The Heart of the Desert | Page 9

resolutely stared at the young Indian's profile. In the
unreal world in which she drifted, she needed some thought of strength,
some hope beyond her own, to which to cling. She was lonely--lonely
as some outcast watching with sick eyes the joy of the world to which
he is denied. As she stared at the stern young profile beside her, into
her heart crept the now familiar thrill.
Suddenly Cartwell turned and looked at her quizzically.

"Well, what are your conclusions?"
Rhoda shook her head.
"I don't know, except that it's hard to realize that you are an Indian."
Cartwell's voice was ironical.
"The only good Indian is a dead Indian, you know. I'm liable to break
loose any time, believe me!"
Rhoda's eyes were on the far lavender line where the mesa melted into
the mountains.
"Yes, and then what?" she asked.
Cartwell's eyes narrowed, but Rhoda did not see.
"Then I'm liable to follow Indian tradition and take whatever I want, by
whatever means!"
"My! My!" said Rhoda, "that sounds bludgy! And what are you liable
to want?"
"Oh, I want the same thing that a great many white men want. I'm
going to have it myself, though!" His handsome face glowed curiously
as he looked at Rhoda.
But the girl was giving his words small heed. Her eyes still were turned
toward the desert, as though she had forgotten her companion. Sand
whirls crossed the distant levels, ceaselessly. Huge and menacing, they
swirled out from the mesa's edge, crossed the desert triumphantly, then,
at contact with rock or cholla thicket, collapsed and disappeared.
Endless, merciless, hopeless the yellow desert quivered against the
bronze blue sky. For the first time dazed hopelessness gave way in
Rhoda to fear. The young Indian, watching the girl's face, beheld in it
what even DeWitt never had seen there--beheld deadly fear. He was
silent for a moment, then he leaned toward her and put a strong brown
hand over her trembling little fists. His voice was deep and soft.

"Don't," he said, "don't!"
Perhaps it was the subtle, not-to-be-fathomed influence of the desert
which fights all sham; perhaps it was that Rhoda merely had reached
the limit of her heroic self-containment and that, had DeWitt or
Newman been with her, she would have given way in the same manner;
perhaps it was that the young Indian's presence had in it a quality that
roused new life in her. Whatever the cause; the listless melancholy
suddenly left Rhoda's gray eyes and they were wild and black with fear.
"I can't die!" she panted. "I can't leave my life unlived! I can't crawl on
much longer like a sick animal without a soul. I want to live! To live!"
"Look at me!" said Cartwell. "Look at me, not at the desert!" Then as
she turned to him, "Listen, Rhoda! You shall not die! I will make you
well! You shall not die!"
For a long minute the two gazed deep into each other's eyes, and the
sense of quickening blood touched Rhoda's heart. Then they both woke
to the sound of hoof-beats behind them and John DeWitt, with a
wildcat thrown across his saddle, rode up.
"Hello! I've shouted one lung out! I thought you people were petrified!"
He looked curiously from Rhoda's white face to Cartwell's inscrutable
one. "Do you think you ought to have attempted this trip, Rhoda?" he
asked gently.
"Oh, we've taken it very slowly," answered the Indian. "And we are
going to turn back now."
"I don't think I've overdone," said Rhoda. "But perhaps we have had
enough."
"All right," said Cartwell. "If Mr. DeWitt will change places with me,
I'll ride on to the ditch and he can drive you back."
DeWitt assented eagerly and, the change made, Cartwell lifted his hat
and was gone. Rhoda and John returned in a silence that lasted until

DeWitt lifted Rhoda from the buggy to the veranda. Then he said:
"Rhoda, I don't like to have you go off alone with Cartwell. I wish you
wouldn't."
Rhoda smiled.
"John, don't be silly! He goes about with Katherine all the time."
John only shook his head and changed the subject. That afternoon,
however, Billy Porter buttonholed DeWitt in the corral where the New
Yorker was watching the Arizonian saddle his fractious horse. When
the horse was ready at the post, "Look here, DeWitt," said Billy, an
embarrassed look in his honest brown eyes, "I don't want you to think
I'm buttin' in, but some one ought to watch that young Injun. Anybody
with one eye can see he's crazy about Miss Rhoda."
John was too startled to be resentful.
"What do you mean?" he exclaimed. "Cartwell is a great friend of the
Newmans'."
"That's why I came to you. They're plumb locoed about the fellow,