THE HEART'S OWN BITTERNESS
"I'm not worrying," answered Rhoda stoutly, "except about you. You are
shaking with exhaustion while I am as fit as can be."
"Oh, don't bother about me!" exclaimed John. "I'm just a little tired."
But Rhoda was not to be put off.
"How much did you sleep last night?"
"Not much," admitted DeWitt. "I haven't been a heavy sleeper at times
ever since you disappeared, strange as that may seem!" Then he
grinned. It was pleasant to have Rhoda bully him.
Yet the big fellow actually was sinking with weariness. The fearful
hardships that he had undergone had worked havoc with him. Now that
the agonizing nerve-strain was lifted he was going to pieces. He stood
wavering for a minute, then he slowly sat down in the sand.
Rhoda stood beside him uncertainly and looked from the man to the
immovably distant mountain peak. She realized that, in stopping, the
risk of recapture was great, yet her desert experiences told her that
John must regain some of his strength before the sun caught them. She
had little faith that they would tumble upon the camp as easily as John
thought, and wanted to prepare for a day of desert heat.
"If we were sure just where the camp lay," she said, "I would go on for
help. But as we aren't certain, I'm afraid to be separated from you,
John."
John looked up fiercely with his haggard eyes.
"Don't you dare to move six inches from me, Rhoda. It will kill me to
lose you now."
"Of course I won't," said Rhoda. "I've had my lesson about losing
myself in the desert. But you must have some sleep before we go any
farther."
Rhoda spoke with a cheerfulness she did not feel. She looked about for
a comfortable resting-place but the desert was barren.
"There's no use trying to find a comfortable bed," she said. "You had
better lie down right where you are."
"Honey," said John, "I've no idea of sleeping. It will be time enough
for that when we reach camp. But if you think you could stand guard
for just ten minutes I will lie flat in the sand and rest. You take my
watch and time me."
"That's splendid!" said Rhoda, helping him to clear of rocks and cactus
a space long enough to lie in.
"Just ten minutes," said DeWitt, and as he spoke he sank to sleep.
Rhoda stood in the moonlight looking into the man's unconscious face.
His new-grown beard gave him a haggard look that was enhanced by the
dark circles under his eyes. That wan face touched Rhoda much more
than the healthy face of former days. The lines of weariness and pain
that never could be fully erased were all for her, she thought with a
little catch of her breath. Then with a pitying, affectionate look at
the sleeping man came a whimsical smile. Once she had thought no one
could equal John in physical vigor. Now she pictured Kut-le's panther
strength and endurance, and smiled.
She looked at the watch. Five hours till dawn. She would let John
have the whole of that time in which to sleep. His ten minutes would
be worse than useless, while to find the camp after the moon had set
would be quite out of the question. Her own eyes were wide and
sleepless. She sat in the sand beside DeWitt until driven by the cold
to pace back and forth. John slept without stirring; the sleep of
complete exhaustion. Rhoda was not afraid, nor did she feel lonely.
The desert was hers now. There was no wind, but now and again the
cactus rustled as if unseen wings had brushed it. The dried heaps of
cholla stirred as if unseen paws had pressed them. From afar came the
demoniacal laughter of coyotes on their night hunts. But still Rhoda
was not afraid.
At first, in the confusion of thoughts that the day's events had
crowded on her, her clearest sense was of thankfulness. Then she fell
to wondering what had happened to Porter and Kut-le. Suddenly she
caught her breath with a shiver. If Porter won there could be but one
answer as to Kut-le's fate. John's attitude of mind told that. Rhoda
twisted her hands together.
"I will not have him killed!" she whispered. "No! No! I will not
have him killed!"
For many minutes she paced back and forth, battling with her fears.
Then she suddenly recalled the fact that vengeance was to be saved for
John. This uncanny thought comforted her. She had little fear but
that she could manage John.
And then in the utter silence of the desert night, staring at the
sinking moon, Rhoda asked herself why, when she should have been mad
with joy over her own rescue, she was giving all her thoughts to
Kut-le's plight! For a moment the question brought a flood of
confusion. Then, standing alone in the night beauty of the desert, the
girl acknowledged the truth that she had denied even to herself so
long. The young Indian's image returned to her endowed with all the
dignity of his remarkable physical perfection. She knew now that from
the first this physical beauty of his had had a strong appeal to her.
She knew now that all his unusual characteristics that at first had
seemed so strange to her were the ones that had drawn her to him. His
strange mental honesty, his courage, his brutal incisiveness, all had
fascinated her. All her days with him returned to her, days of
weakness, of anger, then the weeks on the ledge, and the day when she
had found the desert, and finally the day just past, to the very moment
when Billy Porter had come upon them on the ledge.
Rhoda stood with unseeing eyes while before her inward vision passed a
magnificent panorama of the glories through which Kut-le had led her.
Chaos of mountain and desert, resplendent with color; cool, sweet depth
of cañon; burning height of tortured peak; slope of pungent piñon
forest--all wrapped in the haze which is the desert's own.
Rhoda knew the truth; knew that she loved Kut-le! She knew that she
loved him with all the passionate devotion for which her rebirth had
given her the capacity.
With this acknowledgment, all her calm was swept away. With fingers
clasped against her breast, with wide eyes on the brooding night, she
wished that she might tell him this that had come to her. If only once
more the inscrutable tenderness of his black eyes were upon her! If
the deep imperative voice were but sounding in her ears again! If only
she could feel now the touch of his powerful arms as he carried her the
long sick miles to Chira. Trembling with longing, her gaze fell upon
the man sleeping at her feet. She drew a sudden troubled breath. Must
she renounce this new rapture of living? Must she?
"Have I found new life in the desert only to lose it?" she whispered.
"O Kut-le! Kut-le!"
DeWitt slept on, unmoving, and Rhoda watched him with tragedy-stricken
eyes.
"What shall I do!" she whispered, lips quivering, shaking hands
twisting together. "Oh, what shall I do!"
She tried to picture a future with Kut-le. She saw his tenderness, his
purposefulness, the bigness of his mind and spirit. Then with a cold
clutch at her throat came the thought of race barrier, and in a moment
Rhoda was plunged into the oldest, the most hopeless, the least
solvable of all love's problems. Minute after minute went by and the
girl, standing by the sleeping man, fought a fight that shook her
slender body and racked her soul. At last she raised her face to the
sky.
"I want to do what is right!" she said piteously. "It doesn't matter
about me, if only I can decide what is right!" Then after, a pause, "I
will marry John! I will!" like a child that has been punished and
promises to be good. Still another pause, then, "So that part of me is
dead!" and she put her fingers before her eyes and fell to crying, not
with the easy tears of a woman but with the deep, agonizing sobs of a
man over his dead.
"Kut-le, I wanted you! I wanted you for my mate! If I could have
heard you, seen you, felt you once more! Nothing else would have
mattered. I wanted you!"
A long hour passed in which Rhoda sat in the sand, limp and quiescent,
as though all but wrecked by the storm through which she had passed.
Dawn came at last. The air was pregnant with new hope, with a vague
uplifting of sense and being that told of the coming of a new day. The
east quivered with prismatic colors and suddenly the sun appeared.
Rhoda rose and stooped over DeWitt to smooth the hair back from his
forehead.
"Come," she said softly. "It's breakfast time!"
DeWitt sat up bewildered. Then his senses returned.
"Rhoda," he exclaimed, "what do you mean by this!"
Rhoda's smile was a little wan.
"You needed the rest and I didn't!"
DeWitt rose and shook himself like a great dog, then looked at Rhoda
wonderingly.
"And you don't look much done up! But you had no right to do such a
thing! I told you to give me ten minutes. I feel like a brute. Lie
down now and get a little sleep yourself."
"Lie in the sun? Thank you, I'd rather push on to the camp and have
some breakfast. How do you feel?"
"Much better! It was fine of you, dear, but it wasn't a fair deal."
"I'll be good from now on!" said Rhoda meekly. "What would you like
for breakfast?"
DeWitt looked about him. Already the desert was assuming its brazen
aspect.
"Water will be enough for me," he answered, "and nothing else. I am
seriously considering a rigid diet for a time."
They both drank sparingly of the water in Rhoda's canteen.
"I have three shots in my Colt," said DeWitt, "but I want to save them
for an emergency. But if we don't strike camp pretty soon, I'll try to
pot a jack-rabbit."
"We can eat desert mice," said Rhoda. "I know how to catch and cook
them!"
"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated DeWitt. "Let's start on at once, if you're
not too tired."
So they began the day cheerfully. As the morning wore on and they
found no trace of the camp, they began to watch the canteen carefully.
Gradually their thirst became so great that the desire for food was
quite secondary to it and they made no attempt to hunt for a rabbit.
They agreed toward noon to save the last few drops in the canteen until
they could no longer do without it.
Hour after hour they toiled in the blinding heat, the strange deep blue
of the sky reflecting the brazen light of the desert. In their careful
avoiding of the mountain where they had rested at sunset the night
before, they gradually worked out into a wide barren space with dunes
and rock heaps interchanging.
"This won't do at all," said Dewitt at last, wearily. "We had better
try for any old mountain at all in the hope of finding water."
They stood panting, staring at the distant haze of a peak. Trackless
and tortuous, the way underfoot was incredibly difficult. Yet the
distances melted in ephemeral slopes as lovely in their tints as they
were accursed in their reality of cruelty. Rhoda, unaccustomed to day
travel, panted and gasped as they walked. But she held her own fairly
well, while DeWitt, sick and overstrained at the start, was failing
rapidly.
"It's noon now," said John a little thickly. "You had better lie in
the shade of that rock for an hour."
"You sleep too!" pleaded Rhoda.
"I'm too hot to sleep. I'll wake you in an hour."
When Rhoda awoke it was to see DeWitt leaning against the rock heap,
his lips swollen, his eyes uncertain.
Weak and dizzy herself, she rose and laid her hand on John's, every
maternal instinct in her stirring and speaking in her gray eyes.
"Come, dear boy, we mustn't give up so easily."
John lifted the little hand to his cheek.
"I won't give up," he said uncertainly. "I'll take care of you, honey
girl!"
"Come on, then!" said Rhoda. "You see that queer bunch of cholla
yonder? Let's get as far as that before we stop again!"
With a great effort, DeWitt gathered himself together and, fixing his
eyes on the fantastic cactus growth, he plodded desperately through the
sand. At the cholla bunch, Rhoda pointed to a jutting lavender rock.
"At that we'll rest for a minute. Come on, John!"
John's sick eyes did not waver but his trembling legs described many
circles in their journey to the jutting rock. Distances were so many
times what they seemed that Rhoda's little scheme carried them over a
mile of desert before DeWitt sank to his knees.
"I'm a sick man," he said huskily as he fell in a limp heap.
Nothing could have appeared more opportunely than this new hardship to
take Rhoda's mind off her misery of the night. Nothing could have
brought John so near to her as this utter helplessness brought about
through his toiling for her. She looked at him with tears of pity in
her eyes, while her heart sank with fright. She knew the terrible
danger that menaced them. But she closed her lips firmly and looked
thoughtfully at the mite of water that remained to them. Then she held
the canteen to DeWitt's lips. He pushed it away from him and in
another moment or so he rose.
Rhoda, fastening their hopes to another distant cholla, led the way on
again. But she too was growing a little light-headed. The distant
cactus danced grotesquely and black spots flitted between her and the
molten iron over which, her fancy said they traveled. Suddenly she
laughed crazily:
"'Twas brillig, and the slythy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe!"
DeWitt laughed hoarsely.
"That's just the way it looks to me, Rhoda. But you're just as crazy
as I am."
Rhoda jerked herself together and tried to moisten her lips with her
swollen tongue.
"We must take it turn about. When you are crazy I must try to be sane!"
"Good idea!" croaked DeWitt, "only I'm crazy all the time!"
"'O frabjous day! Calloo! Collay!
He chortled in his joy!'"
Rhoda patted his hand.
"Poor John! Oh, my poor John! I was not worth all this. You may not
have an Apache's strength, but your heart is right!" Two great tears
rolled down her cheeks.
DeWitt looked at her seriously.
"You aren't as dry as I am. I haven't enough moisture in me to moisten
my eyeballs, let alone cry! I am so cracked and dry that you will have
to soak me in the first spring we come to before I'll hold water."
Rhoda laughed weakly and John turned away with a hurt look.
"It's not a joke!" he said.
How long they were, in their staggering, circuitous course, in reaching
their goal of cholla, Rhoda never knew. She knew that each heavy foot,
tingling and scorched, seemed to drag her back a step for every one
that she took forward. She knew that she repeatedly offered the last
of their water to John and that he repeatedly refused it, urging it on
her. She knew that the pulp of the barrel cactus that she tried to
chew turned to bitter sawdust in her mouth and sickened her. Then
suddenly, as she struggled to refocus her wandering wits on the cholla,
it appeared within touch of her hand.
Afraid to pause, she adopted a new goal in a far mesa, and clutching
DeWitt's unresponsive fingers she struggled forward.
And so on and on toward a never nearing goal; now falling, now rising,
now pausing to strive to hush Dewitt's cracked voice that wandered
aimlessly through all the changes of verse that seemed to his delirium
appropriate to the occasion. It seemed to Rhoda that her own brain was
reeling as she watched the illimitable space through which they moved.
John's voice did not cease.
"Alone! Alone! All, all, alone!
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
So lonely 'twas that God himself,
Scarce seemed there to be!"
"Hush, John! Hush!" pleaded Rhoda.
"Alone! Alone! All, all alone!"
repeated the croaking voice.
"But I'm with you, John!" Rhoda pleaded, but DeWitt rambled on
unheeding.
The way grew indescribably rough. The desert floor became a series of
sand dunes, a rise and fall of sea-like billows over which they climbed
like ants over a new-plowed field. In the hollow of each wave they
rested, sinking in the sand, where, breathless and scorching, the air
scintillated above their motionless forms. At the crest of each they
rested again, the desert wind hurtling the hot sand against their
parched skins. Frequently John refused to rise and Rhoda in her half
delirium would sink beside him until the mist lifted from her brain and
once more the distant mesa forced itself upon her vision.
"Come, John, we will soon be there. We can't keep on this way forever
and not reach some place. Please come, dear!"
"'He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside
still waters. He restoreth my soul--'"
"Perhaps there will be water there! O John, dear John, if you love me,
come!"
"I don't love you, little boy! I love Rhoda Tuttle.
"O for a draught of vintage that hath been
Cooled a long age in deep delved earth!"
"Please, John! I'm so sick!"
The man, after two or three attempts, staggered to his feet and stood
swaying.
"God help me!" he said. "I can do no more!"
"Yes, you can, John! Yes, you can! Perhaps there is a whole fountain
of water there on the mesa!"
The glazed look returned to DeWitt's eyes.
"'Or the pitcher be broken at the fountain,'" he muttered, "'or the
wheel broken at the cistern--or the pitcher broken at the fountain, or
the wheel--'"
Rhoda threw her arm across her eyes.
"Oh, not that, John! I can't bear that one!"
Again, she stood upon the roof at Chira, looking up into Kut-le's face.
Again the low wailing of the Indian women and the indescribable depth
and hunger of those dear black eyes. Again the sense of protection and
content in his nearness.
"O Kut-le! Kut-le!" she moaned.
Instantly sanity returned to John's eyes.
"Why did you say Kut-le?" he demanded thickly.
"Were you thinking of him?"
"Yes," answered Rhoda simply. "Come on, John!"
DeWitt struggled on bravely to the crest of the next dune.
"I hate that Apache devil!" he muttered. "I am going to kill him!"
Rhoda quickly saw the magic of Kut-le's name.
"Why should you want to kill Kut-le?" she asked as Dewitt paused at the
top of the next dune. Instantly he started on.
"Because I hate him! I hate him, the devil!"
"See how near the mesa is, John! Only a little way! Kut-le would say
we were poor stuff!"
"No doubt! Well, I'll let a gun give him my opinion of him!"
The sand dunes had indeed beaten themselves out against the wall of a
giant mesa. Rhoda followed blindly along the wall and stumbled upon a
precipitous trail leading upward.