The Heart of the Desert

Rhoda gave a cry of joy. From the horsemen rose a sudden shout.

"Spread! Spread! There they are!"

"Don't shoot!" It was Porter's voice, shrill and high with excitement. "That's her, the boy there! Rhoda! Rhoda! We're coming!"

With a quick responsive cry, Rhoda struck her horse. With the blow, Kut-le leaned from his own horse and seized her bridle, turning her horse with his own away from the mesa and to the left. The other Indians followed and with hoarse cries of exultation the rescuers took up the pursuit.

Rhoda looked back.

"Shoot!" she screamed. "Shoot!"

Before the second scream had left her lips she was lifted bodily from the saddle to Kut-le's arms where, understanding his device, she struggled like a mad woman. But she only wasted her strength. Without a glance at her, Kut-le turned his pony almost in its tracks and made for the mesa.

"Cut him off! He'll get away from us!" It was DeWitt's voice, and "John! John DeWitt!" Rhoda cried.

But the young Indian had gaged his distance well. He brought his horse to its haunches and with Rhoda in his arms was running into a fissure seemingly too narrow for human to enter, while the pursuers were still a hundred yards away.

"Hold 'em, Alchise!" he said briefly as he ran.

Alchise, with rifle cocked, stopped by the opening. The fissure widened immediately into a narrow passageway. High, high above them rolled a strip of pink and blue morning sky. Before them was a seemingly interminable crevice along which the squaws scuttled. As Rhoda watched them they disappeared around a sudden curve. When Kut-le reached this point with his burden, the squaws were climbing like monkeys up the wall which here gave back, roughly, ending the fissure in a rude chimney which it seemed to Rhoda only a bear or an Apache could have climbed. Kut-le set Rhoda on her feet. She looked up into his face mockingly. To her mind she was as good as rescued. But the young Apache seemed in no wise hurried or excited.

"Our old friends seem to want something!" he commented with his boyish grin.

"What are you going to do now?" asked Rhoda, with calm equal to the Apache's.

"I can't carry you up this wall," suggested Kut-le.

"Very well!" returned Rhoda pleasantly. "I am quite willing that you should leave me here."

Kut-le's eyes glittered.

"Rhoda, you must climb this wall with me!"

"I won't!" replied Rhoda laconically.

"Then I shall force you to," said the Indian, shifting his rifle and prodding Rhoda ever so gently with the barrel.

Rhoda gave Kut-le a look of scorn that he was not soon to forget and slowly mounted the first broken ledge. The wall was composed of a series of jutting rocks and of ledges that barely offered hand or foot hold. Up and up and up! Kut-le was now beside her, now above her, now lifting, now pulling. Half-way to the top, Rhoda stopped, dizzy and afraid. Kneeling on the ledge above, with one hand thrust down to lift her, Kut-le looked into her eyes almost pleadingly. That handsome face so close to hers affected Rhoda strangely.