The Heart of the Desert | Page 5

felt within herself a
vague stirring that for a second wiped the languor from her eyes.
Cartwell spoke first, easily, in the quiet, well-modulated voice of the
Indian.
"Hello! All safe, I see! Mr. Newman will be here shortly." He seated
himself on the upper step with his back against a pillar and fanned
himself with his hat. "Jack's working too hard. I want him to go to the
coast for a while and let me run the ditch. But he won't. He's as
pig-headed as a Mohave."

"Are the Mohaves so pig-headed then?" asked DeWitt, smiling.
Cartwell returned the smile with a flash of white teeth.
"You bet they are! My mother was part Mohave and she used to say
that only the Pueblo in her kept her from being as stiff-necked as yucca.
You're all over the dizziness, Miss Tuttle?"
"Yes," said Rhoda. "You were very good to me."
Cartwell shook his head.
"I'm afraid I can't take special credit for that. Will you two ride to the
ditch with me tomorrow? I think Miss Tuttle will be interested in Jack's
irrigation dream, don't you, Mr. DeWitt?"
DeWitt answered a little stiffly.
"It's out of the question for Miss Tuttle to attempt such a trip, thank
you."
But to her own as well as DeWitt's astonishment Rhoda spoke
protestingly.
"You must let me refuse my own invitations, John. Perhaps the ditch
would interest me."
DeWitt replied hastily, "Good gracious, Rhoda! If anything will interest
you, don't let me interfere."
There was protest in his voice against Rhoda's being interested in an
Indian's suggestion. Both Rhoda and Cartwell felt this and there was an
awkward pause. This was broken by a faint halloo from the corral and
DeWitt rose abruptly.
"I'll go down and meet Jack," he said.
"We'll do a lot of stunts if you're willing," Cartwell said serenely, his
eyes following DeWitt's broad back inscrutably. "The desert is like a

story-book if one learns to read it. If you would be interested to learn, I
would be keen to teach you."
Rhoda's gray eyes lifted to the young man's somberly.
"I'm too dull these days to learn anything," she said. "But I--I didn't
used to be! Truly I didn't! I used to be so alive, so strong! I believed in
everything, myself most of all! Truly I did!" She paused, wondering at
her lack of reticence.
Cartwell, however, was looking at her with something in his gaze so
quietly understanding that Rhoda smiled. It was a slow smile that lifted
and deepened the corners of Rhoda's lips, that darkened her gray eyes
to black, an unforgetable smile to the loveliness of which Rhoda's
friends never could accustom themselves. At the sight of it, Cartwell
drew a deep breath, then leaned toward her and spoke with curious
earnestness.
"You make me feel the same way that starlight on the desert makes me
feel."
Rhoda replied in astonishment, "Why, you mustn't speak that way to
me! It's not--not--"
"Not conventional?" suggested Cartwell. "What difference does that
make, between you and me?"
Again came the strange stirring in Rhoda in response to Cartwell's gaze.
He was looking at her with something of tragedy in the dark young
eyes, something of sternness and determination in the clean-cut lips.
Rhoda wondered, afterward, what would have been said if Katherine
had not chosen this moment to come out on the porch.
"Rhoda," she asked, "do you feel like dressing for dinner? Hello, Kut-le,
it's time you moved toward soap and water, seems to me!"
"Yessum!" replied Cartwell meekly. He rose and helped Rhoda from
the hammock, then held the door open for her. DeWitt and Newman

emerged from the orchard as he crossed to Katherine's chair.
"Is she very sick, Mrs. Jack?" he asked.
Katherine nodded soberly.
"Desperately sick. Her father and mother were killed in a railroad
wreck a year ago. Rhoda wasn't seriously hurt but she has never gotten
over the shock. She has been failing ever since. The doctor feared
consumption and sent her down here. But she's just dying by inches. Oh,
it's too awful! I can't believe it! I can't realize it!"
Cartwell stood in silence for a moment, his lips compressed, his eyes
inscrutable.
Then, "I've met her at last," he said. "It makes me believe in Fate."
Katherine's pretty lips parted in amazement.
"Goodness! Are you often taken this way!" she gasped.
"Never before!" replied Cartwell serenely. "Jack said she'd broken her
engagement to DeWitt because of her illness, so it's a fair war!"
"Kut-le!" exclaimed Katherine. "Don't talk like a yellow-backed novel!
It's not a life or death affair."
"You can't tell as to that," answered Cartwell with a curious little smile.
"You mustn't forget that I'm an Indian."
And he turned to greet the two men who