The Heart of the Desert

Rhoda answered angrily.

"I'm not at all interested in your opinions."

But the young Apache went on.

"It makes me tired to hear the white women of your class talk of their equality to men! You don't do a thing to make you equal. You live off some one else. You don't even produce children. Huh! No wonder nature kicks you out with all manner of illness. You are mere cloggers of the machinery. For heaven's sake, wake up, Rhoda! Except for your latent possibilities, you aren't in it with Molly!"

"You have some touchstone, I suppose," replied Rhoda contemptuously, "by which you are made competent to sit in judgment on mankind?"

"I sure have!" said Kut-le. "It is that you so live that you die spiritually richer than you were born. Life is a simple thing, after all. To keep one's body and soul healthy, to bear children, to give more than we take. And I believe that in the end it will seem to have been worth while."

Rhoda made no answer. Kut-le ate on in silence for a time, then he said wistfully: "Don't you enjoy this meal with me, just a little?"

Rhoda glanced from Kut-le's naked body to her own torn clothing, then at the crude meal.

"I don't enjoy it, no," she answered quietly.

Something in the quiet sincerity of the voice caused Kut-le to rise abruptly and order the Indians to break camp. But on the trail that night he rode close beside her whenever the way permitted and talked to her of the beauty of the desert. At last, lashed to desperation by her indifference, he cried: "Can't you see that your silence leads to nothing--that it maddens me!"

"That is what I want it to do," returned Rhoda calmly. "I shall be so glad if I can make you suffer a touch of what I am enduring!"

Kut-le did not reply for a moment, then he began slowly: "You imagine that I am not suffering? Try to put yourself in my place for a moment! Can't you see how I love you? Can't you see that my stealing was the only thing that I could do, loving you so? Wouldn't you have done the same in my place? If I had been a white man I wouldn't have been driven to this. I would have had an equal chance with DeWitt and could have won easily. But I had all the prejudice against my alien race to fight. There was but one thing to do: to take you to the naked desert where you would be forced to see life as I see it, where you would be forced to see me, the man, far from any false standards of civilization."