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Updated: June 18, 2025
If Rhoda wants to marry Kut-le, that's her business. I always did like Kut-le and I always shall. I've done my full duty in trying to get Rhoda back. Now that she says that she cares for him, it's neither your nor my business nor DeWitt's. But I want them to come back to the ranch with me and let Katherine give them a nice wedding." "But but " spluttered Porter.
In the flicker of the lanterns the men looked pityingly at DeWitt's haggard face. "Say," said a tall, lank cowman, "if you'll go in and sleep till daylight, usn'll scour this part of the desert with a fine-tooth comb. So you all won't lose a minute by taking a little rest. An' if we find the Injun we'll string him up and save you the trouble." DeWitt spoke for the first time.
I tell you I will never marry you with his blood on your hands!" A look curiously hard, curiously suspicious, came to DeWitt's eyes. Without lowering his gun or looking at the girl, he answered: "You plead too well, Rhoda! I want this Indian to pay for more torture of mine than you can dream of! Get back out of the way! Are you ready, Kut-le?" Rhoda's slender body was rigid.
Old Lady Kane, great-aunt of the Marquis of Edbury, was particularly my tormentor, through her plain- spoken comments on my father's legal suit; for I had to listen to her without wincing, and agree in her general contempt of the Georges, and foil her queries coolly, when I should have liked to perform Jorian DeWitt's expressed wish to 'squeeze the acid out of her in one grip, and toss her to the Gods that collect exhausted lemons. She took extraordinary liberties with me.
But she closed her lips firmly and looked thoughtfully at the mite of water that remained to them. Then she held the canteen to DeWitt's lips. He pushed it away from him and in another moment or so he rose. Rhoda, fastening their hopes to another distant cholla, led the way on again. But she too was growing a little light-headed.
The man, after two or three attempts, staggered to his feet and stood swaying. "God help me!" he said. "I can do no more!" "Yes, you can, John! Yes, you can! Perhaps there is a whole fountain of water there on the mesa!" The glazed look returned to DeWitt's eyes.
She tried to piece together her faint and distorted recollection of the occurrences since the morning when the mesa had risen through the dawn. But her only clear picture was of John DeWitt's wild face as she disappeared into the fissure. She recalled its look of agony and sobbed a little to herself as she realized what torture he and the Newmans must have endured since her disappearance.
And Rhoda, awed by this display of passions, stood like the First Woman and waited! Of a sudden Kut-le disentangled himself and with knees on DeWitt's shoulders he clutched at the white man's throat. At the same time, DeWitt gathered together his recumbent body and with a mighty heave he flung Kut-le over his head.
And for two weeks now they scoured the desert, meeting scarcely a human, finding none of the traces that Rhoda was so painfully dropping along her course. The hugeness, the cruelty of the region drove the hopelessness of their mission more and more deeply into DeWitt's brain. It seemed impossible except by the merest chance to find trace of another human in a waste so vast.
"You'd better let Jack and Billy shoot with you," he said quietly. "You won't like to think about the shot that killed me, afterward. It isn't nice, I've heard, the memory of killing a man!" "I'm shooting an Indian, not a man!" said DeWitt. "Say your prayers!" The spell of fear that had paralyzed Rhoda snapped. Before Jack or Billy could detain her she ran to DeWitt's side and grasped his arm.
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