THE RUINED MISSION
Rhoda was so confused that for a moment she could only ease herself to
the pony's swift canter and wonder if her encounter with DeWitt had
been but a dream after all. A short distance from the pueblo Kut-le
rode in beside her. It was very dark, with the heavy blackness that
just precedes the dawn, but Rhoda felt that the Indian was looking at
her exultingly.
"It seemed as if I never would get Alchise and Injun Tom moved to a
friend's _campos_ so that I could overtake you. I will say that that
fellow Porter is game to the finish. It took me an hour to subdue him!
Now, don't worry about the two of them. With a little work they can
loose themselves and help each other to safety. I saw Newman's trail
ten miles or so over beyond the pueblo mesa and I told Porter just how
to go to pick him up."
Rhoda laughed hysterically.
"No wonder you have such a hold on your Indians! You seem never to
fail! I do believe as much of it is luck as ingenuity!"
Kut-le chuckled.
"What a jolt DeWitt will find when he comes to, and finds Porter!"
"You needn't gloat over the situation, Kut-le!" exclaimed Rhoda, half
sobbing in her conflict of emotions.
"Oh, you mustn't mind anything I say," returned the young Indian. "I
am crazy with joy at just hearing your voice again! Are you really
sorry to be with me again? Did DeWitt mean as much to you as ever?
Tell me, Rhoda! Say just one kindly thing to me!"
"O Kut-le," cried Rhoda, "I can't! I can't! You must help me to be
strong! You--who are the strongest person that I know! Can't you put
yourself in my place and realize what a horrible position I am in?"
Kut-le answered slowly.
"I guess I can realize it. But the end is so great, so much worth
while that nothing before that matters much, to me! Rhoda, isn't this
good--the lift of the horse under your knees--the air rushing past your
face--the weave and twist of the trail--don't they speak to you and
doesn't your heart answer?"
"Yes," answered Rhoda simply.
The young Indian rode still closer. Dawn was lifting now, and with a
gasp Rhoda saw what she had been too agonized to heed on the terrace in
the moonlight. Kut-le was clothed again! He wore the khaki suit, the
high-laced riding boots of the ranch days; and he wore them with the
grace, the debonair ease that had so charmed Rhoda in young Cartwell.
That little sense of his difference that his Indian nakedness had kept
in Rhoda's subconsciousness disappeared. She stared at his broad,
graceful shoulders, at the fine outline of his head which still was
bare, and she knew that her decision was going to be indescribably
difficult to keep. Kut-le watched the wistful gray eyes tenderly, as
if he realized the depth of anguish behind their wistfulness; yet he
watched none the less resolutely, as if he had no qualms over the
outcome of his plans. And Rhoda, returning his gaze, caught the depth
and splendor of his eyes. And that wordless joy of life whose thrill
had touched her the first time that she had met young Cartwell rushed
through her veins once more. He was the youth, the splendor, the vivid
wholesomeness of the desert! He was the heart itself, of the desert.
Kut-le laid his hand on hers.
"Rhoda," softly, "do you remember the moment before Porter interrupted
us? Ah, dear one, you will have to prove much to erase the truth of
that moment from our hearts! How much longer must I wait for you,
Rhoda?"
Rhoda did not speak, but as she returned the young man's gaze there
came her rare slow smile of unspeakable beauty and tenderness. Kut-le
trembled; but before he could speak Rhoda seemed to see between his
face and hers, DeWitt, haggard and exhausted, expending the last
remnant of his strength in his fight for her. She put her hands before
her face with a little sob.
Kut-le watched her in silence for a moment, then he said in his low
rich voice:
"Neither DeWitt nor I want you to suffer over your decision. And
DeWitt doesn't want just the shell of you. I have the real you! O
Rhoda, the real you will belong to me if you are seven times DeWitt's
wife! Can't you realize that forever and ever you are mine, no matter
how you fight or what you do?"
But Rhoda scarcely heard him. She was with DeWitt, struggling across
the parching sands.
"O Kut-le! Kut-le! What shall I do! What shall I do!"
Kut-le started to answer, then changed his mind.
"You poor, tired little girl," he said. "You have had a fierce time
there in the desert. You look exhausted. What did you have to eat and
how did you make out crossing to the mesa? By your trail you went
miles out of your way."
Rhoda struggled for calm.
"We nearly died the first day," she said. "But we did very well after
we reached the mesa."
Kut-le smiled to himself. It was hard even for him to realize that
this plucky girl who passed so simply over such an ordeal as he knew
she must have endured could be the Rhoda of the ranch. But he said
only:
"We'll make for the timber line and let you rest for a while."
At mid-morning they left the desert and began to climb a rough mountain
slope. At the piñon line, Kut-le called a halt. Never before had
shade seemed so good to Rhoda as it did now. She lay on the
pine-needles looking up into the soft green. It was unspeakably
grateful to her eyes which had been so long tortured by the desert
glare. She lay thus for a long time, her mental pain for a while lost
in the access of physical comfort. Shortly Molly, who had been working
rapidly, brought her a steaming bowl of stew. Rhoda ate this, then
with her head pillowed on her arm she fell asleep.
She was wakened by Molly's touch on her arm. It was late afternoon.
Rhoda looked up into the squaw's face and drew a quick hard breath as
realization came to her.
"Molly! Molly!" she cried. "I'm in terrible, terrible trouble, Molly!"
The squaw looked worried.
"You no go away! Kut-le heap sorry while you gone!"
But Rhoda scarcely heeded the woman's voice. She rolled over with her
hot face in the fragrant needles and groaned.
"O Molly! Molly! I'm in terrible trouble!"
"What trouble? You tell old Molly!"
Rhoda sat up and stared into the deep brown eyes. Just as Kut-le had
become to her the splendor of the desert, so had Molly become the
brooding wisdom of the desert. With sudden inspiration she grasped the
Indian woman's toil-scarred hands.
"Listen, Molly! Before I knew Kut-le, I was going to marry the white
man, DeWitt. And after he stole me I hated Kut-le and I hated the
desert. And now, O Molly, I love both Kut-le and the desert, and I
must marry the white man!"
"Why? You tell Molly why?"
"Because he is white, Molly, like me. Because he loves me so and has
done so much for me! But most of all because he is white!"
Molly scowled.
"Because Kut-le is Injun, you no marry him?"
Rhoda nodded miserably.
"Huh! And you think you so big, Kut-le so big that Great Spirit care
if you marry white, marry Injun. All Great Spirit care is for every
squaw to have papoose. Squaw, she big fool to listen to her head.
Squaw, she must always listen to her heart, that is Great Spirit
talking. Your heart, it say marry Kut-le!"
Molly paused and looked at the girl, who sat with stormy eyes on the
sinking sun. And she forgot her hard-earned wisdom and was just a
heart-hungry woman.
"You stay! Stay with Kut-le and old Molly! You so sweet! You like
little childs! You lie in old Molly's heart like little girl papoose
that never came to Molly. You stay! Always, always, Molly will take
care of you!"
Rhoda was deeply touched. This was the cry of the famished motherhood
of a dying race. She put her soft cheek on Molly's shoulder and she
could no longer see the sun, for her eyes were tear-blinded. Kut-le,
standing on the other side of the camp, looked at the picture with
deepening eyes; then he crossed and put his hand on Rhoda's shoulder.
"Dear one," he said, "you must eat your supper, then we must take the
trail."
Rhoda looked up into the young man's face. She was exquisite in the
failing light. For a moment it seemed as if Kut-le must fold her in
his arms; but something in her troubled gaze withheld him and he only
smiled at her caressingly.
"Before you eat," he said, "come to the edge of the camp and look
through the glasses."
Rhoda hurried after him, and stared out over the desert. A short
distance out, vivid in the afterglow, moved two figures. She
distinguished the short wiry figure of Porter, the gaunt figure of
DeWitt, walking with determined strides. Waiting till she could
command her voice, Rhoda turned to Kut-le. He was watching her keenly.
"Will they pick up our trail? Are the poor things badly lost?"
"Billy Porter lost! I guess not! And I gave him enough hints so that
he ought to join Newman in another twenty-four hours."
Rhoda smiled wanly.
"Sometimes you forget to act like a cold-blooded Indian."
Kut-le gave his familiar chuckle.
"Well, you see, I've been contaminated by my long association with the
whites!"
And so again the nights of going. During her waking hours, Rhoda spent
the greater part of her time considering arguments that would have
weight with Kut-le when the struggle came which she knew was imminent.
If she had suffered before, if the early part of her abduction had been
agony, it had been nothing in comparison with what she was enduring in
putting Kut-le aside for DeWitt. And, after all, she had no final
guide in holding to her resolution save an instinct that told her that
her course was the right one. All the arguments that she could put
into words against inter-race marriage seemed inadequate. This
instinct which was wordless and formless alone remained sufficient.
And with the ill logic of womankind, through all her arguing with
herself there flushed one glad thought. Kut-le knew that she loved
him, knew that she was suffering in the thought of giving him up! His
tender, half sad, half triumphant smile proved that, as did his
protective air of ownership.
Rhoda noticed one condition of her keeping to her decision. She was
very firm in it at night when the desert was dim. But in the glory of
the dawns and the sunsets, her little arguments seemed strangely small.
Sitting on a mountainside one afternoon, Rhoda watched a rain-storm
sweep across the ranges, across the desert, to the far-lying mesas.
Normally odorless, the desert, after the rain, emitted a faint,
ineffable odor that teased the girl's fancy as if she verged on the
secret of the desert's beauty. Exquisite violet mists rolled back to
the mountains. Flashing every rainbow tint from its moistened breast
the desert lay as if breathing the very words of the Great Scheme.
Suddenly to Rhoda her resolution seemed small and futile, and for a
long hour she revelled in the thought of belonging to the man she
loved. And yet as night descended and the infinite reaches of the
desert receded into darkness, the spell was broken, and the old doubts
and misery returned.
And so again, the nights of going. But the holiday aspect of the
flight was gone. Kut-le moved with a grim determination that was not
to be misinterpreted. Rhoda knew that they were to reach the Mexican
border with all possible speed. The young Indian drove the little
party to the limit of its endurance. Rhoda avoided talking to him as
much as she could and Kut-le, seeming to understand her mood, left her
much to herself.
On the fourth day they camped on a cañon edge. After Rhoda had eaten
she walked with Kut-le to the far edge and looked down. The cañon was
very deep and narrow. Some distance away, near where it opened on the
desert, lay a heap of ruins.
"Is that another pueblo?" asked Rhoda.
"No, it's an old monastery. Part of the year they have a padre there.
I wish I knew if there was one there now."
"Why?" asked Rhoda suspiciously.
"Don't bother your dear head," answered Kut-le. Then he went on, as if
half to himself: "There's been an awful lot of fooling on this
expedition. Perhaps I ought to have made for the Mexican border the
very night I took you." He looked at Rhoda's wide, troubled eyes.
"But no, then I would have missed this wonderful desert growth of
yours! But now we are going straight over the border where I know a
padre that will many us. Then we will make for Europe at once."
The morning sun glinted on the pine-needles. Old Molly hummed a
singsong air over the stew-pot. And Rhoda stood with stormy,
tear-dimmed eyes and quivering lips.
"It can never, never be, Kut-le!"
"Why not?"
"We can't solve the problems of race adjustment. No love is big enough
for that. I have been civilized a thousand years. You have been
savage a thousand years. You can't come forward. I can't go backward."
"You know well enough, Rhoda," said Kut-le quietly, "that I am
civilized."
"You are externally, perhaps," said the girl. "But you yourself have
no proof that at heart you are not as uncivilized as your father or
grandfather. Your stealing me shows that. Nothing can change our
instinct. You know that you might revert at any time."
Kut-le turned on her fiercely.
"Do you love me, Rhoda?"
Rhoda stood silently, her cleft chin trembling, her deep gray eyes wide
and grief-stricken.
"Do you love me--and better than you do DeWitt?" insisted the man,
Suddenly Rhoda lifted her head proudly.
"Yes," she said, "I do love you, better than any one in the world; but
I cannot marry you!"
Kut-le took her trembling hands in his.
"Why not, dear one?" he asked.
Still the sun flickered on the pine-needles and still Molly hummed over
her stew-pot. Still Rhoda stood looking into the eyes of the man she
loved, her scarlet cheeks growing each moment more deeply crimson.
"Because you are an Indian. The instinct in me against such a marriage
is so strong that I dare not go against it."
Kut-le's mouth closed in the old way.
"And still you shall marry me, Rhoda!"
"I am a white woman, Kut-le. I can't marry an Indian. The difference
is too great!"
Kut-le turned abruptly and walked to the cañon edge, looking far out to
the desert. Rhoda, panting and half hysterical, watched him. The
moment which she had so dreaded had arrived, and she found herself,
after all her planning, utterly unprepared to meet it save with
hackneyed phrases.
It seemed a long time that Kut-le stood staring away from her. At last
Rhoda could bear the silence no longer. She ran to him and put her
trembling hand on his arm. He turned his stern young face to her and
her heart failed her.
"O Kut-le! Kut-le!" she cried. "If you won't help me to do right, who
will? It's not right for us to marry! Just not right! That's all I
know about it!"
Kut-le put both hands on her shoulders.
"Look here, Rhoda. What you call the 'right' instinct is just the
remnant of the old man-made race hatred in you. It's just a part of
the old conceit of the Caucasian."
Rhoda stirred restlessly, but Kut-le held her firmly and went on.
"I tell you, if we're not to go mad, we've got to believe that great
things come to us for a purpose. There is no human being who has loved
who does not believe that love is the greatest thing that has been
given to man. The man who has loved knows that the biggest things in
the world have been done for the love of woman. Love is bigger than
nations or races. It's human, not white, or black, or yellow. It's
above all we can do to tarnish it with our little prejudices. When it
comes greatly, it comes supremely."
He lifted the girl's face and looked deeply into her eyes.
"Rhoda, if it has come as greatly to you as it has to me, you will not
pause for any sorrow that your coming to me may cost you. You will
come, in spite of everything. I believe that if in your smallness and
ignorance you refuse this gift that has come to you and me, you will be
outraging the greatest force in nature."
Rhoda stood sorrow-stricken and confused. When the deep, quiet voice
ceased, she said brokenly:
"I haven't lived in the desert so long as you. The way does not lie so
clear to me. If only I had your conviction, I too could be strong and
walk the path I saw unhesitatingly. But I see no path!"
"Then," said Kut-le, "because I see, I'll decide for you! O Rhoda, you
must believe in me! I have had you in my power and I have kept the
faith with you. I am going to take you and marry you. I am going to
make this gift that has come to you and me make us the big man and
woman that nature needs. Tonight we shall reach the padre who will
marry us."
He watched the girl keenly for a moment, then he again turned from her
deliberately and walked to the edge of the cañon, as if he wanted her
to come to her final decision unbiased by his nearness. But he turned
back to her with a curious expression on his face.
"Come and take a good-by look, Rhoda! Your friends are below. I hope
it will be some time before we see them again!"
Rhoda went to him. Far, far below, she saw little dots of men making
camp beyond the monastery near the desert. Suddenly Rhoda sank to her
knees with a cry of longing that was heart-breaking.
"O my people! My own people!" she sobbed, crouching upon the cañon
edge.
Kut-le watched the little figure with inscrutable eyes. Then he lifted
the girl to her feet.
"Rhoda, are you going to eat your heart out for your own kind if you
marry me? Won't I be sufficient? It hadn't occurred to me that I
might not be!"
"You haven't given up your people," answered Rhoda. "You are always
going back to them."
"But you aren't really giving them up," urged Kut-le. "It really is I
who make the sacrifice of my race!"
"And that is the reason for one of my fears," cried Rhoda. "I am
afraid that some day you would find the price too great and that our
marriage would be wrecked."
"Even if I went back for a few months each year, would that make you
unhappy?" asked Kut-le.
"Kut-le!" exclaimed Rhoda. "I am not talking of externals. I mean
that if your longing for your own kind made you lose your love for me.
Oh, I can't see any of it straight, but I am afraid!"
"Nonsense, Rhoda! I fought that battle long before I knew you. There
is absolutely no danger of my reverting. I am going to spend the rest
of my life among the whites even if you shouldn't marry me, Rhoda.
Rhoda, I wish I had had time to let you grow to it fully!"
Rhoda stood rigidly. Molly, sensing trouble, hovered restlessly just
out of earshot.
"If you married DeWitt," Kut-le went on, "could you forget me? Forget
the desert? Forget our days and nights? Forget my arms about you?"
"Oh, no! No!" cried Rhoda. "You know that I shall love you always!"
"And will DeWitt want what you offer him?" Kut-le went on, mercilessly.
Rhoda winced.
"I wish," said Kut-le huskily, "you never will know how I wish that you
had come to me freely, feeling that the sacrifice was worth while!"
Rhoda looked at him wonderingly. After all the weeks of iron
determination, was the young giant weakening, was his great heart
failing him!
"I had thought," he went on, "that you were big enough to stand the
test. That after the travail and the heart scourging, you would
see--and would come to me freely--strong enough to smile at all your
regrets and fears. That thought steeled me to put you through the
torture. But if now, at the end, you are coming to me only because you
must! Rhoda, I don't want you on those terms."
Rhoda gasped. She felt as one feels when in a dream one falls an
unexpected and endless distance. The relief from the pressure of
Kut-le's will that had forced her on, for so long, left her weak and
aimless.
Yet somehow she found the strength to say:
"Kut-le, we must give each other up! I love you so that I can let you
go! Oh, can't you see how I feel about it!"
Again Kut-le looked far off over vista of mountains and cañon. His
eyes were deep and abstracted, as if he saw into the years ahead with
knowledge denied to Rhoda. Then he turned to Rhoda and searched her
face with burning gaze. He eyed her hair, her lovely heart-broken
face, her slender figure. For a moment his face was tortured by a look
of doubt that was heart-shattering. He lifted Rhoda across his chest
in the old way and held her to him with passionate tenderness. He laid
his face against hers and she heard him whisper:
"O my love! Love of my youth and my manhood!" Then he set her very
gently to her feet. "Don't cry," he said. "I can't bear it!"
Rhoda threw her arms above her head in an abandonment of agony.
"Oh, I cannot, cannot bear this!" Then she added more calmly: "I
suffer as much as you, Kut-le!"
Again the look of unspeakable grief crossed the young Indian's face,
but it immediately became inscrutable. He led Rhoda along the cañon
edge.
"Do you see that little trail going down?" he said.
"Yes," said Rhoda wonderingly.
"Then go!" said Kut-le quietly.
Rhoda looked up at him blankly.
"Go!" he said sternly. "Go back to your own kind and I will go on,
alone. Don't stop to talk any more. Go now!"
Rhoda turned and looked at Cesca squatting by the horses, at Molly
hovering near by with anxious eyes. Never to make the dawn camp,
again--never to hear Molly humming over the stew-pot! Suddenly Rhoda
felt that if she could have Molly with her she would not be so utterly
separated from Kut-le.
"Let Molly go with me!" she said. "I love Molly!"
"No!" said Kut-le. "You are to forget the desert and the Indians. Go
now!"
With awe and grief too deep for words, Rhoda obeyed the young chief's
stern eyes. She clambered down the rough trail to a break in the cañon
wall, then, clinging with hands and feet, down the sheer side. The
tall figure, beautiful in its perfect symmetry, stood immovable, the
face never turning from her. Rhoda knew that she never was to forget
this picture of him. At the foot of the cañon wall she stood long,
looking up. Far, far above, the straight figure stood in lonely
majesty, gazing at the life for which he had sacrificed so much. Rhoda
looked until, tear-blinded, she turned away.