"Before you eat," he said, "come to the edge of the camp and look through the glasses."
Rhoda hurried after him, and stared out over the desert. A short distance out, vivid in the afterglow, moved two figures. She distinguished the short wiry figure of Porter, the gaunt figure of DeWitt, walking with determined strides. Waiting till she could command her voice, Rhoda turned to Kut-le. He was watching her keenly.
"Will they pick up our trail? Are the poor things badly lost?"
"Billy Porter lost! I guess not! And I gave him enough hints so that he ought to join Newman in another twenty-four hours."
Rhoda smiled wanly.
"Sometimes you forget to act like a cold-blooded Indian."
Kut-le gave his familiar chuckle.
"Well, you see, I've been contaminated by my long association with the whites!"
And so again the nights of going. During her waking hours, Rhoda spent the greater part of her time considering arguments that would have weight with Kut-le when the struggle came which she knew was imminent.
If she had suffered before, if the early part of her abduction had been agony, it had been nothing in comparison with what she was enduring in putting Kut-le aside for DeWitt. And, after all, she had no final guide in holding to her resolution save an instinct that told her that her course was the right one. All the arguments that she could put into words against inter-race marriage seemed inadequate. This instinct which was wordless and formless alone remained sufficient.
And with the ill logic of womankind, through all her arguing with herself there flushed one glad thought. Kut-le knew that she loved him, knew that she was suffering in the thought of giving him up! His tender, half sad, half triumphant smile proved that, as did his protective air of ownership.
Rhoda noticed one condition of her keeping to her decision. She was very firm in it at night when the desert was dim. But in the glory of the dawns and the sunsets, her little arguments seemed strangely small. Sitting on a mountainside one afternoon, Rhoda watched a rain-storm sweep across the ranges, across the desert, to the far-lying mesas. Normally odorless, the desert, after the rain, emitted a faint, ineffable odor that teased the girl's fancy as if she verged on the secret of the desert's beauty. Exquisite violet mists rolled back to the mountains. Flashing every rainbow tint from its moistened breast the desert lay as if breathing the very words of the Great Scheme.
Suddenly to Rhoda her resolution seemed small and futile, and for a long hour she revelled in the thought of belonging to the man she loved. And yet as night descended and the infinite reaches of the desert receded into darkness, the spell was broken, and the old doubts and misery returned.