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Updated: May 3, 2025
Slowly her white lids closed, yet with one last conscious cry for life: "Kut-le!" she wailed. "Kut-le!" A quick shadow filled the doorway. "Here, Rhoda! Here!" Kut-le bounded into the room, upsetting the medicine-man, and lifted Rhoda in his arms. She clung to him wildly. "Take me away, Kut-le! Take me away!" He soothed her with great tenderness. "Dear one!" he murmured.
He knew Kut-le and it was hard to believe that he would give up what he already had won. DeWitt spoke excitedly. "Then he's still within our reach! Hurry up, friends!" Rhoda turned swiftly to the gaunt-faced man. Then she spoke very distinctly, with that in her deep gray eyes that stirred each listener with a vague sense of loss and yearning. "I don't want Kut-le harmed!
Kut-le took a bundle from his saddle and began to unfasten it before Rhoda. "You must get into some suitable clothes," he said. "Put these on." Rhoda stared at the clothing Kut-le was shaking out. Then she gave him a look of disgust. There was a pair of little buckskin breeches, exquisitely tanned, a little blue flannel shirt, a pair of high-laced hunting boots and a sombrero.
"Well," he said, "Kut-le, will you and Rhoda come down to the monastery with us and be married?" His young niece was solemn. "Yes," answered Kut-le, "if Rhoda is agreed." Rhoda's face still wore the look of exaltation. "I will come!" she said. Kut-le did not let his glance rest on her, but turned to Billy. "Mr. Porter," he said courteously, "will you come to my wedding?" Billy looked dazed.
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.
Then we will make for Europe at once." The morning sun glinted on the pine-needles. Old Molly hummed a singsong air over the stew-pot. And Rhoda stood with stormy, tear-dimmed eyes and quivering lips. "It can never, never be, Kut-le!" "Why not?" "We can't solve the problems of race adjustment. No love is big enough for that. I have been civilized a thousand years.
"Half-breed Philip find white squaw's handkerchief. Give to white men, maybe! Marie see Philip get handkerchief from little girl." Kut-le gave Rhoda an inscrutable look, but she did not tell him that she shared his surprise. "Well," said Kut-le calmly, "maybe we had better mosey along." They descended to find Marie hastily doing up a bundle of bread and fruit.
Then Kut-le broke his silence. "That's the bell of the old mission. Some one has been buried, I guess. We can look. There are no tourists now." There was a sound of wailing: a deep mournful sound that caught Rhoda's heart to her throat and blanched her face. It was the sound of the grief of primitive man, the cry of the forlorn and broken-hearted, uncloaked by convention.
Tell me, Miss Rhoda, what's the use of it all?" "Use?" asked Rhoda, staring at the blue sky above the peach-trees. "I am a fit person to ask what is the use of anything! Of course, civilization is the only thing that lives. I can't get your point of view at all." "Huh!" sniffed Kut-le. "It's too bad Indians don't write books!
Rhoda made no reply but leaned limply against the ancient rock, her golden hair touching the crude drawings of long ago. She was a very different Rhoda from the eager girl of the early morning. She ignored every effort Kut-le made to tempt her to eat. Her tired gaze wandered to her hands, still blood-grimed, and her cleft chin quivered. Kut-le saw the expressive little look.
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