The Heart of the Desert Part 22

"Here, Rhoda! Here!"

Kut-le bounded into the room, upsetting the medicine-man, and lifted Rhoda in his arms. She clung to him wildly.

"Take me away, Kut-le! Take me away!"

He soothed her with great tenderness.

"Dear one!" he murmured. "Dear one!" and she closed her eyes quietly.

During this time the Indians sat silent and watchful. Kut-le turned to Alchise.

"You cursed fool!" he said.

"She get well now," replied Alchise anxiously. "Alchise save her for you. Molly tell you where come."

For a moment Kut-le stared at Alchise; then, as if realizing the futility of speech, "Come!" he said, and ignoring the other Indians, he strode from the _campos_. Alchise and Cesca followed him, and outside the anxious Molly seized Rhoda's limp hand with a little cry of joy.

Kut-le led the way to a quiet spot among the pines. Here he laid Rhoda on a sheepskin and covered her with a tattered blanket, the spoils of his previous night's trip.

About the middle of the morning Rhoda opened her eyes. As she stirred, Kut-le came to her.

"I've had such horrible dreams, Kut-le. You won't go and leave me to the Indians again?"

This appeal from Rhoda in her weakness almost overcame Kut-le but he only smoothed her tangled hair and answered:

"No, dear one!"

"Where are we now?" she asked feebly.

Kut-le smiled.

"In the Rockies."

"I think I am very sick," continued Rhoda. "Do you think we can stay quiet in one place today?"

Kut-le shook his head.

"I am going to get you to some quinine as quick as I can. There is some about twenty-four hours from here."

Rhoda's eyes widened.

"Shall I be with white people?"

"Don't bother. You'll have good care."

The light faded from Rhoda's eyes.

"It's hard for me, isn't it?" she said, as if appealing to the college man of the ranch.

"Rhoda! Rhoda!" whispered Kut-le, "your suffering kills me! But I must have you, I must!"

Rhoda moved her head impatiently, as if the Indian's tense, handsome face annoyed her. She refused food but drank deeply of the tepid water and shortly they were again on the trail.

For several hours Rhoda lay in Kut-le's arms, weak and ill but with lucid mind. They were making their way up a long canon. It was very narrow. Rhoda could see the individual leaves of the aspens on the opposite wall as they moved close in the shadow of the other. The floor, watered by a clear brook, was level and green. On either side the walls were murmurous with delicately quivering aspens and sighing pines.

Suddenly Cesca gave a grunt of warning. Far down the valley a sheep-herder was approaching with his flocks. Kut-le turned to the right and Alchise sprang to his aid. In the shelter of the trees, Kut-le twisted a handkerchief across Rhoda's mouth; and in reply to her outraged eyes, he said:

"I don't mind single visitors as a rule but I haven't time to fuss with one now."

Together the two men carried Rhoda up the canon-side. They lifted her from trunk to trunk, now a root-hold, now a jutting bit of rock, till far up the sheer wall. Rhoda lay at last on a little ledge heaped with pine-needles. By the time the Indians were settled on the rock Rhoda was delirious again. The fever had returned twofold and Molly's entire efforts were toward keeping the tossing form on the ledge.

Slowly, very slowly, the herder, a st.u.r.dy ragged Mexican, moved up the canon, pausing now and again to scratch his head. He was whistling _La Paloma_. The Indians' black eyes did not leave him and after his flute-like notes had melted into the distance they still crouched in cramped stillness on the ledge.

But shortly Kut-le freed Rhoda's mouth, gave Alchise a swift look, and with infinite care the descent was begun. Kut-le did not like traveling in the daylight, for many reasons. Carefully, swiftly they moved up the canon, always hugging the wall. Late in the afternoon they emerged on an open mesa. All the wretched day Rhoda had traveled in a fearsome world of her own, peopled with uncanny figures, alight with a glare that seared her eyes, held in a vice that gripped her until she screamed with restless pain. The song that the shepherd had whistled tortured her tired brain.

"The day that I left my home for the rolling sea, I said, 'Mother dear, O pray to thy G.o.d for me!'

But e'er we set sail I went a fond leave to take--"

Over and over she sang the three lines, ending each time with a frightened stare up into Kut-le's face.

"Whom did I say good-by to? Whom? But they don't care!"

Then again the tired voice:

"The day that I left my home for the rolling sea--"

Night came and the weary, weary crossing of a craggy, heavily wooded mountain. Kut-le did not relinquish his burden. He seemed not to tire of the weight of the slender body that lay now in helpless stupor. If the squaws or Alchise felt fatigue or impatience as Kut-le held them to a pace on the tortuous trail that would nearly have exhausted a Caucasian athlete, they gave no sign. All the endless night Kut-le led the way under the midnight blackness of the pinon or the violet light of the stars, until the lifting light of the dawn found them across the ranges and standing at the edge of a little river.

In the dim light there lifted a terraced adobe building with ladders faintly outlined on the terraces. There was no sound save the barking of a dog and the ripple of the river. With a muttered admonition, Kut-le left Rhoda to the others and climbed one of the ladders. He returned with a blanketed figure that gazed on Rhoda non-committally.

At a sign, Kut-le lifted Rhoda, and the little group moved noiselessly toward the dwelling, clambered up a ladder, and disappeared.

Rhoda opened her eyes with a sense of physical comfort that confused her. She was lying on the floor of a long, gray-walled room. In one corner was a tiny adobe fire-place from which a tinier fire threw a jet of flame color on the Navajo that lay before the hearth. Along the walls were benches with splendid Navajos rolled cushion-wise upon them.

Above the benches hung several rifles with cougarskin quivers beneath them. A couple of cheap framed mirrors were hung with silver necklaces of beautiful workmanship. In a corner a table was set with heavy but shining china dishes.

Rhoda stared with increasing wonder. She was very weak and spent but her head was clear. She lifted her arms and looked at them. She was wearing a loose-fitting gray garment of a strange weave. She fingered it, more and more puzzled.

"You wake now?" asked a low voice.

Coming softly down the room was an Indian woman of comely face and strange garb. Over a soft shirt of cut and weave such as Rhoda had on, she wore a dark overdress caught at one shoulder and reaching only to the knees. A many-colored girdle confined the dress at the waist. Her legs and feet were covered with high, loose moccasins. Her black hair hung free on her shoulders.

"You been much sick," the woman went on, "much sick," stooping to straighten Rhoda's blanket.

"Where am I?" asked Rhoda.

"At Chira. You eat breakfast?"

Rhoda caught the woman's hand.

"Who are you?" she asked. "You have been very good to me."