The Heart of the Desert | Page 8

back to thee----"

Something in Cartwell's voice stirred Rhoda as had his eyes. For the
first time in months Rhoda felt poignantly that it would be hard to be
cut down with all her life unlived. The mellow voice ceased and
Cartwell, rising, lighted a fresh cigarette.
"I am going to get up with the rabbits, tomorrow," he said, "so I'll trot
to bed now."
DeWitt, impelled by that curious sense of liking for the young Indian
that fought down his aversion, said, "The music was bully, Cartwell!"
but Cartwell only smiled as if at the hint of patronage in the voice and
strolled to his own room.
Rhoda slept late the following morning. She had not, in her three nights
in the desert country, become accustomed to the silence that is not the
least of the desert's splendors. It seemed to her that the nameless
unknown Mystery toward which her life was drifting was embodied in
this infinite silence. So sleep would not come to her until dawn. Then
the stir of the wind in the trees, the bleat of sheep, the trill of
mocking-birds lulled her to sleep.
As the brilliancy of the light in her room increased there drifted across
her uneasy dreams the lilting notes of a whistled call. Pure and liquidly
sweet they persisted until there came to Rhoda that faint stir of hope
and longing that she had experienced the day before. She opened her
eyes and finally, as the call continued, she crept languidly from her bed
and peered from behind the window-shade. Cartwell, in his khaki suit,
his handsome head bared to the hot sun, leaned against a peach-tree
while he watched Rhoda's window.
"I wonder what he wakened me for?" she thought half resentfully. "I
can't go to sleep again, so I may as well dress and have breakfast."
Hardly had she seated herself at her solitary meal when Cartwell
appeared.
"Dear me!" he exclaimed. "The birds and Mr. DeWitt have been up this
long time."

"What is John doing?" asked Rhoda carelessly.
"He's gone up on the first mesa for the wildcats I spoke of last night. I
thought perhaps you might care to take a drive before it got too hot.
You didn't sleep well last night, did you?"
Rhoda answered whimsically.
"It's the silence. It thunders at me so! I will get used to it soon. Perhaps
I ought to drive. I suppose I ought to try everything."
Not at all discouraged, apparently, by this lack of enthusiasm, Cartwell
said:
"I won't let you overdo. I'll have the top-buggy for you and we'll go
slowly and carefully."
"No," said Rhoda, suddenly recalling that, after all, Cartwell was an
Indian, "I don't think I will go. Katherine will have all sorts of
objections."
The Indian smiled sardonically.
"I already have Mrs. Jack's permission. Billy Porter will be in, in a
moment. If you would rather have a white man than an Indian, as escort,
I'm quite willing to retreat."
Rhoda flushed delicately.
"Your frankness is almost--almost impertinent, Mr. Cartwell."
"I don't mean it that way at all!" protested the Indian. "It's just that I
saw so plainly what was going on in your mind and it piqued me. If it
will be one bit pleasanter for you with Billy, I'll go right out and hunt
him up for you now."
The young man's naïveté completely disarmed Rhoda.
"Don't be silly!" she said. "Go get your famous top-buggy and I'll be

ready in a minute."
In a short time Rhoda and Cartwell, followed by many injunctions from
Katherine, started off toward the irrigating ditch. At a slow pace they
drove through the peach orchard into the desert. As they reached the
open trail, thrush and to-hee fluttered from the cholla. Chipmunk and
cottontail scurried before them. Overhead a hawk dipped in its reeling
flight. Cartwell watched the girl keenly. Her pale face was very lovely
in the brilliant morning light, though the somberness of her wide, gray
eyes was deepened. That same muteness and patience in her trouble
which so touched other men touched Cartwell, but he only said:
"There never was anything bigger and finer than this open desert, was
there?"
Rhoda turned from staring at the distant mesas and eyed the young
Indian wonderingly.
"Why!" she exclaimed, "I hate it! You know that sick fear that gets you
when you try to picture eternity to yourself? That's the way this
barrenness and awful distance affects me. I hate it!"
"But you won't hate it!" cried Cartwell. "You must let me show you its
bigness. It's as healing as the hand of God."
Rhoda shuddered.
"Don't talk about it, please! I'll try to think of something else."
They drove in silence for some moments. Rhoda, her thin hands
clasped in her lap,