The Western Romance MEGAPACK ®: 20 Classic Tales

by Zane Grey

  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.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE FORGOTTEN CITY

  Up this tortuous trail Rhoda staggered, closely followed by DeWitt. At a level spot the girl paused.

  “Water, John! Water!” she cried.

  The two threw themselves down and drank of the bubbling spring until they could hold no more. Then Rhoda lay down on the sun-warmed rocks and sleep overwhelmed her.

  She opened her eyes to stare into a yellow moon that floated liquidly above her. Whether she had slept through a night and a day or whether but a few hours had elapsed since she had staggered to the spring beside which she lay, she could not tell. She lay looking up into the sky languidly, but with clear mind. A deep sigh roused her. DeWitt sat on the other side of the spring, rubbing his eyes.

  “Hello!” he said in a hoarse croak. “How did we land here?”

  “I led us here sometime in past ages. When or how, quién sabe?” answered Rhoda. “John, we must find food somehow.”

  “Drink all the water you can, Rhoda,” said DeWitt; “it helps some, and I’ll pot a rabbit. What a fool I am. You poor girl! More hardships for you!”

  Rhoda dipped her burning face into the water, then lifted it, dripping.

  “If only you won’t be delirious, John, I can stand the hardships.”

  DeWitt looked at the girl curiously.

  “Was I delirious? And you were alone, leading me across that Hades out there? Rhoda dear, you make me ashamed of myself!”

  “I don’t see how you were to blame,” answered Rhoda stoutly. “Think what you have been doing for me!”

  John rose stiffly.

  “Do you feel equal to climbing this trail with me, to find where we are, or had you rather stay here?”

  “I don’t want to stay here alone,” answered Rhoda.

  Very slowly and weakly they started up the trail. The spring was on a broad stone terrace. Above it rose another terrace weathered and disrupted until in the moonlight it looked like an impregnable castle wall, embattled and embuttressed. But clinging to the seemingly invulnerable fortress was the trail, a snake-like shadow in the moonlight.

  “Perhaps we had better stay at the spring until morning,” suggested Rhoda, her weak legs flagging.

  “Not with the hope of shelter a hundred feet above us,” answered John firmly. “This trail is worn six inches into the solid rock. My guess is that there are some inhabitants here. It’s queer that they haven’t discovered us.”

  Slowly and without further protest, Rhoda followed DeWitt up the trail. Deep-worn and smooth though it was, they accomplished their task with infinite difficulty. Rhoda, stumbling like a sleep-sodden child, wondered if ever again she was to accomplish physical feats with the magical ease with which Kut-le had endowed her.

  “If he were here, I’d know I was to tumble into a comfortable camp,” she thought. Then with a remorseful glance at DeWitt’s patient back, “What a selfish beast you are, Rhoda Tuttle!”

  She reached John’s side and together they paused at the top of the trail. Black against the sky, the moon crowning its top with a frost-like radiance, was a huge flat-topped building. Night birds circled about it. From black openings in its front owls hooted. But otherwise there was neither sight nor sound of living thing. The desert far below and beyond lay like a sea of death. Rhoda unconsciously drew nearer to DeWitt.

  “Where are the dogs? At Chira the dogs barked all night. Indians always have dogs!”

  “It must be very late,” whispered DeWitt. “Even the dogs are asleep!”

  “And at Chira,” went on Rhoda, whispering as did DeWitt, “owls didn’t hoot from the windows.”

  “Let’s go closer,” suggested John.

  Rhoda thrust cold little fingers into his hand.

  The doors were empty and forlorn. The terraced walls, built with the patient labor of the long ago, were sagged and decayed. Riot
of greasewood crowned great heaps of débris. A loneliness as of the end of the world came upon the two wanderers. Sick and dismayed, they stood in awe before this relic of the past.

  “Whoo! Whoo!” an owl’s cry sounded from the black window openings.

  DeWitt spoke softly.

  “Rhoda, it’s one of the forgotten cities!”

  “Let’s go back! Let’s go back to the spring!” pleaded Rhoda. “It is so uncanny in the dark!”

  “No!” DeWitt rubbed his aching head wearily. “I must contrive some sort of shelter for you. Almost anything is better than another night in the open desert. Come on! We will explore a little.”

  “Let’s wait till morning,” begged Rhoda. “I’m so cold and shivery.”

  “Dear sweetheart, that’s just the point. You will be sick if you don’t have some sort of shelter. You have suffered enough. Will you sit here and let me look about?”

  “No! No! I don’t want to be left alone.”

  Rhoda followed John closely up into the mass of fallen rock.

  DeWitt smiled. It appealed to the tenderest part of his nature that the girl who had led him through the terrible experiences of the desert should show fear now that a haven was reached.

  “Come on, little girl,” he said.

  Painfully, for they both were weak and dizzy, they clambered to a gaunt opening in the gray wall. Rhoda clutched John’s arm with a little scream as a bat whirred close by them. Within the opening DeWitt scratched one of his carefully hoarded matches. The tiny flare revealed a small adobe-walled room, quite bare save for broken bits of pottery on the floor. John lighted a handful of greasewood and by its brilliant light they examined the floor and walls.

  “What a clean, dry little room!” exclaimed Rhoda. “Oh, I am so tired and sleepy!”

  “Let’s look a little farther before we stop. What’s on the other side of this broken wall?”

  They picked their way across the litter of pottery and peered into another room, the duplicate of the first.

  “How will these do for our respective sleeping-rooms?” asked DeWitt.

  Rhoda stared at John with horror in her eyes.

  “I’d as soon sleep in a tomb! Let’s make a fire outside and sleep under the stars. I’d rather have sleep than food just now.”

  “It will have to be just a tiny smudge, up behind this débris, where Kut-le can’t spot it,” answered DeWitt. “I won’t mind having a red eye of fire for company. It will help to keep me awake.”

  “But you must sleep,” protested Rhoda.

  “But I mustn’t,” answered John grimly. “I’ve played the baby act on this picnic as much as I propose to. It is my trick at the wheel.”

  Too weary to protest further, Rhoda threw herself down with her feet toward the fire and pillowed her head on her arm. DeWitt filled his pipe and sat puffing it, with his arms folded across his knees. Rhoda watched him for a moment or two. She found herself admiring the full forehead, the lines of refinement about the lips that the beard could not fully conceal.

  “He’s not as handsome as Kut-le,” she thought wearily, “but he’s—he’s—” but before her thought was completed she was asleep.

  Rhoda woke at dawn and lay waiting for the stir of the squaws about the morning meal. Then with a start she rose and looked soberly about her. Suddenly she smiled.

  “Tenderfoot!” she murmured.

  DeWitt lay fast asleep by the ashes of the fire.

  “If Kut-le,” she thought. Then she stopped abruptly and stamped her foot. “You are not even to think of Kut-le any more!” And with her cleft chin very firm she descended the trail to the spring. When she returned, DeWitt was rising stiffly to his feet.

  “Hello!” he cried. “I was good this time. I never closed my eyes till dawn. I’m so hungry I could eat greasewood. How do you feel?”

  “Weak with hunger but otherwise very well. Go wash your face, Johnny.”

  DeWitt grinned and started down the trail obediently. But Rhoda laid a detaining hand on his arm. The sun was but a moment high. All the mesa front lay in purple shadows, though farther out the desert glowed with the yellow light of a new day.

  “I think animals come to the spring to drink,” said Rhoda. “There were tiny wet footmarks there when I went down to wash my face.”

  “Bully!” exclaimed John. “Wait now, let’s watch.”

  The two dropped to the ground and peered over the edge of the upper terrace. The spring bubbled forth serenely, followed its shallow trough a short distance, then disappeared into the insatiable floor of the desert. For several moments the two lay watching until at last Rhoda grew restless. DeWitt laid a detaining hand on her arm.

  “Hush!” he whispered.

  A pair of jack-rabbits loped up the trail, sniffed the air tentatively, then with forelegs in the water drank greedily. DeWitt’s right arm stiffened, there were two puffs of smoke and the two kicking rabbits rolled into the spring.

  “I’m beginning to have a little self-respect as the man of the party,” said DeWitt, as he blew the smoke from his Colt.

  Rhoda ran down to the spring and lifted the two wet little bodies. John took them from her.

  “If you’ll find some place for a table, I’ll bring these up in no time.”

  When DeWitt came up from the spring with the dressed rabbits, he found a little fire glowing between two rocks. Near by on a big flat-topped stone were set forth two earthen bowls, with a brown water-jar in the center. As he stared, Rhoda came out of the building with interested face.

  “Look, John! See what I found on a little corner shelf!” She held in her outstretched hand a tiny jar no bigger than a wine-glass. It was of an exquisitely polished black. “Not even an explorer can have been here, or nothing so perfect as this would have been left! What hands do you suppose made this!”

  But DeWitt did not answer her question.

  “Now, look here, Rhoda, you aren’t to do anything like starting a fire and lugging these heavy jars again! You’re not with the Indians now. You’ve got a man to wait on you!”

  Rhoda looked at him curiously.

  “But I’ve learned to like to do it!” she protested. “Nobody can roast a rabbit to suit me but myself,” and in spite of DeWitt’s protests she spitted the rabbits and would not let him tend the fire which she said was too fine an art for his untrained hands. In a short time the rich odor of roasting flesh rose on the air and John watched the pretty cook with admiration mingled with perplexity. Rhoda insisting on cooking a meal! More than that, Rhoda evidently enjoying the job! The idea left him speechless.

  An hour after Rhoda had spitted the game, John sighed with contentment as he looked at the pile of bones beside his earthen bowl.

  “And they say jacks aren’t good eating!” he said. “Why if they had been salted they would have been better than any game I ever ate!”

  “You never were so hungry before,” said Rhoda. “Still, they were well roasted, now weren’t they?”

  “Your vanity is colossal, Miss Tuttle,” laughed John, “but I will admit that I never saw better roasting.” Then he said soberly, “I believe we had better not try the trail again today, Rhoda dear. We don’t know where to go and we’ve no supplies. We’d better get our strength up, resting here today, and tomorrow start in good shape.”

  Rhoda looked wistfully from the shade of the pueblo out over the desert. She had become very, very tired of this endless fleeing.

  “I wish the Newman ranch was just over beyond,” she said. “John, what will you do if Kut-le comes on us here?”

  DeWitt’s forehead burned a painful red.

  “I have a shot left in my revolver,” he said.

  Rhoda walked ever to John and put one hand on his shoulder as he sat looking up at her with somber blue eyes.

>   “John,” she said, “I want you to promise me that you will fire at Kut-le only in the last extremity to keep him from carrying me off, and that you will shoot only as Porter did, to lame and not to kill.”

  John’s jaws came together and he returned the girl’s scrutiny with a steel-like glance.

  “Why do you plead for him?” he asked finally.

  “He saved my life,” she answered simply.

  John rose and walked up and down restlessly.

  “Rhoda, if a white man had done this thing I would shoot him as I would a dog. What do I care for a law in a case like this! We were men long before we had laws. Why should this Indian be let go when he has done what a white would be shot for?”

  Rhoda looked at him keenly.

  “You talk as if in your heart you knew you were going to kill him because he is an Indian and were trying to justify yourself for it!”

  He turned on the girl a look so haunted, so miserable, yet so determined, that her heart sank. For a time there was silence, each afraid to speak. At last Rhoda said coolly:

  “Will you get fresh water while I bank in the fire?”

  DeWitt’s face relaxed. He smiled a little grimly.

  “I’ll do anything for you but that one thing—promise not to kill the Indian.”

  “The desert has changed us both, John,” said Rhoda. “It has taken the veneer off both of us!”

  “Maybe so,” replied DeWitt. “I only know that that Apache must pay for the hell you and I have lived through.”

  “Look at me, John!” cried Rhoda. “Can’t you realize that the good Kut-le has done me has been far greater than his affront to me? Do you see how well I am, how strong? Oh, if I could only make you see what a different world I live in! You would have been tied to an invalid, John, if Kut-le hadn’t stolen me! Think now of all I can do for you! Of the home I can make, of the work I can do!”