by Zane Grey
She rode Sarchedon, and she liked to trot or lope along beside Slone while they linked hands and watched the distance. But her glance shunned the north, that distance which held the wild canyons and the broken battlements and the long, black, pine-fringed plateau.
“Won’t you ever ride with me, out to the old camp, where I used to wait for you?” asked Slone.
“Some day,” she said, softly.
“When?”
“When—when we come back from Durango,” she replied, with averted eyes and scarlet cheek. And Slone was silent, for that planned trip to Durango, with its wonderful gift to be, made his heart swell.
And so on this rainbow day, with storms all around them, and blue sky above, they rode only as far as the valley. But from there, before they turned to go back, the monuments appeared close, and they loomed grandly with the background of purple bank and creamy cloud and shafts of golden lightning. They seemed like sentinels—guardians of a great and beautiful love born under their lofty heights, in the lonely silence of day, in the star-thrown shadow of night. They were like that love. And they held Lucy and Slone, calling every day, giving a nameless and tranquil content, binding them true to love, true to the sage and the open, true to that wild upland home.
THE HEART OF THE DESERT, by Honoré Willsie Morrow
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 blacks 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!�
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“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.
