Part 17 (1/2)

A sudden light of pa.s.sionate adoration burned in Molly's eyes, a light that never was to leave them again when they gazed on Rhoda. But she shook her head.

”You ask Molly to give up her peoples but you don't want to give up yours. You stay with Molly and Kut-le. Learn what desert say 'bout life, 'bout people. When you _sabe_ what the desert say 'bout that you _sabe_ almost much as Great Spirit!”

”Molly, listen! When Kut-le and Alchise go off on one of their hunts and Cesca goes to sleep, you and I will steal off and hide until night, and you will show me how to get home again. O Molly, I'll be very good to you if you will do this for me! Don't you see how foolish Kut-le is? I can never, never marry him! His ways are not my ways. My ways are not his! Always I will be white and he Indian. He will get over this craze for me and want one of his own kind. Molly, listen to your heart! It must tell you white to the white, Indian to the Indian.

Dear, dear Molly, I want to go home!”

”No! No! Molly promise Kut-le to keep his white squaw for him.

Injuns they always keep promises. And Molly _sabe_ some day when you learn more you be heap glad old Molly keep you for Kut-le.”

Rhoda turned away with a sigh at the note of finality in Molly's voice.

Kut-le was climbing the trail toward the camp with a little pile of provisions. So far he had not failed to procure when needed some sort of rations--bacon, flour and coffee--though since her abduction Rhoda had seen no human habitation, Cesca was preparing supper. She was pounding a piece of meat on a flat stone, muttering to herself when a piece fell to the ground. Sometimes she wiped the sand from the fallen bit on her skirt. More often she flung it into the stew-pot unwiped.

”Cesca!” cried Rhoda, ”do keep the burro out of the meat!” The burro that Kut-le recently had acquired was sniffing at the meat.

Cesca gave no heed except to murmur, ”Burro heap hungry!”

”I am going to begin to cook my own meals, Molly,” said Rhoda. ”I am strong enough now, and Cesca is so dirty!”

Kut-le entered the camp in time to hear Rhoda's resolution.

”Will you let me eat with you?” he asked courteously. ”I don't enjoy dirt, myself!”

Rhoda stared at the young man. The calm effrontery of him, the cleverness of him, to ask a favor of her! She turned from him to the distant ranges. She did not realize how much she turned from the roughness of the camp to the far desert views! Brooding, aloof, how big the ranges were, how free, how calm! For the first time her keeping Kut-le in Coventry seemed foolish to her. Of what avail was her silence, except to increase her own loneliness? Suddenly she smiled grimly. The game was a good one. Perhaps she could play it as well as the Indian.

”If you wish, you may,” she said coldly.

Then she ignored the utter joy and astonishment in the young man's face and set about roasting the rabbit that Molly had dressed. She tossed the tortillas as Molly had taught her and baked them over the coals.

She set forth the cans and baskets that formed the camp dinner-set and served the primitive meal. Kut-le watched the preparations silently.

When the rabbit was cooked the two sat down on either side of the flat rock that served as a table while the other three squatted about Cesca's stew-pot near the fire.

It was the first time that Rhoda and Kut-le had eaten tete-a-tete.

Hitherto Rhoda had taken her food off to a secluded corner and eaten it alone. There was an intimacy in thus sitting together at the meal Rhoda had prepared, that both felt.

”Are you glad you did this for me, Rhoda?” asked Kut-le.

”I didn't do it for you!” returned Rhoda. ”I did it for my own comfort!”

Something in her tone narrowed the Indian's eyes.

”Why should you speak as a queen to a poor devil of a subject? By what particular mark of superiority are you exempt from work? For a time you have had the excuse of illness, but you no longer have that. I should say that making tortillas was better than sitting in sloth while they are made for you! Do you never have any sense of shame that you are forever taking and never giving?”

Rhoda answered angrily.

”I'm not at all interested in your opinions.”

But the young Apache went on.