Cartwell's voice was ironical. 

 "The only good Indian is a dead Indian, you know. I'm liable to break loose any time, believe me!" 

 Rhoda's eyes were on the far lavender line where the mesa melted into the mountains. 

 "Yes, and then what?" she asked. 

 Cartwell's eyes narrowed, but Rhoda did not see. 

 "Then I'm liable to follow Indian tradition and take whatever I want, by whatever means!" 

 "My! My!" said Rhoda, "that sounds bludgy! And what are you liable to want?" 

 "Oh, I want the same thing that a great many white men want. I'm going to have it myself, though!"  His handsome face glowed curiously as he looked at Rhoda. 

 But the girl was giving his words small heed. Her eyes still were turned toward the desert, as though she had forgotten her companion. Sand whirls crossed the distant levels, ceaselessly. Huge and menacing, they swirled out from the mesa's edge, crossed the desert triumphantly, then, at contact with rock or cholla thicket, collapsed and disappeared. Endless, merciless, hopeless the yellow desert quivered against the bronze blue sky. For the first time dazed hopelessness gave way in Rhoda to fear. The young Indian, watching the girl's face, beheld in it what even DeWitt never had seen there—beheld deadly fear. He was silent for a moment, then he leaned toward her and put a strong brown hand over her trembling little fists. His voice was deep and soft. 

 "Don't," he said, "don't!" 

 Perhaps it was the subtle, not-to-be-fathomed influence of the desert which fights all sham; perhaps it was that Rhoda merely had reached the limit of her heroic self-containment and that, had DeWitt or Newman been with her, she would have given way in the same manner; perhaps it was that the young Indian's presence had in it a quality that roused new life in her. 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!" 

 Prev. P 19/172 next