The Heart of the Desert | Page 3

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 niggers 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