The Heart of the Desert Part 21

"Mule meat!" said Kut-le to Rhoda. "I went to find horses but there was nothing but an old lame mule, I brought him back this way!"

"Heavens!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Rhoda.

The squaws worked busily, cutting the meat into strips which they hung over their shoulders to sun dry during the day. Alchise cleansed a length of mule's intestine in the spring, to serve as a canteen. Rhoda gave small heed to these preparations. She was too ill and feverish even to be disgusted by them. She refused to eat but drank constantly from the spring. When at Kut-le's command she took up the march with the others the young man eyed her anxiously. He slung Molly's canteen from his own to Alchise's shoulder and felt Rhoda's pulse.

"This water was bad for you," he said. "But it was the only spring within miles. Perhaps you will throw off the effects of it when we get into the heat of the sun."

Rhoda made no reply but staggered miserably after Molly. The spring lay in a pocket between mountains and mesa. The mountains seemed cruelly high to Rhoda as she looked at them and thought of toiling across them. With head sunk on her breast and feverishly twitching hands she followed for half an hour. Then Kut-le turned.

"I'm going to carry you, Rhoda," he said.

The girl shrank away from him.

"You and Molly and all of them think I'm just a parasite," she muttered. "You don't have to do anything for me! Just let me drop anywhere and die!"

Kut-le looked at her strangely. Without comment, he picked her up.

There was a sternly tender look on his face that never had been there before. He did not carry her dispa.s.sionately today, but very gently.

Something in his manner pierced through Rhoda's half delirium and she looked up at him with a faint replica of her old lovely smile that Kut-le had not seen since he had stolen her. He trembled at its beauty and started forward at a tremendous pace.

"I'll get you to good water by noon," he said.

At noon they were well up in the mountains by a clear spring fringed with aspens. Watercress grew below it, and high above it were pines and junipers. It was a spot of surpa.s.sing loveliness, but Rhoda, tossing and panting, could not know it, Kut-le laid his burden on the ground and Molly drew off her tattered petticoat to lay beneath the feverish head. The young Apache stood looking down at the little figure, so graceful in its boyish abandonment of gesture, so pitiful in its broken unconsciousness. Molly bathed the burning face and hands in the pure cold water, muttering tender Apache phrases. Kut-le constantly interrupted her to change the girl's position. For an hour or so he waited for the fever to turn. By three o'clock there was no change for the better and he left Rhoda's side to pace back and forth by the spring in anxious thought.

At last he came to a conclusion and with stern set face he issued a few short orders to his companions. The canteens were refilled. Kut-le lifted Rhoda and the trail was taken to the west. Alchise would have relieved him of his burden, willingly, but Kut-le would not listen to it. Molly trotted anxiously by the young Apache's side, constantly moistening the girl's lips with water.

Rhoda was quite delirious now. She murmured and sometimes sobbed, trying to free herself from Kut-le's arms.

"I'm not sick!" she said, looking up into the Indian's face with unseeing eyes. "Don't let him see that I am sick!"

"No! No! Dear one!" answered Kut-le.

"Don't let him see I'm sick!" she sobbed. "He hurts me so!"

"No! No!" exclaimed Kut-le huskily. "Molly, give her a little more water!"

"Molly!" panted Rhoda, "you tell him how hard I worked--how I earned my way a little! And don't let him do anything for me!"

CHAPTER XI

THE TURN IN THE TRAIL

The little group, trudging the long difficult trail along the mountain was a rich study in degrees: Rhoda, the fragile Caucasian, a product of centuries of civilization; and Kut-le, the Indian, with the keenness, the ferocious courage, the cunning of the Indian leavened inextricably with the thousand softening influences of a score of years' contact with civilization; then Cesca, the lean and stoical product of an ancient and terrible savagery; and Alchise, her mate. Finally Molly--squat, dirty Molly--the stupid, squalid aborigine, as distinct from Cesca's type as is the brown snail from the stinging wasp.

Alchise, striding after his chief, was smitten with a sudden idea.

After ruminating on it for some time, he communicated it to his squaw.

Cesca shook her head with a grunt of disapproval. Alchise insisted and the squaw looked at Kut-le cunningly.

"_Quien sabe_?" she said at last.

At this Alchise hurried forward and touched Kut-le on the shoulder.

"Take 'em squaw to Reservation. Medicine dance. Squaw heap sick.

_Sabe_?"

"Reservation's too far away," replied Kut-le, shifting Rhoda's head to lie more easily on his arm. "I'm making for Chira."

Alchise shook his head vigorously.

"Too many mens! We go Reservation. Alchise help carry sick squaw."

"Nope! You're way off, Alchise. I'm going where I can get some white man's medicine the quickest. I'm not so afraid of getting caught as I am of her getting a bad run of fever. I have friends at Chira."

Alchise fell back, muttering disappointment. White man's medicine was no good. He cared little about Rhoda but he adored Kut-le. It was necessary therefore that the white squaw be saved, since his chief evidently was quite mad about her. All the rest of the day Alchise was very thoughtful. Late at night the next halt was made. High up in the mountain on a sheltered ledge Kut-le laid down his burden.

"Keep her quiet till I get back," he said, and disappeared.

Rhoda was in a stupor and lay quietly unconscious with the stars blinking down on her, a limp dark heap against the mountain wall. The three Indians munched mule meat, then Molly curled herself on the ground and in three minutes was snoring. Alchise stood erect and still on the ledge for perhaps ten minutes after Kut-le's departure. Then he touched Cesca on the shoulder, lifted Rhoda in his arms and, followed by Cesca, left the sleeping Molly alone on the ledge.

Swiftly, silently, Alchise strode up the mountainside, Rhoda making neither sound nor motion. For hours, with wonderful endurance the two Indians held the pace. They moved up the mountain to the summit, which they crossed, then dropped rapidly downward. Just at dawn Alchise stopped at a gray _campos_ under some pines and called. A voice from the hut answered him. The canvas flap was put back and an old Indian buck appeared, followed by several squaws and young bucks, yawning and staring.

Alchise laid Rhoda on the ground while he spoke rapidly to the Indian.

The old man protested at first but on the repeated use of Kut-le's name he finally nodded and Alchise carried Rhoda into the _campos_. A squaw kindled a fire which, blazing up brightly, showed a huge, dark room, canvas-roofed and dirt-floored, quite bare except for the soiled blankets on the floor.

Rhoda was laid in the center of the hut. The old buck knelt beside her. He was very old indeed. His time-ravaged features were lean and ascetic. His clay-matted hair was streaked with white; his black eyes were deep-sunk and his temples were hollow. But there was a fine sort of dignity about the old medicine-man, despite his squalor. He gazed on Rhoda in silence for some time. Alchise and Cesca sat on the floor, and little by little they were joined by a dozen other Indians who formed a circle about the girl. The firelight flickered on the dark, intent faces and on Rhoda's delicate beauty as she lay pa.s.sing rapidly from stupor to delirium.

Suddenly the old man raised his lean hand, shaking a gourd filled with pebbles, and began softly to chant. Instantly the other Indians joined him and the _campos_ was filled with the rhythm of a weird song. Rhoda tossed her arms and began to cough a little from the smoke. The chant quickened. It was but the mechanical repet.i.tion of two notes falling always from high to low. Yet it had an indescribable effect of melancholy, this aboriginal song. It was as hopeless and melancholy as all of nature's chants: the wail of the wind, the sob of the rain, the beat of the waves.

Rhoda sat erect, her eyes wild and wide. The old buck, without ceasing his song, attempted to thrust her back with one lean brown claw, but Rhoda struck him feebly.

"Go away!" she cried. "Be quiet! You hurt my head! Don't make that dreadful noise!"

The chant quickened. The medicine-man now rocked back and forth on his knees, accenting the throb of the song by beating his bare feet on the earth. He seemed by some strange suppleness to flatten his instep paddle-wise and to bring the entire leg from toe to knee at one blow against the ground. Never did his glowing old eyes leave Rhoda's face.

The girl, thrown into misery and excitement by the insistence of the chant, began to wring her hands. The words said nothing to her but the rhythmic repet.i.tion of the notes told her a story as old as life itself: that life pa.s.ses swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and without hope; that our days are as gra.s.s and as the clouds that are consumed and are no more; that the soul sinks to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death. Rhoda struggled, with horror in her eyes, to rise; but the old man with a hand on her shoulder forced her back on the blanket.

"Oh, what is it!" wailed Rhoda, clutching at the ma.s.s of yellow-brown hair about her face. "Where am I? What are you doing? Have I died?

Where is Kut-le? Kut-le!" she screamed. "Kut-le!"

The medicine-man held her to the blanket and for a time she sat quiescent. Then as the Indian lifted his hand from her shoulder the bewilderment of her gray eyes changed to the wildness of delirium. She looked toward the doorway where the dawn light made but little headway against the dark interior. With one blue-veined hand on her panting breast she slowly, stealthily gathered herself together, and with unbelievable swiftness she sprang for the square of dawn light. She leaped almost into the arms of a young buck who sat near the door. He bore her back to her place while the chant continued without interruption.

Exhausted, Rhoda lay listening to the song. Gradually it began to exert its hypnotic influence over her. Its sense of melancholy enveloped her drug-like. She lay p.r.o.ne, the tears coursing down her cheeks, her twitching hands turned upward beside her. Slowly she floated outward upon a dark sea whose waves beat a ceaseless requiem of anguish on her ears. It seemed to her that she was enduring all the sorrows of the ages; that she was brain-tortured by the death agonies of all humanity; that all the uselessness, all the meaninglessness, all the utter weariness of the death-ridden world pressed upon her, suffocating her, forcing her to stillness, slowing the beating of her heart, the intake of her breath. Slowly her white lids closed, yet with one last conscious cry for life:

"Kut-le!" she wailed. "Kut-le!"

A quick shadow filled the doorway.