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Updated: May 3, 2025
Rhoda made no reply but staggered miserably after Molly. The spring lay in a pocket between mountains and mesa. The mountains seemed cruelly high to Rhoda as she looked at them and thought of toiling across them. With head sunk on her breast and feverishly twitching hands she followed for half an hour. Then Kut-le turned. "I'm going to carry you, Rhoda," he said. The girl shrank away from him.
Kut-le, standing on the other side of the camp, looked at the picture with deepening eyes; then he crossed and put his hand on Rhoda's shoulder. "Dear one," he said, "you must eat your supper, then we must take the trail." Rhoda looked up into the young man's face. She was exquisite in the failing light.
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."
For half an hour the three, with Li Chung hovering in the background, worked over the girl. Then as they saw her stupor change to a natural sleep, Katherine gave a sigh that was almost a sob. "She's all right!" she said. "O Kut-le, if you hadn't come at that moment!" Cartwell shook his head. "It might have gone hard with her, she's so delicate.
"We've a long ride ahead of us," he said softly. "I want something that I can't have on horseback." Rhoda laid her hand on his. "You meant it all, Rhoda? It was not only to save my life?" "Do you have to ask that?" said Rhoda. "No!" answered Kut-le simply. "You see I waited for you. I knew that they would bring you back. And if you had not spoken, I would rather have died.
Neither DeWitt nor Rhoda ever before had known an Indian. Most of their ideas of the race were founded on childhood reading of Cooper. Kut-le was quite as cultured, quite as well-mannered and quite as intelligent as any of their Eastern friends. But in many other qualities he differed from them.
Rhoda was so energetic and efficient that the sun was just climbing from behind the far peaks when Kut-le finished his bacon and coffee. The girl stood looking at him, hands on hips, head on one side, with that look in her eyes of superiority, maternity and complacent tenderness which a woman can assume only when she has ministered to the needs of a helpless masculine thing.
Kut-le took her trembling hands in his. "Why not, dear one?" he asked. Still the sun flickered on the pine-needles and still Molly hummed over her stew-pot. Still Rhoda stood looking into the eyes of the man she loved, her scarlet cheeks growing each moment more deeply crimson. "Because you are an Indian. The instinct in me against such a marriage is so strong that I dare not go against it."
But just as she fancied that the coyotes had drawn so near that she could hear their footsteps, a hand was laid on her arm. "Have you had enough, Rhoda?" asked Kut-le. "No!" shuddered Rhoda. "I'd rather die here!" The Indian laughed softly as he lifted her from the ground. "A good hater makes a good lover, Rhoda," he said. "I wish I'd had time to let you learn your lesson more thoroughly.
I can't! You must help me to be strong! You who are the strongest person that I know! Can't you put yourself in my place and realize what a horrible position I am in?" Kut-le answered slowly. "I guess I can realize it. But the end is so great, so much worth while that nothing before that matters much, to me!
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