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"That will be fine!" replied Rhoda. "But I'd rather hear the stories than take any trips. Did you spend your boyhood in New Mexico? Did you see real Indian fights? Did you ?" She paused with an involuntary glance at Cartwell. Porter, too, looked at the dark young face across the table and something in its inscrutable calm seemed to madden him. "My boyhood here? Yes, and a happy boyhood it was!
Porter responded to the young Indian's courteous bow with a surly nod, and proceeded with his soup. "I'd as soon eat with a nigger as an Injun," he said to Rhoda under cover of some laughing remark of Katherine's to Cartwell. "He seems to be nice," said Rhoda vaguely. "Maybe, though, Katherine is a little liberal, making him one of the family."
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.
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.
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!
In an incredibly short time he was entering the peach orchard that surrounded the ranch-house. A young man in white flannels jumped from a hammock in which he had been dozing. "For heaven's sake!" he exclaimed. "What does this mean?" Rhoda was too ill to reply. Cartwell did not slack his giant stride toward the house.
Mabel Cartwell says he's in jail," her voice dropped to an awed whisper; "but when I asked mamma, she just cried and cried. Now she's sick and they are going to take her to a hospital, and I don't know what Rivers and me'll do. Mrs. Burnett says of course we can't go with her, 'cause there ain't any sickness the matter with us, and and oh, we can't stay with her!
The throbbing of the great, quiet southern stars stirred her only with a sense of helpless loneliness that was all but unendurable. And still, from who knows what source, she found strength to meet the days and her friends with that unfailing sweetness that was as poignant as the clinging fingers of a sick child. Jack, Katherine, DeWitt, Cartwell, all were unwearying in their effort to amuse her.
"Our what?" asked Cartwell, entering the room at the last word. He was looking very cool and well groomed in white flannels. Billy Porter stared at the newcomer and dropped his soup-spoon with a splash. "What in thunder!" Rhoda heard him mutter. Jack Newman spoke hastily. "This is Mr. Cartwell, our irrigation engineer, Mr. Porter."
Jack will think I've reverted!" DeWitt stood for a moment watching the tall, lithe figure move through the peach-trees. He was torn by a strange feeling, half of aversion, half of charm for the dark young stranger. Then: "Hold on, Cartwell," he cried. "I'll drive you back in the buckboard."
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