Part 21 (1/2)

”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.