THE CAUCASIAN WAY
When Rhoda entered the dining-room some of her pallor seemed to have left
her. She was dressed in a gown of an elusive pink that gave a rose flush
to the marble fineness of her face.
Katherine was chatting with a wiry, middle-aged man whom she introduced
to Rhoda as Mr. Porter, an Arizona mining man. Porter stood as if
stunned for a moment by Rhoda's delicate loveliness. Then, as was the
custom of every man who met Rhoda, he looked vaguely about for something
to do for her. Jack Newman forestalled him by taking Rhoda's hand and
leading her to the table. Jack's curly blond hair looked almost white in
contrast with his tanned face. He was not as tall as either Cartwell or
DeWitt but he was strong and clean-cut and had a boyish look despite the
heavy responsibilities of his five-thousand-acre ranch.
"There," he said, placing Rhoda beside Porter; "just attach Porter's
scalp to your belt with the rest of your collection. It'll be a new
experience to him. Don't be afraid, Porter."
Billy Porter was not in the least embarrassed.
"I've come too near to losing my scalp to the Apaches to be scared by
Miss Tuttle. Anyhow I gave her my scalp without a yelp the minute I laid
eyes on her."
"Here! That's not fair!" cried John DeWitt. "The rest of us had to work
to get her to take ours!"
"Our what?" asked Cartwell, entering the room at the last word. He was
looking very cool and well groomed in white flannels.
Billy Porter stared at the newcomer and dropped his soup-spoon with a
splash. "What in thunder!" Rhoda heard him mutter.
Jack Newman spoke hastily.
"This is Mr. Cartwell, our irrigation engineer, Mr. Porter."
Porter responded to the young Indian's courteous bow with a surly nod,
and proceeded with his soup.
"I'd as soon eat with a nigger as an Injun," he said to Rhoda under cover
of some laughing remark of Katherine's to Cartwell.
"He seems to be nice," said Rhoda vaguely. "Maybe, though, Katherine
_is_ a little liberal, making him one of the family."
"Is there any hunting at all in this open desert country?" asked DeWitt.
"I certainly hate to go back to New York with nothing but sunburn to show
for my trip!"
"Coyotes, wildcats, rabbits and partridges," volunteered Cartwell. "I
know where there is a nest of wildcats up on the first mesa. And I know
an Indian who will tan the pelts for you, like velvet. A jack-rabbit
pelt well tanned is an exquisite thing too, by the way. I will go on a
hunt with you whenever the ditch can be left."
"And while they are chasing round after jacks, Miss Tuttle," cut in Billy
Porter neatly, "I will take you anywhere you want to go. I'll show you
things these kids never dreamed of! I knew this country in the days of
Apache raids and the pony express."
"That will be fine!" replied Rhoda. "But I'd rather hear the stories
than take any trips. Did you spend your boyhood in New Mexico? Did you
see real Indian fights? Did you--?" She paused with an involuntary
glance at Cartwell.
Porter, too, looked at the dark young face across the table and something
in its inscrutable calm seemed to madden him.
"My boyhood here? Yes, and a happy boyhood it was! I came home from the
range one day and found my little fifteen-year-old sister and a little
neighbor friend of hers hung up by the back of their necks on butcher
hooks. They had been tortured to death by Apaches. I don't like
Indians!"
There was an awkward pause at the dinner table. Li Chung removed the
soup-plates noiselessly. Cartwell's brown fingers tapped the tablecloth.
But he was not looking at Porter's scowling face. He was watching
Rhoda's gray eyes which were fastened on him with a look half of pity,
half of aversion. When he spoke it was as if he cared little for the
opinions of the others but would set himself right with her alone.
"My father," he said, "came home from the hunt, one day, to find his
mother and three sisters lying in their own blood. The whites had gotten
them. They all had been scalped and were dead except the baby, three
years old. She--she--my father killed her."
A gasp of horror went round the table.
"I think such stories are inexcusable here!" exclaimed Katherine
indignantly.
"So do I, Mrs. Jack," replied Cartwell. "I won't do it again."
Porter's face stained a deep mahogany and he bowed stiffly to Katherine.
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Newman!"
"I feel as if I were visiting a group of anarchists," said Rhoda
plaintively, "and had innocently passed round a bomb on which to make
conversation!"
Jack Newman laughed, the tension relaxed, and in a moment the dinner was
proceeding merrily, though Porter and Cartwell carefully avoided speaking
to each other. Most of the conversation centered around Rhoda.
Katherine always had been devoted to her friend. And though men always
had paid homage to Rhoda, since her illness had enhanced her delicacy,
and had made her so appealingly helpless, they were drawn to her as
surely as bee to flower. Old and young, dignified and happy-go-lucky,
all were moved irresistibly to do something for her, to coddle her, to
undertake impossible missions, self-imposed.
Porter from his place of vantage beside her kept her plate heaped with
delicacies, calmly removed the breast of chicken from his own plate to
hers, all but fed her with a spoon when she refused to more than nibble
at her meal.
DeWitt's special night-mare was that drafts were blowing on her. He kept
excusing himself from the table to open and close windows and doors, to
hang over her chair so as to feel for himself if the wind touched her.
Katherine and Jack kept Li Chung trotting to the kitchen for different
dainties with which to tempt her. Only Cartwell did nothing. He kept up
what seemed to be his usual fire of amiable conversation and watched
Rhoda constantly through inscrutable black eyes. But he made no attempt
to serve her.
Rhoda was scarcely conscious of the deference showed her, partly because
she had received it so long, partly because that detached frame of mind
of the hopeless invalid made the life about her seem shadowy and unreal.
Nothing really mattered much. She lay back in her chair with the little
wistful smile, the somber light in her eyes that had become habitual to
her.
After dinner was finished Katherine led the way to the living-room. To
his unspeakable pride, Rhoda took Billy Porter's arm and he guided her
listless footsteps carefully, casting pitying glances on his less favored
friends. Jack wheeled a Morris chair before the fireplace--desert nights
are cool--and John DeWitt hurried for a shawl, while Katherine gave every
one orders that no one heeded in the least.
Cartwell followed after the others, slowly lighted a cigarette, then
seated himself at the piano. For the rest of the evening he made no
attempt to join in the fragmentary conversation. Instead he sang softly,
as if to himself, touching the keys so gently that their notes seemed
only the echo of his mellow voice. He sang bits of Spanish love-songs,
of Mexican lullabies. But for the most part he kept to Indian
melodies--wistful love-songs and chants that touched the listener with
strange poignancy.
There was little talk among the group around the fire. The three men
smoked peacefully. Katherine and Jack sat close to each other, on the
davenport, content to be together. DeWitt lounged where he could watch
Rhoda, as did Billy Porter, the latter hanging on every word and movement
of this lovely, fragile being, as if he would carry forever in his heart
the memory of her charm.
Rhoda herself watched the fire. She was tired, tired to the inmost fiber
of her being. The only real desire left her was that she might crawl off
somewhere and die in peace. But these good friends of hers had set their
faces against the inevitable and it was only decency to humor them.
Once, quite unconscious that the others were watching her, she lifted her
hands and eyed them idly. They were almost transparent and shook a
little. The group about the fire stirred pityingly. John and Katherine
and Jack remembered those shadowy hands when they had been rosy and full
of warmth and tenderness. Billy Porter leaned across and with his hard
brown palms pressed the trembling fingers down into Rhoda's lap. She
looked up in astonishment.
"Don't hold 'em so!" said Billy hoarsely. "I can't stand to see 'em!"
"They _are_ pretty bad," said Rhoda, smiling. It was her rare, slow,
unforgetable smile. Porter swallowed audibly. Cartwell at the piano
drifted from a Mohave lament to _La Paloma_.
"The day that I left my home for the rolling sea,
I said, 'Mother dear, O pray to thy God for me!'
But e'er I set sail I went a fond leave to take
Of Nina, who wept as if her poor heart would break!"
The mellow, haunting melody caught Rhoda's fancy at once, as Cartwell
knew it would. She turned to the sinewy figure at the piano. DeWitt was
wholesome and strong, but this young Indian seemed vitality itself.
"Nina, if I should die and o'er ocean's foam
Softly at dusk a fair dove should come,
Open thy window, Nina, for it would be
My faithful soul come back to thee----"
Something in Cartwell's voice stirred Rhoda as had his eyes. For the
first time in months Rhoda felt poignantly that it would be hard to be
cut down with all her life unlived. The mellow voice ceased and
Cartwell, rising, lighted a fresh cigarette.
"I am going to get up with the rabbits, tomorrow," he said, "so I'll trot
to bed now."
DeWitt, impelled by that curious sense of liking for the young Indian
that fought down his aversion, said, "The music was bully, Cartwell!" but
Cartwell only smiled as if at the hint of patronage in the voice and
strolled to his own room.
Rhoda slept late the following morning. She had not, in her three nights
in the desert country, become accustomed to the silence that is not the
least of the desert's splendors. It seemed to her that the nameless
unknown Mystery toward which her life was drifting was embodied in this
infinite silence. So sleep would not come to her until dawn. Then the
stir of the wind in the trees, the bleat of sheep, the trill of
mocking-birds lulled her to sleep.
As the brilliancy of the light in her room increased there drifted across
her uneasy dreams the lilting notes of a whistled call. Pure and
liquidly sweet they persisted until there came to Rhoda that faint stir
of hope and longing that she had experienced the day before. She opened
her eyes and finally, as the call continued, she crept languidly from her
bed and peered from behind the window-shade. Cartwell, in his khaki
suit, his handsome head bared to the hot sun, leaned against a peach-tree
while he watched Rhoda's window.
"I wonder what he wakened me for?" she thought half resentfully. "I
can't go to sleep again, so I may as well dress and have breakfast."
Hardly had she seated herself at her solitary meal when Cartwell appeared.
"Dear me!" he exclaimed. "The birds and Mr. DeWitt have been up this
long time."
"What is John doing?" asked Rhoda carelessly.
"He's gone up on the first mesa for the wildcats I spoke of last night.
I thought perhaps you might care to take a drive before it got too hot.
You didn't sleep well last night, did you?"
Rhoda answered whimsically.
"It's the silence. It thunders at me so! I will get used to it soon.
Perhaps I ought to drive. I suppose I ought to try everything."
Not at all discouraged, apparently, by this lack of enthusiasm, Cartwell
said:
"I won't let you overdo. I'll have the top-buggy for you and we'll go
slowly and carefully."
"No," said Rhoda, suddenly recalling that, after all, Cartwell was an
Indian, "I don't think I will go. Katherine will have all sorts of
objections."
The Indian smiled sardonically.
"I already have Mrs. Jack's permission. Billy Porter will be in, in a
moment. If you would rather have a white man than an Indian, as escort,
I'm quite willing to retreat."
Rhoda flushed delicately.
"Your frankness is almost--almost impertinent, Mr. Cartwell."
"I don't mean it that way at all!" protested the Indian. "It's just that
I saw so plainly what was going on in your mind and it piqued me. If it
will be one bit pleasanter for you with Billy, I'll go right out and hunt
him up for you now."
The young man's naïveté completely disarmed Rhoda.
"Don't be silly!" she said. "Go get your famous top-buggy and I'll be
ready in a minute."
In a short time Rhoda and Cartwell, followed by many injunctions from
Katherine, started off toward the irrigating ditch. At a slow pace they
drove through the peach orchard into the desert. As they reached the
open trail, thrush and to-hee fluttered from the cholla. Chipmunk and
cottontail scurried before them. Overhead a hawk dipped in its reeling
flight. Cartwell watched the girl keenly. Her pale face was very lovely
in the brilliant morning light, though the somberness of her wide, gray
eyes was deepened. That same muteness and patience in her trouble which
so touched other men touched Cartwell, but he only said:
"There never was anything bigger and finer than this open desert, was
there?"
Rhoda turned from staring at the distant mesas and eyed the young Indian
wonderingly.
"Why!" she exclaimed, "I hate it! You know that sick fear that gets you
when you try to picture eternity to yourself? That's the way this
barrenness and awful distance affects me. I hate it!"
"But you won't hate it!" cried Cartwell. "You must let me show you its
bigness. It's as healing as the hand of God."
Rhoda shuddered.
"Don't talk about it, please! I'll try to think of something else."
They drove in silence for some moments. Rhoda, her thin hands clasped in
her lap, resolutely stared at the young Indian's profile. In the unreal
world in which she drifted, she needed some thought of strength, some
hope beyond her own, to which to cling. She was lonely--lonely as some
outcast watching with sick eyes the joy of the world to which he is
denied. As she stared at the stern young profile beside her, into her
heart crept the now familiar thrill.
Suddenly Cartwell turned and looked at her quizzically.
"Well, what are your conclusions?"
Rhoda shook her head.
"I don't know, except that it's hard to realize that you are an Indian."
Cartwell's voice was ironical.
"The only good Indian is a dead Indian, you know. I'm liable to break
loose any time, believe me!"
Rhoda's eyes were on the far lavender line where the mesa melted into the
mountains.
"Yes, and then what?" she asked.
Cartwell's eyes narrowed, but Rhoda did not see.
"Then I'm liable to follow Indian tradition and take whatever I want, by
whatever means!"
"My! My!" said Rhoda, "that sounds bludgy! And what are you liable to
want?"
"Oh, I want the same thing that a great many white men want. I'm going
to have it myself, though!" His handsome face glowed curiously as he
looked at Rhoda.
But the girl was giving his words small heed. Her eyes still were turned
toward the desert, as though she had forgotten her companion. Sand
whirls crossed the distant levels, ceaselessly. Huge and menacing, they
swirled out from the mesa's edge, crossed the desert triumphantly, then,
at contact with rock or cholla thicket, collapsed and disappeared.
Endless, merciless, hopeless the yellow desert quivered against the
bronze blue sky. For the first time dazed hopelessness gave way in Rhoda
to fear. The young Indian, watching the girl's face, beheld in it what
even DeWitt never had seen there--beheld deadly fear. He was silent for
a moment, then he leaned toward her and put a strong brown hand over her
trembling little fists. His voice was deep and soft.
"Don't," he said, "don't!"
Perhaps it was the subtle, not-to-be-fathomed influence of the desert
which fights all sham; perhaps it was that Rhoda merely had reached the
limit of her heroic self-containment and that, had DeWitt or Newman been
with her, she would have given way in the same manner; perhaps it was
that the young Indian's presence had in it a quality that roused new life
in her. Whatever the cause; the listless melancholy suddenly left
Rhoda's gray eyes and they were wild and black with fear.
"I can't die!" she panted. "I can't leave my life unlived! I can't
crawl on much longer like a sick animal without a soul. I want to live!
To live!"
"Look at me!" said Cartwell. "Look at me, not at the desert!" Then as
she turned to him, "Listen, Rhoda! You shall not die! I will make you
well! You shall not die!"
For a long minute the two gazed deep into each other's eyes, and the
sense of quickening blood touched Rhoda's heart. Then they both woke to
the sound of hoof-beats behind them and John DeWitt, with a wildcat
thrown across his saddle, rode up.
"Hello! I've shouted one lung out! I thought you people were
petrified!" He looked curiously from Rhoda's white face to Cartwell's
inscrutable one. "Do you think you ought to have attempted this trip,
Rhoda?" he asked gently.
"Oh, we've taken it very slowly," answered the Indian. "And we are going
to turn back now."
"I don't think I've overdone," said Rhoda. "But perhaps we have had
enough."
"All right," said Cartwell. "If Mr. DeWitt will change places with me,
I'll ride on to the ditch and he can drive you back."
DeWitt assented eagerly and, the change made, Cartwell lifted his hat and
was gone. Rhoda and John returned in a silence that lasted until DeWitt
lifted Rhoda from the buggy to the veranda. Then he said:
"Rhoda, I don't like to have you go off alone with Cartwell. I wish you
wouldn't."
Rhoda smiled.
"John, don't be silly! He goes about with Katherine all the time."
John only shook his head and changed the subject. That afternoon,
however, Billy Porter buttonholed DeWitt in the corral where the New
Yorker was watching the Arizonian saddle his fractious horse. When the
horse was ready at the post, "Look here, DeWitt," said Billy, an
embarrassed look in his honest brown eyes, "I don't want you to think I'm
buttin' in, but some one ought to watch that young Injun. Anybody with
one eye can see he's crazy about Miss Rhoda."
John was too startled to be resentful.
"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "Cartwell is a great friend of the
Newmans'."
"That's why I came to you. They're plumb locoed about the fellow, like
the rest of the Easterners around here."
"Do you know anything against him?" insisted DeWitt.
"Why, man, he's an Injun, and half Apache at that! That's enough to know
against him!"
"What makes you think he's interested in Miss Tuttle?" asked John.
Porter flushed through his tan.
"Well," he said sheepishly, "I seen him come down the hall at dawn this
morning. Us Westerners are early risers, you know, and when he reached
Miss Turtle's door, he pulled a little slipper out of his pocket and
kissed it and put it in front of the sill."
DeWitt scowled, then he laughed.
"He's no worse than the rest of us that way! I'll watch, him, though
perhaps it's only your prejudice against Indians and not really a matter
to worry about."
Porter sighed helplessly.
"All right! All right! Just remember, DeWitt, I warned you!"
He mounted, then held in his horse while the worried look gave place to
one so sad, yet so manly, that John never forgot it.
"I hope you appreciate that girl, DeWitt. She--she's a thoroughbred! My
God! When you think of a sweet thing like that dying and these Injun
squaws living! I hope you'll watch her, DeWitt. If anything happens to
her through you not watching her, I'll come back on you for it! I ain't
got any rights except the rights that any living man has got to take care
of any white thing like her. They get me hard when they're dainty like
that. And she's the daintiest I ever seen!"
He rode away, shaking his head ominously.