The Heart of the Desert Part 25

AN INTERLUDE

Late in the afternoon, Rhoda woke. Kut-le stood beside her. His expression was half eager, half tender.

"How do you feel now?" he asked.

"Quite well," answered Rhoda. "Will you call Marie? I want to dress."

"You must rest in bed today," replied the Indian. "Tomorrow will be soon enough for you to get up."

Rhoda looked at the young man with irritation.

"Can't you learn that I am not a squaw? That it maddens me to be ordered about? That every time you do you alienate me more, if possible?"

"You do foolish stunts," said Kut-le calmly, "and I have to put you right."

Rhoda moaned.

"Oh, how long, how long must I endure this! How could they be so stupid as to let you slip through their fingers so!"

Kut-le's mouth became a narrow seam.

"As soon as I can get you into the Sierra Madre, I shall marry you.

You are practically a well woman now. But I am not going to hurry overmuch. You are going to love me first and you are going to love this life first. Then we will go to Paris until the storm has pa.s.sed."

Rhoda did not seem to hear him. She tossed her arms restlessly.

"Please send Marie to me," she said finally. "You will permit me to eat something perhaps?"

Kut-le left the room at once. In a short time he returned with Marie, who bore a steaming bowl which he himself flanked with a dish of luscious melon. The woman propped Rhoda adroitly to a sitting position and Kut-le gravely balanced the bowl against the girl's knees. The stew which the bowl contained was delicious, and Rhoda ate it to the last drop. She ate in silence, while Kut-le watched her with unspeakable longing in his eyes. The room was almost dark when the simple meal was finished. Marie brightened the fire and smoothed Rhoda's blankets.

"Kut-le go now," said the Pueblo woman. "You rest. In morning, Marie bring white squaw some clothes."

Rhoda was glad to pillow her head on her arm but it was long before she slept. She tried to piece together her faint and distorted recollection of the occurrences since the morning when the mesa had risen through the dawn. But her only clear picture was of John DeWitt's wild face as she disappeared into the fissure. She recalled its look of agony and sobbed a little to herself as she realized what torture he and the Newmans must have endured since her disappearance.

And yet she was very hopeful. If her friends could come as close to her as they did before the mesa, they must be learning Kut-le's methods. Surely the next time luck would not play so well for the Indian.

Rhoda woke in the morning to the sound of song. Marie knelt on the ground before a sloping slab of stone and patiently kneeded corn with a smaller stone. Her song, a quaint repet.i.tion of short mellow syllables pleased Rhoda's sensitive ear and she lay listening. When Marie saw Rhoda's wide eyes she came to the girl's side.

"You feel good now?" she queried.

"Yes, much better. I want to get up."

The Indian woman nodded.

"Marie clean white squaw's clothes. White squaw wear Marie's. Now Marie help you wash."

Rhoda smiled.

"You are not an Apache if you want me to bathe!"

Marie answered indignantly.

"Marie is Pueblo squaw!"

The clothes that Marie brought, Rhoda thought very attractive. There was a soft wool underdress of creamiest tint. Over this Marie pulled, fastening it at one shoulder, a gay, many-colored overdress which, like the one she herself wore, reached to the knees. Rhoda pulled on her own high laced boots which had been neatly mended. Then the two turned their attention to the neglected braid of hair.

When it was loosened and hung in tangled ma.s.ses nearly to Rhoda's knees, Marie's delight in its loveliness knew no expression. She fetched a queer battered old comb which she washed and then proceeded with true feminine rapture to comb the wonderful waving locks. In the midst of this Kut-le entered. He gazed on Rhoda's new disguise with delight. Indeed her delicate face, above the many-hued garment, was like a harebell growing in a gaudy nasturtium bed.

"We can only let you on the roof," said Kut-le, who was carrying Rhoda's sombrero.

Rhoda made no reply but when Marie had plaited her hair in a rippling braid she followed Kut-le up the short ladder. Her sense of cleanliness after the weeks of disorder was delightful. As she stepped on the flat-topped roof and the sweet clear air filled her lungs she felt as if reborn. With Navajo blankets, Kut-le had contrived an awning that not only made a bit of shade but precluded view from below.

The rich tints of the blankets were startlingly picturesque against the yellow gray of the adobe. Rhoda, dropped luxuriantly to the heap of blankets and turned her face toward the mountain, many-colored and bare toward the base, deep-cloaked with pinon, oak and Juniper on the uplands. From its base flowed the little river, gurgling over its shallow bed of stone and rich with green along its flat banks. Close beside the river was the Pueblo village, the many-terraced buildings, on one of the roofs of which Rhoda sat.

Kut-le, stretched on the roof near by, smoked cigarette after cigarette as he watched the girl's quiet face, but he did not speak. For three or four hours the two sat thus in silence. Just as the sun sank behind the mountain, a bell clanged and then fell to tolling softly. Then Kut-le broke his silence.

"That's the bell of the old mission. Some one has been buried, I guess. We can look. There are no tourists now."

There was a sound of wailing: a deep mournful sound that caught Rhoda's heart to her throat and blanched her face. It was the sound of the grief of primitive man, the cry of the forlorn and broken-hearted, uncloaked by convention. It touched a primitive chord of response in Rhoda that set her to trembling. Surely, when the world was young she too had wept so. Surely she too had voiced a poignant, unbearable loss in just such a wild outpouring of grief!

They moved to the edge of the terrace and looked below into the street.

Down the rocky way a line of Indians was bearing hand-mills and jars and armloads of ornaments.

"They will take those to the 'killing place' and break them that the dead owner may have them afterward," explained Kut-le softly. "It always makes me think of a verse in the Bible. I can't recall the words exactly though."

Rhoda glanced up into the dark face with a look of appreciation.

"'And the grinders shall cease because they are few!'" she said, "'and those that look out of the windows be darkened. And the doors shall be shut in the street when the sound of the grinding is low, because man goeth to his long home and mourners go about the street.'"

"And there is something else," murmured Kut-le, "about 'the silver cord.'"

"'Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken or the pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the spirit to G.o.d who gave it.'"

They stood in silence again. The wailing died into the distance. The sun touched to molten gold the heavy shadows of the mountain arroyos.

Rhoda was deeply moved by the scene below her. She felt as if she had been thrust back through the ages to look upon the sorrow of some little Judean town. The little rocky street, the vivid robes, the weird, dying wail, the broken ornaments and utensils that some folded tired hands would use no more, and, above all, the simple unquestioning faith, roused in her a sudden longing for a life that she never had known. For a long time she stood in thought. As darkness fell she roused herself.

"Let me go back to my room," she said.

As they turned, neither noticed that Rhoda's little handkerchief, which she had carried through all her experiences, fluttered from her sleeve to the street.

Again it was long before Rhoda slept. Through her window there floated the sound of song, the evening singing of Indian lads in the village street. There was a vibrant quality in their voices that Rhoda could liken only to the music of stringed instruments. There was neither the mellow smoothness of the negro voice nor the flute-like sweetness of the white, yet the voices compa.s.sed all the mystical appealing quality of violin notes.

The music woke in Rhoda a longing for she knew not what. It seemed to her as if she were peering past a misty veil into the childhood of the world to whose simple beauty and delights civilization had made her alien. The vibrating voices chanted slower and slower. Rhoda stirred uneasily. To be free again as these voices were free! Not to long for the civilization she had left but for open skies and trails! To be free again!

As the voices melted into silence, a guitar was touched softly under Rhoda's window and Kut-le's voice rose in _La Golondrina_:

"Whither so swiftly flies the timid swallow?

What distant bourne seeks her untiring wing?

To reach her nest what needle does she follow When darkness wraps the poor wee storm-tossed thing?"