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We take care Kut-le's squaw." Rhoda turned wearily on her side. "Go away and let me sleep," she said. As Kut-le, with Rhoda in his arms, disappeared into the mesa fissure, John DeWitt threw himself from his horse and was at the opening before the others had more than brought their horses to their haunches. He was met by Alchise's rifle, with Alchise entirely hidden from view.
She put one of Alchise's two calico shirts on to boil over the breakfast fire. She washed out the nasty cut and bandaged it with strips from the sterilized shirt. She brought Kut-le's breakfast and her own to his blanket side and coaxed the young man to eat, he assuming great indifference merely for the happiness of being urged.
I told you!" exulted Billy hoarsely. "See that weight fastened to it? Wasn't that smart of her? Bless her heart! Now we got to get above, somehow, and find where she dropped it from!" "We'll start now," said Kut-le. Alchise led out the horses. The squaws each threw an emancipated, sinewy leg across a pony's back and followed Alchise's fluttering shirt up the mountain.
Rhoda, her eyes never leaving Alchise's impassive back, drew herself silently and swiftly from her blankets and with a clever touch or two rounded them. Then she crept around the cat's-claw, where a man squatted, his eyes blazing with excitement. He put up a sinewy, hand to pull her from sight when, without warning, Rhoda sneezed.
Silence in the camp had continued for some time when a strange young Indian strode up the slope, nodded to the group in the camp, and deliberately rolled himself in a blanket and dropped to sleep. Rhoda stared at him questioningly. "Alchise's and Cesca's son," said Kut-le. "His job is to follow us at a distance and remove all trace of our trail. Not an overturned pebble misses his eye.
When at Kut-le's command she took up the march with the others the young man eyed her anxiously. He slung Molly's canteen from his own to Alchise's shoulder and felt Rhoda's pulse. "This water was bad for you," he said. "But it was the only spring within miles. Perhaps you will throw off the effects of it when we get into the heat of the sun."
God help that Indian when I get him!" Porter kept his eyes on Alchise's rifle which had never wavered in the past three hours. "I've a notion to shoot the barrel off that thing just for luck!" he growled. "John, sit down! You will need all the strength you've got and then some before you catch that Injun!"
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