CHAPTER X
A LONG TRAIL
Rhoda gave a cry of joy. From the horsemen rose a sudden shout.
"Spread! Spread! There they are!"
"Don't shoot!" It was Porter's voice, shrill and high with excitement."That's her, the boy there! Rhoda! Rhoda! We're coming!"
With a quick responsive cry, Rhoda struck her horse. With the blow,Kut-le leaned from his own horse and seized her bridle, turning herhorse with his own away from the mesa and to the left. The otherIndians followed and with hoarse cries of exultation the rescuers tookup the pursuit.
Rhoda looked back.
"Shoot!" she screamed. "Shoot!"
Before the second scream had left her lips she was lifted bodily fromthe saddle to Kut-le's arms where, understanding his device, shestruggled like a mad woman. But she only wasted her strength. Withouta glance at her, Kut-le turned his pony almost in its tracks and madefor the mesa.
"Cut him off! He'll get away from us!" It was DeWitt's voice, and"John! John DeWitt!" Rhoda cried.
But the young Indian had gaged his distance well. He brought his horseto its haunches and with Rhoda in his arms was running into a fissureseemingly too narrow for human to enter, while the pursuers were stilla hundred yards away.
"Hold 'em, Alchise!" he said briefly as he ran.
Alchise, with rifle cocked, stopped by the opening. The fissurewidened immediately into a narrow passageway. High, high above themrolled a strip of pink and blue morning sky. Before them was aseemingly interminable crevice along which the squaws scuttled. AsRhoda watched them they disappeared around a sudden curve. When Kut-lereached this point with his burden, the squaws were climbing likemonkeys up the wall which here gave back, roughly, ending the fissurein a rude chimney which it seemed to Rhoda only a bear or an Apachecould have climbed. Kut-le set Rhoda on her feet. She looked up intohis face mockingly. To her mind she was as good as rescued. But theyoung Apache seemed in no wise hurried or excited.
"Our old friends seem to want something!" he commented with his boyishgrin.
"What are you going to do now?" asked Rhoda, with calm equal to theApache's.
"I can't carry you up this wall," suggested Kut-le.
"Very well!" returned Rhoda pleasantly. "I am quite willing that youshould leave me here."
Kut-le's eyes glittered.
"Rhoda, you must climb this wall with me!"
"I won't!" replied Rhoda laconically.
"Then I shall force you to," said the Indian, shifting his rifle andprodding Rhoda ever so gently with the barrel.
Rhoda gave Kut-le a look of scorn that he was not soon to forget andslowly mounted the first broken ledge. The wall was composed of aseries of jutting rocks and of ledges that barely offered hand or foothold. Up and up and up! Kut-le was now beside her, now above her, nowlifting, now pulling. Half-way to the top, Rhoda stopped, dizzy andafraid. Kneeling on the ledge above, with one hand thrust down to lifther, Kut-le looked into her eyes almost pleadingly. That handsome faceso close to hers affected Rhoda strangely.
"Don't be afraid," whispered Kut-le. "Nothing can happen to you whileI am taking care of you."
Rhoda looked into his eyes proudly.
"I am not afraid," she said, reaching for a fresh handhold withtrembling fingers.
The jutting rocks were sharp. Kut-le from his ledge saw Rhoda look ather hold then turn white. Her nails were torn to the quick andbleeding. She swayed with only an atom of gravity lacking to send herto death below. Instantly Kut-le was back beside her, his sinewy handbetween her shoulders, supporting and lifting her to the ledge above.As they neared the top the broken surface became prickly with cactusand Rhoda winced with misery as the thorns pierced and tore her flesh.But finally, in what actually had been an incredibly short time, theyemerged on the plateau, where the two squaws huddled high above thepursuers.
"They think they have you now!" said Kut-le, as Rhoda dropped pantingto the ground. "We must move out of here before they investigate themesa top."
He allowed, however, a few minutes' breathing spell for Rhoda. She satquietly, though her gray eyes were brilliant with excitement. Itseemed to her but a matter of a few hours now when she would be withher own. Yet she could not but notice with that curious observance ofdetail which comes at moments of intensest excitement the varied colorsof the distances that opened before her. The great mesa on which shesat was a mighty peninsula of chalcedony that stretched into thedesert. It was patched by rocks of lavender, of yellow, and of green,and belled over by the intensity of the morning blue above.
"Come!" said Kut-le. "There will be little rest for us today."
Rhoda rose, took a few staggering steps, then sat down.
"I can't start yet," she said. "I'm too worn out."
Kut-le's expression was amused while it was impatient.
"I suppose you may be sleepy, but I think you can walk a little way.Hurry, Rhoda! Hurry!"
Rhoda sat staring calmly into the palpitating blue above.
"I hate to have you carry me," she said after a moment, "but I don'tfeel at all like walking!"
Her tired face was irresistibly lovely as she looked up at the Apache,but by an effort he remained obdurate.
"You must walk as long as you can," he insisted. "We have got tohustle today!"
"I really don't feel like hustling!" sighed Rhoda.
"Rhoda!" cried Kut-le impatiently, "get up and walk after me! Cesca,see that the white squaw keeps moving!" and he handed his rifle to thebrown hag who took it with evident pleasure. Molly ran forward as ifto protest but at a look from Kut-le she dropped back.
Rhoda rose slowly, with her lower lip caught between her teeth. Shefollowed silently after Kut-le, Cesca and the rifle at her shoulder andMolly in the rear. It seemed to the girl that of all the strangescenes through which the past weeks had carried her this was of all themost unreal. All about her was a world of vivid rock heaps sointensely colored that she doubted her vision. Away to the south laythe boundless floor of the desert, a purple and gold infinity thatrolled into the horizon. Far to the north mountains were faintly bluein the yellow sunlight.
Kut-le headed straight for the mountains. His pace was swift andunrelenting. Almost immediately Rhoda felt the debilitating effects ofoverheat. The sun, now sailing high, burned through her flannel shirtuntil her flesh was blistered beneath it. The light on the brilliantlycolored rocks made her eyes blink with pain. Before long she wasparched with thirst and faint with hunger. This was her firstexperience in tramping for any distance under the desert sun. ButKut-le kept the pace long after the two squaws were half leading, halfcarrying the girl.
Rhoda had long since learned the uselessness of protesting. She kepton until the way danced in reeling colors before her eyes. Thenwithout a sound she dropped in the scant shadow of a rock. At the cryfrom Molly, Kut-le turned, and after one glance at Rhoda's white faceand limp figure he knelt in the sand and lifted the drooping, yellowhead. Molly unslung her canteen and forced a few drops of waterbetween Rhoda's lips. Then she tenderly chafed the small hands and thedelicate throat and Rhoda opened her eyes. Immediately Kut-le liftedher in his arms and the flight was resumed.
At short intervals during the morning, Rhoda walked, but for the mostpart Kut-le packed her as dispassionately as if she had been a lamepuppy. He held her across his broad chest as if her fragile weightwere nothing. Lying so, Rhoda watched the merciless landscape or thebrown squaws jogging at Kut-le's heels. Surely, she thought, theancient mesa never had seen a stranger procession or known of a wildermission. She looked up into Kut-le's face and wondered as she staredat his bare head how his eyes could look so steadily into thesun-drenched landscape.
As she lay, the elation of the early morning left her. More and moresurely the conviction came to her that the Apache's boast was true;that no white could catch him on his own ground. Dizzy and ill fromthe heat, she closed her eyes and lay without hope or coherent thought.
/> At noon they stopped for a short time that Rhoda might eat. Theirresting-place was in the shadow of a beetling, weather-beaten rock thatstill bore traces of hieroglyphic carvings. There were broken bits ofclay pots among the tufts of cactus. Rhoda stared at them languidlyand wondered what the forgotten vessels could have contained in aregion so barren of life or hope.
Kut-le strolled over to a cat's-claw bush at whose base lay a tangle ofdead leaves. With a bit of stick, he scattered this litter, struck theground several good blows and returned with a string of fat desertmice. With infinite care Cesca kindled a fire so tiny, so clear, thatscarcely a wisp of smoke escaped into the quivering air. Into this sheflung the eviscerated mice and in an instant the tiny things were adelicate brown. The aroma was pleasant but Rhoda turned whiter stillwhen Molly brought her the fattest of the mice.
"Take it away!" she whispered. "Take it away!"
Molly looked at the girl in stupid surprise.
"You must eat, Rhoda girl!" said Kut-le.
Rhoda made no reply but leaned limply against the ancient rock, hergolden hair touching the crude drawings of long ago. She was a verydifferent Rhoda from the eager girl of the early morning. She ignoredevery effort Kut-le made to tempt her to eat. Her tired gaze wanderedto her hands, still blood-grimed, and her cleft chin quivered. Kut-lesaw the expressive little look.
"I'm sorry," he said simply.
Rhoda looked up at him.
"I don't believe you," she returned calmly.
The Indian's jaw stiffened.
"Come, we'll start now."
The afternoon was like the morning, except that the sun was moreburning overhead, the way more scorching underfoot; except that thecourse became more broken, the clambering heavier, the drops morewracking. All the afternoon, Kut-le carried Rhoda. At last the sunsank below the mesa and the day was ended.
The place of their camping seemed to Rhoda damp and cold. It was closebeside a spring that gave out a faint, miasmic odor. The bitter waterwas grateful, however. Again more mice were seered over before thefire was stamped out hastily. This time Rhoda forced herself to eat.Then she drank deeply of the bitter water and lay down on the coldground. Despite the fact that she was shivering with the cold, shefell asleep at once. Toward midnight she awoke and moving close toMolly's broad back for warmth, she looked up into the sky. For thefirst time the great southern stars seemed near and kindly to her andbefore she fell asleep again she wondered why.
At earliest peep of dawn the squaws were astir waiting for Kut-le, whoshortly staggered into camp with a load of meat on his shoulder.Alchise was with him.
"Mule meat!" said Kut-le to Rhoda. "I went to find horses but therewas nothing but an old lame mule, I brought him back this way!"
"Heavens!" ejaculated Rhoda.
The squaws worked busily, cutting the meat into strips which they hungover their shoulders to sun dry during the day. Alchise cleansed alength of mule's intestine in the spring, to serve as a canteen. Rhodagave small heed to these preparations. She was too ill and feverisheven to be disgusted by them. She refused to eat but drank constantlyfrom the spring. When at Kut-le's command she took up the march withthe others the young man eyed her anxiously. He slung Molly's canteenfrom his own to Alchise's shoulder and felt Rhoda's pulse.
"This water was bad for you," he said. "But it was the only springwithin miles. Perhaps you will throw off the effects of it when we getinto the heat of the sun."
Rhoda made no reply but staggered miserably after Molly. The springlay in a pocket between mountains and mesa. The mountains seemedcruelly high to Rhoda as she looked at them and thought of toilingacross them. With head sunk on her breast and feverishly twitchinghands 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," shemuttered. "You don't have to do anything for me! Just let me dropanywhere 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 therebefore. He did not carry her dispassionately today, but very gently.Something in his manner pierced through Rhoda's half delirium and shelooked up at him with a faint replica of her old lovely smile thatKut-le had not seen since he had stolen her. He trembled at its beautyand 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 fringedwith aspens. Watercress grew below it, and high above it were pinesand junipers. It was a spot of surpassing loveliness, but Rhoda,tossing and panting, could not know it, Kut-le laid his burden on theground and Molly drew off her tattered petticoat to lay beneath thefeverish head. The young Apache stood looking down at the littlefigure, so graceful in its boyish abandonment of gesture, so pitiful inits broken unconsciousness. Molly bathed the burning face and hands inthe pure cold water, muttering tender Apache phrases. Kut-leconstantly interrupted her to change the girl's position. For an houror so he waited for the fever to turn. By three o'clock there was nochange for the better and he left Rhoda's side to pace back and forthby the spring in anxious thought.
At last he came to a conclusion and with stern set face he issued a fewshort orders to his companions. The canteens were refilled. Kut-lelifted Rhoda and the trail was taken to the west. Alchise would haverelieved him of his burden, willingly, but Kut-le would not listen toit. Molly trotted anxiously by the young Apache's side, constantlymoistening 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 withunseeing 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 morewater!"
"Molly!" panted Rhoda, "you tell him how hard I worked--how I earned myway a little! And don't let him do anything for me!"