Part 27 (2/2)

In the camp, Rhoda a.s.sumed command while Kut-le lay on his blanket watching her in silent content. She put one of Alchise's two calico s.h.i.+rts on to boil over the breakfast fire. She washed out the nasty cut and bandaged it with strips from the sterilized s.h.i.+rt. She brought Kut-le's breakfast and her own to his blanket side and coaxed the young man to eat, he a.s.suming great indifference merely for the happiness of being urged. Rhoda was so energetic and efficient that the sun was just climbing from behind the far peaks when Kut-le finished his bacon and coffee. The girl stood looking at him, hands on hips, head on one side, with that look in her eyes of superiority, maternity and complacent tenderness which a woman can a.s.sume only when she has ministered to the needs of a helpless masculine thing.

”There!” she said with a sigh of satisfaction.

”Rhoda,” said Kut-le, hoping that the heavy thumping of his heart did not shake his whole broad chest, ”how long ago was it that you were a helpless, dying little girl without strength to cut up your own food?

How long since you have served any one but yourself?”

Rhoda drew a quick breath. She stood staring from the Indian to the desert, to her slender body, and back again. She held out her hands and looked at them. They were scratched and brown and did not tremble.

Then she looked at the young Indian and he never was to forget the light in her eyes.

”Kut-le!” she cried. ”Kut-le! I am well again! I am well again!”

She paced back and forth along the ledge. Through the creamy tan her cheeks flushed richly crimson. Finally she stopped before the Apache.

”You have outraged all my civilized instincts,” she said slowly, ”yet you have saved my life and given me health. Whatever comes, Kut-le, I never shall forget that!”

”I have changed more than that,” said Kut-le quietly. ”Where is your old hatred of the desert?”

Rhoda turned to look. At the edge of the distant ranges showed a rim of red. Crimson spokes of fire flashed to the zenith. The sky grew brighter, more translucent, the ranges melted into molten gold. The sun, hot and scarlet, rolled into view. Into Rhoda's heart flooded a sense of infinite splendor, infinite beauty, infinite peace.

”Why!” she gasped to Kut-le, ”it is beautiful! It's not terrible!

It's unadorned beauty!”

The Indian nodded but did not speak. Rhoda never was to forget that day. Long years after she was to catch the afterglow of that day of her rebirth. Suddenly she realized that never could a human have found health in a setting more marvelous. The realization was almost too much. Kut-le, with sympathy for which she was grateful, did not talk to her much. Once, however, as she brought him a drink and mechanically smoothed his blanket he said softly:

”You who have been served and demanded service all your life, why do you do this?”

Rhoda answered slowly.

”I'm not serving you. I'm trying to pay up some of the debt of my life.”

Kut-le was about in a day or so and by the end of the week he was quite himself. He resumed the daily expeditions with Rhoda and Alchise which provided text for the girl's desert learning. Rhoda's old despondency, her old agony of prayer for immediate rescue had given way to a strange conflict of desires. She was eager for rescue, was conscious of a constant aching desire for her own people, and yet the old sense of outrage, of grief, of hopelessness was gone.

Of a sudden she found herself pausing, thrusting back the problems that confronted her while she drank to the full this strange mad joy of life which she felt must leave her when she left the desert. She knew only that the fear of death was gone. That hours of fever and pain were no more. That her mind had found its old poise but with an utterly new view-point of life. Her blood ran red. Her lungs breathed deep. Her eyes saw distances too big for their conception, beauties so deep that her spirit had to expand to absorb them.

The silent nights of stars, the laborious crests that tossed sudden and unspeakable views before the eyes, the eternal canons that led beneath ranges of surpa.s.sing majesty, roused in her a pa.s.sion of delight that could find expression only in her growing physical prowess. She lived and ate like a splendid boy. Day after day she scaled the ranges with Kut-le and Alchise; tenderly reared creature of an ultracivilization as she was, she learned the intricate lore of the aborigines, learned what students of the dying people would give their hearts to know.

Kut-le wakened Rhoda at dawn one day. She prepared the breakfast of coffee, bacon and tortilla. Alchise shared this eagerly with Rhoda and Kut-le, though already he had eaten with the squaws. The day was still gray when the three set out on a long day's trip in search of game.

The way this morning led up a canon deep and quiet, with the night shadows still dark and cool within it. The air was that of a northern day of June.

Rhoda tramped bravely, up and up, from cactus to bear gra.s.s, from bear gra.s.s to stunted cedar, from cedar to pines that at last rose triumphant at the crest of a great ridge. Here Rhoda and Kut-le flung themselves to the ground to rest while Alchise prowled about restlessly. Across a hundred miles of desert rose faint snow-capped peaks.

Kut-le watched Rhoda's rapt face for a time. Then, as if unable to keep back the words, he said softly:

”Rhoda! Stay here, always! Marry me and stay here always!”

Rhoda looked at the beautiful pleading eyes. She stirred restlessly; but before she could frame an answer Alchise appeared, followed by a lean old Indian all but toothless who wore a pair of tattered overalls and a gauze s.h.i.+rt. The two Indians stopped before Kut-le, and Alchise jerked a thumb at the stranger.

”_Sabe_ no white talk,” he said.

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