“I’ll do anything you want me to—­in that line!”

Rhoda carefully ignored the last phrase.

“Even if we’re half dead, it’s too bad to miss the opportunity to examine such a wonderful thing as this.  You couldn’t find as glorious a setting for a ruin anywhere in Europe.”

“Oh, yes, you could; lots of ’em,” answered DeWitt.  “You can’t compare a ruin like this with anything in Europe.  What makes European ruins appeal to us is not only their intrinsic beauty but the association of big ideas with them.  We know that big thoughts built them and perhaps destroyed them.”

“What do you call big thoughts?” asked Rhoda.  “Wasn’t it just as great for these Pueblo Indians to perform such terrible labor in building this for their families as it was for some old king to work thousands of slaves to death to build him a monument?”

DeWitt laughed.

“Rhoda, you can love the desert, its Indians and its ruins all you want to, if you won’t ask me to!  I’ve had all I want of the three of them!  Lord, how I hate it all!”

Rhoda looked at him wistfully.  If only he could understand the spiritual change in her that was even greater than the physical!  If only he could see the beauty of those far lavender hazes!  If only he could understand how even now she was heartsick for the night trail where one looked up into the sky as into a shadowy opal!  If only he knew the peace that had dwelt with her on the holiday ledge where there were tints and beauties too deep for words!  And yet with the wistfulness came a strange sense of satisfaction that all this new part of her must belong forever to Kut-le.

John led the way into the dwelling.  All was emptiness and ruin.  All that remained of the old life within its walls were wonderful bits of pottery.  Only once did DeWitt give evidence of pleasure.  He was examining the carefully finished walls of one of the rooms when he called: 

“I say, Rhoda, just look at this bit of humanness!”

Rhoda came to him quickly and he pointed low down on the adobe wall where was the perfect imprint of a baby’s hand.

“The little rascal got spanked, I’ll bet, for putting his hand on the ’dobe before it was dry!” commented John.

Rhoda smiled but said nothing.  These departed peoples had become very real and very pitiable to her.

As soon as he could drag Rhoda from the ancient pots, John led the way to the top of the ruin.  He was anxious to find if there were more than the one trail leading from the desert.  To his great satisfaction he found that the mesa was unscalable except at the point that Rhoda had found as she staggered up from the desert.

“I’m going to guard that trail tonight,” he said.  “It’s just possible, you know, that Kut-le escaped from Porter, though I think if he had he would have been upon us long before this.  I’ve been mighty careless.  But my brain is so tired it seems to have been off duty.  I could hold that trail single-handed from the upper terrace for a week.”