying so, Rhoda watched the merciless landscape or the brown squaws jogging at Kut-le's heels. Surely, she thought, the ancient mesa never had seen a stranger procession or known of a wilder mission. She looked up into Kut-le's face and wondered as she stared at his bare head how his eyes could look so steadily into the sun-drenched landscape.

As she lay, the elation of the early morning left her. More and more surely the conviction came to her that the Apache's boast was true; that no white could catch him on his own ground. Dizzy and ill from the heat, she closed her eyes and lay without hope or coherent thought.

At noon they stopped for a short time that Rhoda might eat. Their resting-place was in the shadow of a beetling, weather-beaten rock that still bore traces of hieroglyphic carvings. There were broken bits of clay pots among the tufts of cactus. Rhoda stared at them languidly and wondered what the forgotten vessels could have contained in a region so barren of life or hope.

Kut-le strolled over to a cat's-claw bush at whose base lay a tangle of dead leaves. With a bit of stick, he scattered this litter, struck the ground several good blows and returned with a string of fat desert mice. With infinite care Cesca kindled a fire so tiny, so clear, that scarcely a wisp of smoke escaped into the quivering air. Into this she flung the eviscerated mice and in an instant the tiny things were a delicate brown. The aroma was pleasant but Rhoda turned whiter still when Molly brought her the fattest of the mice.

"Take it away!" she whispered. "Take it away!"

Molly looked at the girl in stupid surprise.

"You must eat, Rhoda girl!" said Kut-le.

Rhoda made no reply but leaned limply against the ancient rock, her golden hair touching the crude drawings of long ago. She was a very different Rhoda from the eager girl of the early morning. She ignored every effort Kut-le made to tempt her to eat. Her tired gaze wandered to her hands, still blood-grimed, and her cleft chin quivered. Kut-le saw the expressive little look.

"I'm sorry," he said simply.

Rhoda looked up at him.

"I don't believe you," she returned calmly.

The Indian's jaw stiffened.

"Come, we'll start now."

The afternoon was like the morning, except that the sun was more burning overhead, the way more scorching underfoot; except that the course became more broken, the clambering heavier, the drops more wracking. All the afternoon, Kut-le carried Rhoda. At last the sun sank below the mesa and the day was ended.

The place of their camping seemed to Rhoda damp and cold. It was close beside a spring that gave out a faint, miasmic odor. The bitter water was grateful, however. Again more mice were seered over before the fire was stamped out hastily. This time Rhoda forced herself to eat.

Then she drank deeply of the bitter water and lay down on the cold ground. Despite the fact that she was shivering with the cold, she fell asleep at once. Toward midnight she awoke and moving close to Molly's broad back for warmth, she looked up into the sky. For the first time the great southern stars seemed near and kindly to her and before she fell asleep again she wondered why.

At earliest peep of dawn the squaws were astir waiting for Kut-le, who shortly staggered into camp with a load of meat on his shoulder.

Alchise was with him.