by Zane Grey
“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, d
ear 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.
CHAPTER XXI
THE END OF THE TRAIL
The cañon was sandy and rough. Rhoda could see the monastery set among olive-trees. Beyond this where the cañon opened to the desert she knew that the white men’s camp lay, though she could not see it.
She had no fear of losing her way, with the cañon walls hemming her in. She still was sobbing softly to herself as she started along the foot of the wall. She tramped steadily for a time, then she stopped abruptly. She would not go on! The sacrifice was too much! She looked back to the cañon top. Kut-le had disappeared. Already he must be only a memory to her!
Then of a sudden Rhoda felt a sense of shame that her strength of purpose should be so much less than the Indian’s. At least, she could carry in her heart forever the example of his fortitude. It would be like his warm hand guiding and lifting her through the hard days and years to come. Strangely comforted and strengthened by this thought, Rhoda started on through the familiar wilderness of the desert.
This, she thought, was her last moment alone in the desert, for without Kut-le she would never return to it. She watched the gray-green cactus against the painted rock heaps. She watched the brown, tortured crest of the cañon against the violet sky. She watched the melting haze above the monastery, the buzzards sliding through the motionless air, the far multi-colored ranges, as if she would etch forever on her memory the world that Kut-le loved. And she knew that, let her body wander where it must, her spirit would forever belong to the desert.
