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THE HEART OF THE DESERT
(Kut-Le of the Desert)
by
HONORÉ WILLSIE
Author of "Still Jim"
With Frontispiece in Colors by V. Herbert Dunton
A. L. Burt Company, Publishers
114-120 East Twenty-third Street ---- New York
Published by Arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Company
1913
[Frontispiece: Side by side, they rode off into the desert sunset.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE VALLEY OF THE PECOS
II THE CAUCASIAN WAY
III THE INDIAN AND CAUCASIAN
IV THE INDIAN WAY
V THE PURSUIT
VI ENTERING THE DESERT KINDERGARTEN
VII THE FIRST LESSON
VIII A BROADENING HORIZON
IX TOUCH AND GO
X A LONG TRAIL
XI THE TURN IN THE TRAIL
XII THE CROSSING TRAILS
XIII AN INTERLUDE
XIV THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD
XV AN ESCAPE
XVI ADRIFT IN THE DESERT
XVII THE HEART'S OWN BITTERNESS
XVIII THE FORGOTTEN CITY
XIX THE TRAIL AGAIN
XX THE RUINED MISSION
XXI THE END OF THE TRAIL
The Heart of the Desert
CHAPTER I
THE VALLEY OF THE PECOS
Rhoda hobbled through the sand to the nearest rock. On this she sank
with a groan, clasped her slender foot with both hands and looked about
her helplessly.
She felt very small, very much alone. The infinite wastes of yellow
desert danced in heat waves against the bronze-blue sky. The girl saw
no sign of living thing save a buzzard that swept lazily across the
zenith. She turned dizzily from contemplating the vast emptiness about
her to a close scrutiny of her injured foot. She drew off her thin
satin house slipper painfully and dropped it unheedingly into a bunch
of yucca that crowded against the rock. Her silk stocking followed.
Then she sat in helpless misery, eying her blue-veined foot.
In spite of her evident invalidism, one could but wonder why she made
so little effort to help herself. She sat droopingly on the rock,
gazing from her foot to the far lavender line of the mesas. A tiny,
impotent atom of life, she sat as if the eternal why which the desert
hurls at one overwhelmed her, deprived her of hope, almost of
sensation. There was something of nobility in the steadiness with
which she gazed at the melting distances, something of pathos in her
evident resignation, to her own helplessness and weakness.
The girl was quite unconscious of the fact that a young man was
tramping up the desert behind her. He, however, had spied the white
gown long before Rhoda had sunk to the rock and had laid his course
directly for her. He was a tall fellow, standing well over six feet
and he swung through the heavy sand with an easy stride that covered
distance with astonishing rapidity. As he drew near enough to perceive
Rhoda's yellow head bent above her injured foot, he quickened his pace,
swung round the yucca thicket and pulled off his soft felt hat.
"Good-morning!" he said. "What's the matter?"
Rhoda started, hastily covered her foot, and looked up at the tall
khaki-clad figure. She never had seen the young man before, but the
desert is not formal.
"A thing like a little crayfish bit my foot," she answered; "and you
don't know how it hurts!"
"Ah, but I do!" exclaimed the young man. "A scorpion sting! Let me
see it!"
Rhoda flushed.
"Oh, never mind that!" she said. "But if you will go to the Newman
ranch-house for me and ask them to send the buckboard I'll be very
grateful. I--I feel dizzy, you know."
"Gee whiz!" exclaimed the young man. "There's no time for me to run
about the desert if you have a scorpion sting in your foot!"
"Is a scorpion sting dangerous?" asked Rhoda. Then she added,
languidly, "Not that I mind if it is!"
The young man gave her a curious glance. Then he pulled a small case
from his pocket, knelt in the sand and lifted Rhoda's foot in one
slender, strong, brown hand. The instep already was badly swollen.
"Hold tight a minute!" said the young man.
And before Rhoda could protest he had punctured the red center of the
swelling with a little scalpel, had held the cut open and had filled it
with a white powder that bit. Then he pulled a clean handkerchief from
his pocket and tore it in two. With one half he bound the ankle above
the cut tightly. With the other he bandaged the cut itself.
"Are you a doctor?" asked Rhoda faintly.
"Far from it," replied the young man with a chuckle, tightening the
upper bandage until Rhoda's foot was numb. "But I always carry this
little outfit with me; rattlers and scorpions are so thick over on the
ditch. Somebody's apt to be hurt anytime. I'm Charley Cartwell, Jack
Newman's engineer."
"Oh!" said Rhoda understandingly. "I'm so dizzy I can't see you very
well. This is very good of you. Perhaps now you'd go on and get the
buckboard. Tell them it's for Rhoda, Rhoda Tuttle. I just went out
for a walk and then--"
Her voice trailed into nothingness and she could only steady her
swaying body with both hands against the rock.
"Huh!" grunted young Cartwell. "I go on to the house and leave you
here in the boiling sun!"
"Would you mind hurrying?" asked Rhoda.
"Not at all," returned Cartwell.
He plucked the stocking and slipper from the yucca and dropped them
into his pocket. Then he stooped and lifted Rhoda across his broad
chest. This roused her.
"Why, you can't do this!" she cried, struggling to free herself.
Cartwell merely tightened his hold and swung out at a pace that was
half run, half walk.
"Close your eyes so the sun won't hurt them," he said peremptorily.
Dizzily and confusedly, Rhoda dropped her head back on the broad
shoulder and closed her eyes, with a feeling of security that later on
was to appall her. Long after she was to recall the confidence of this
moment with unbelief and horror. Nor did she dream how many weary days
and hours she one day was to pass with this same brazen sky over her,
this same broad shoulder under her head.
Cartwell looked down at the delicate face lying against his breast, at
the soft yellow hair massed against his sleeve. Into his black eyes
came a look that was passionately tender, and the strong brown hand
that supported Rhoda's shoulders trembled.
In an incredibly short time he was entering the peach orchard that
surrounded the ranch-house. A young man in white flannels jumped from
a hammock in which he had been dozing.
"For heaven's sake!" he exclaimed. "What does this mean?"
Rhoda was too ill to reply. Cartwell did not slack his giant stride
toward the house.
"It means," he answered grimly, "that you folks must be crazy to let
Miss Tuttle take a walk in clothes like this! She's got a scorpion
sting in her foot."
The man in flannels turned pale. He hurried along beside Cartwell,
then broke into a run.
"I'll telephone to Gold Rock for the doctor and tell Mrs. Newman."
He started on ahead.
"Never mind the doctor!" called Cartwell. "I've attended to the sting.
Tell Mrs. Jack to have hot water ready."
As Cartwell sprang up the porch steps, Mrs. Newman ran out to meet him.
She was a pretty, rosy girl, with brown eyes and curly brown hair.
"Rhoda! Kut-le!" she cried. "Why didn't I warn her! Put her on the
couch here in the hall, Kut-le. John, tell Li Chung to bring the
hot-water bottles. Here, Rhoda dear, drink this!"
For half an hour the three, with Li Chung hovering in the background,
worked over the girl. Then as they saw her stupor change to a natural
sleep, Katherine gave a sigh that was almost a sob.
"She's all right!" she said. "O Kut-le, if you hadn't come at that
moment!"
Cartwell shook his head.
"It might have gone hard with her, she's so delicate. Gee, I'm glad I
ran out of tobacco this morning and thought a two-mile tramp across the
desert for it worth while!"
The three were on the porch now. The young man in flannels, who had
said little but had obeyed orders explicitly eyed Cartwell curiously.
"You're Newman's engineer, aren't you?" he asked. "My name's DeWitt.
You've put us all under great obligations, this morning."
Cartwell took the extended hand.
"Well, you know," he said carefully, "a scorpion sting may or may not
be serious. People have died of them. Mrs. Jack here makes no more of
them than of a mosquito bite, while Jack goes about like a drunken
sailor with one for a day, then forgets it. Miss Tuttle will be all
right when she wakes up. I'm off till dinner time, Mrs. Jack. Jack
will think I've reverted!"
DeWitt stood for a moment watching the tall, lithe figure move through
the peach-trees. He was torn by a strange feeling, half of aversion,
half of charm for the dark young stranger. Then:
"Hold on, Cartwell," he cried. "I'll drive you back in the buckboard."
Katherine Newman, looking after the two, raised her eyebrows, shook her
head, then smiled and went back to Rhoda.
It was mid-afternoon when Rhoda woke. Katherine was sitting near by
with her sewing.
"Well!" said Rhoda wonderingly. "I'm all right, after all!"
Katherine jumped up and took Rhoda's thin little hand joyfully.
"Indeed you are!" she cried. "Thanks to Kut-le!"
"Thanks to whom?" asked Rhoda. "It was a tall young man. He said his
name was Charley Cartwell."
"Yup!" answered Katherine. "Charley Cartwell! His other name is
Kut-le. He'll be in to dinner with Jack, tonight. Isn't he
good-looking, though!"
"I don't know. I was so dizzy I couldn't see him. He seemed very
dark. Is he a Spaniard?"
"Spaniard! No!" Katherine was watching Rhoda's languid eyes half
mischievously. "He's part Mescallero, part Pueblo, part Mohave!"
Rhoda sat erect with flaming face.
"You mean that he's an Indian and I let him carry me! Katherine!"
The mischief in Katherine's brown eyes grew to laughter.
"I thought that would get a rise out of you, you blessed tenderfoot!
What difference does that make? He rescued you from a serious
predicament; and more than that he's a fine fellow and one of Jack's
dearest friends."
Rhoda's delicate face still was flushed.
"An Indian! What did John DeWitt say?"
"Oh!" said Katherine, carelessly, "he offered to drive Kut-le back to
the ditch, and he hasn't got home yet. They probably will be very
congenial, John being a Harvard man and Kut-le a Yale!"
Rhoda's curved lips opened, then closed again. The look of interest
died from her eyes.
"Well," she said in her usual weary voice, "I think I'll have a glass
of milk, if I may. Then I'll go out on the porch. You see I'm being
all the trouble to you, Katherine, that I said I would be."
"Trouble!" protested Katherine. "Why, Rhoda Tuttle, if I could just
see you with the old light in your eyes I'd wait on you by inches on my
knees. I would, honestly."
Rhoda rubbed a thin cheek against the warm hand that still held hers,
and the mute thanks said more than words.
The veranda of the Newman ranch-house was deep and shaded by green
vines. From the hammock where she lay, a delicate figure amid the
vivid cushions, Rhoda looked upon a landscape that combined all the
perfection of verdure of a northern park with a sense of illimitable
breathing space that should have been fairly intoxicating to her. Two
huge cottonwoods stood beside the porch. Beyond the lawn lay the peach
orchard which vied with the bordering alfalfa fields in fragrance and
color. The yellow-brown of tree-trunks and the white of grazing sheep
against vegetation of richest green were astonishing colors for Rhoda
to find in the desert to which she had been exiled, and in the few days
since her arrival she had not ceased to wonder at them.
DeWitt crossed the orchard, quickening his pace when he saw Rhoda. He
was a tall fellow, blond and well built, though not so tall and lithe
as Cartwell. His dark blue eyes were disconcertingly clear and direct.
"Well, Rhoda dear!" he exclaimed as he hurried up the steps. "If you
didn't scare this family! How are you feeling now?"
"I'm all right," Rhoda answered languidly. "It was good of you all to
bother so about me. What have you been doing all day?"
"Over at the ditch with Jack and Cartwell. Say, Rhoda, the young
fellow who rescued you is an Indian!"
DeWitt dropped into a big chair by the hammock. He watched the girl
hopefully. It was such a long, long time since she had been interested
in anything! But there was no responsive light in the deep gray eyes.
"Katherine told me," she replied. Then, after a pause, as if she felt
it her duty to make conversation, "Did you like him?"
DeWitt spoke slowly, as if he had been considering the matter.
"I've a lot of race prejudice in me, Rhoda. I don't like niggers or
Chinamen or Indians when they get over to the white man's side of the
fence. They are well enough on their own side. However, this Cartwell
chap seems all right. And he rescued you from a beastly serious
situation!"
"I don't know that I'm as grateful for that as I ought to be," murmured
Rhoda, half to herself. "It would have been an easy solution."
Her words stung DeWitt. He started forward and seized the small thin
hands in both his own.
"Rhoda, don't!" he pleaded huskily. "Don't give up! Don't lose hope!
If I could only give you some of my strength! Don't talk so! It just
about breaks my heart to hear you."
For a time, Rhoda did not answer. She lay wearily watching the eager,
pleading face so close to her own. Even in her illness, Rhoda was very
lovely. The burnished yellow hair softened the thinness of the face
that was like delicately chiseled marble. The finely cut nose, the
exquisite drooping mouth, the little square chin with its cleft, and
the great gray eyes lost none of their beauty through her weakness.
"John," she said at last, "why won't you look the truth in the face? I
never shall get well. I shall die here instead of in New York, that's
all. Why did you follow me down here? It only tortures you. And,
truly it's not so bad for me. You all have lost your realness to me,
somehow. I shan't mind going, much."
DeWitt's strong face worked but his voice was steady.
"I never shall leave you," he said simply. "You are the one woman in
the world for me. I'd marry you tomorrow if you'd let me."
Rhoda shook her head.
"You ought to go away, John, and forget me. You ought to go marry some
fine girl and have a home and a family. I'm just a sick wreck."
"Rhoda," and DeWitt's earnest voice was convincing, "Rhoda, I'd pass up
the healthiest, finest girl on earth for you, just sick you. Why,
can't you see that your helplessness and dependence only deepen your
hold on me? Who wants a thing as fragile and as lovely as you are to
make a home! You pay your way in life just by living! Beauty and
sweetness like yours is enough for a woman to give. I don't want you
to do a thing in the world. Just give yourself to me and let me take
care of you. Rhoda, dear, dear heart!"
"I can't marry unless I'm well," insisted Rhoda, "and I never shall be
well again. I know that you all thought it was for the best, bringing
me down to the desert, but just as soon as I can manage it without
hurting Katherine's and Jack's feelings too much, I'm going back to New
York. If you only knew how the big emptiness of this desert country
adds to my depression!"
"If you go back to New York," persisted DeWitt, "you are going back as
my wife. I'm sick of seeing you dependent on hired care. Why, Rhoda
dear, is it nothing to you that, when you haven't a near relative in
the world, I would gladly die for you?"
"Oh!" cried the girl, tears of weakness and pity in her eyes, "you know
that it means everything to me! But I can't marry any one. All I want
is just to crawl away and die in peace. I wish that that Indian hadn't
come upon me so promptly. I'd just have gone to sleep and never
wakened."
"Don't! Don't!" cried DeWitt. "I shall pick you up and hold you
against all the world, if you say that!"
"Hush!" whispered Rhoda, but her smile was very tender. "Some one is
coming through the orchard."
DeWitt reluctantly released the slender hands and leaned back in his
chair. The sun had crossed the peach orchard slowly, breathlessly. It
cast long, slanting shadows along the beautiful alfalfa fields and
turned the willows by the irrigating ditch to a rosy gray. As the sun
sank, song-birds piped and lizards scuttled along the porch rail. The
loveliest part of the New Mexican day had come.
The two young Northerners watched the man who was swinging through the
orchard. It was Cartwell. Despite his breadth of shoulder, the young
Indian looked slender, though it was evident that only panther strength
could produce such panther grace. He crossed the lawn and stood at the
foot of the steps; one hand crushed his soft hat against his hip, and
the sun turned his close-cropped black hair to blue bronze. For an
instant none of the three spoke. It was as if each felt the import of
this meeting which was to be continued through such strange
vicissitudes. Cartwell, however, was not looking at DeWitt but at
Rhoda, and she returned his gaze, surprised at the beauty of his face,
with its large, long-lashed, Mohave eyes that were set well apart and
set deeply as are the eyes of those whose ancestors have lived much in
the open glare of the sun; with the straight, thin-nostriled nose; with
the stern, cleanly modeled mouth and the square chin, below. And
looking into the young Indian's deep black eyes, Rhoda felt within
herself a vague stirring that for a second wiped the languor from her
eyes.
Cartwell spoke first, easily, in the quiet, well-modulated voice of the
Indian.
"Hello! All safe, I see! Mr. Newman will be here shortly." He seated
himself on the upper step with his back against a pillar and fanned
himself with his hat. "Jack's working too hard. I want him to go to
the coast for a while and let me run the ditch. But he won't. He's as
pig-headed as a Mohave."
"Are the Mohaves so pig-headed then?" asked DeWitt, smiling.
Cartwell returned the smile with a flash of white teeth.
"You bet they are! My mother was part Mohave and she used to say that
only the Pueblo in her kept her from being as stiff-necked as yucca.
You're all over the dizziness, Miss Tuttle?"
"Yes," said Rhoda. "You were very good to me."
Cartwell shook his head.
"I'm afraid I can't take special credit for that. Will you two ride to
the ditch with me tomorrow? I think Miss Tuttle will be interested in
Jack's irrigation dream, don't you, Mr. DeWitt?"
DeWitt answered a little stiffly.
"It's out of the question for Miss Tuttle to attempt such a trip, thank
you."
But to her own as well as DeWitt's astonishment Rhoda spoke
protestingly.
"You must let me refuse my own invitations, John. Perhaps the ditch
would interest me."
DeWitt replied hastily, "Good gracious, Rhoda! If anything will
interest you, don't let me interfere."
There was protest in his voice against Rhoda's being interested in an
Indian's suggestion. Both Rhoda and Cartwell felt this and there was
an awkward pause. This was broken by a faint halloo from the corral
and DeWitt rose abruptly.
"I'll go down and meet Jack," he said.
"We'll do a lot of stunts if you're willing," Cartwell said serenely,
his eyes following DeWitt's broad back inscrutably. "The desert is
like a story-book if one learns to read it. If you would be interested
to learn, I would be keen to teach you."
Rhoda's gray eyes lifted to the young man's somberly.
"I'm too dull these days to learn anything," she said. "But I--I
didn't used to be! Truly I didn't! I used to be so alive, so strong!
I believed in everything, myself most of all! Truly I did!" She
paused, wondering at her lack of reticence.
Cartwell, however, was looking at her with something in his gaze so
quietly understanding that Rhoda smiled. It was a slow smile that
lifted and deepened the corners of Rhoda's lips, that darkened her gray
eyes to black, an unforgetable smile to the loveliness of which Rhoda's
friends never could accustom themselves. At the sight of it, Cartwell
drew a deep breath, then leaned toward her and spoke with curious
earnestness.
"You make me feel the same way that starlight on the desert makes me
feel."
Rhoda replied in astonishment, "Why, you mustn't speak that way to me!
It's not--not--"
"Not conventional?" suggested Cartwell. "What difference does that
make, between you and me?"
Again came the strange stirring in Rhoda in response to Cartwell's
gaze. He was looking at her with something of tragedy in the dark
young eyes, something of sternness and determination in the clean-cut
lips. Rhoda wondered, afterward, what would have been said if
Katherine had not chosen this moment to come out on the porch.
"Rhoda," she asked, "do you feel like dressing for dinner? Hello,
Kut-le, it's time you moved toward soap and water, seems to me!"
"Yessum!" replied Cartwell meekly. He rose and helped Rhoda from the
hammock, then held the door open for her. DeWitt and Newman emerged
from the orchard as he crossed to Katherine's chair.
"Is she very sick, Mrs. Jack?" he asked.
Katherine nodded soberly.
"Desperately sick. Her father and mother were killed in a railroad
wreck a year ago. Rhoda wasn't seriously hurt but she has never gotten
over the shock. She has been failing ever since. The doctor feared
consumption and sent her down here. But she's just dying by inches.
Oh, it's too awful! I can't believe it! I can't realize it!"
Cartwell stood in silence for a moment, his lips compressed, his eyes
inscrutable.
Then, "I've met her at last," he said. "It makes me believe in Fate."
Katherine's pretty lips parted in amazement.
"Goodness! Are you often taken this way!" she gasped.
"Never before!" replied Cartwell serenely. "Jack said she'd broken her
engagement to DeWitt because of her illness, so it's a fair war!"
"Kut-le!" exclaimed Katherine. "Don't talk like a yellow-backed novel!
It's not a life or death affair."
"You can't tell as to that," answered Cartwell with a curious little
smile. "You mustn't forget that I'm an Indian."
And he turned to greet the two men who were mounting the steps.