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Updated: June 11, 2025
When they reached the piñons Kut-le gave the coyote call. It thrilled Rhoda with the misery of the night of her capture. Almost immediately there was an answering call and close in the shadow of the piñon they found Alchise and the two squaws. Molly ran to Rhoda with a squeal of joy and patted the girl's hand but Alchise and Cesca gave no heed to her greeting.
She opened her eyes and would have risen but a voice whispered: "Hush! Don't move!" Rhoda lay stiffly, her heart beating wildly. Kut-le and the squaws, each a muffled, blanketed figure, lay sleeping some distance away. Old Alchise stood on solitary guard at the edge of the camp with his back to her.
But shortly Kut-le freed Rhoda's mouth, gave Alchise a swift look, and with infinite care the descent was begun. Kut-le did not like traveling in the daylight, for many reasons. Carefully, swiftly they moved up the cañon, always hugging the wall. Late in the afternoon they emerged on an open mesa.
Billy Porter, worn and tattered but still looking very well able to hold his own, stood staring into the cave where the squaws eyed him open-mouthed and Alchise, his hand on his rifle, scowled at him aggressively. Porter's eye fell on Injun Tom. "U-huh! You pison Piute, you! I just nacherally snagged your little game, didn't I?" "Billy!" cried Rhoda. "O Billy Porter!"
I thought that the sacrifice was worth while, and I still think so. I'm sorry, for your sake, that you stumbled on us here. We are going to start on the trail shortly and I must send you out to be lost again. I'll let Alchise help you in the job. As you say, I have sacrificed everything else in life; I can't afford to let anything spoil this now. You can rest for an hour.
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.
Kut-le turned to the right and Alchise sprang to his aid. In the shelter of the trees, Kut-le twisted a handkerchief across Rhoda's mouth; and in reply to her outraged eyes, he said: "I don't mind single visitors as a rule but I haven't time to fuss with one now." Together the two men carried Rhoda up the cañon-side.
Kut-le and Alchise were not to be seen but Molly nodded beside Rhoda's blankets and the thin hag Cesca was curled in the grass near by, asleep. "You awake? Heap hungry?" asked Molly suddenly. Rhoda sat up, groaning at the torturing stiffness of her muscles. "Where is Kut-le?" she asked. "Gone get 'em supper. Alchise gone too."
Rhoda was in a stupor and lay quietly unconscious with the stars blinking down on her, a limp dark heap against the mountain wall. The three Indians munched mule meat, then Molly curled herself on the ground and in three minutes was snoring. Alchise stood erect and still on the ledge for perhaps ten minutes after Kut-le's departure.
Rhoda sat in the camp one afternoon with the two squaws while Kut-le and Alchise were off on a turkey hunt. Some of the girl's pallor had given way to a delicate tan. The dark circles about her eyes had lightened a little. Molly was busily pounding grass-seeds between two stones. Rhoda watched her idly. Suddenly a new idea sent the blood to her thin cheeks.
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