“Are you tired, Rhoda?” asked DeWitt abruptly.  “Do you feel able to take to the saddle at once?”

“I’m all right!” exclaimed Rhoda impatiently.  “What are your plans?”

DeWitt pointed out across the sand to the canon wall.  A line of slender footprints led through the level wastes as plainly as if on new-fallen snow.

“We will follow your trail,” he said.

There was silence for an instant in the little camp while the men eyed the girlish face, flushed and vivid beneath the tan.  As it had come when DeWitt had rescued her, the old sense of the appalling nature of her experience was returning to her again.  With sickening clarity she was getting the men’s view-point.  The old Rhoda would have protested, would have fought desperately and blindly.  The new Rhoda had lived through hours of hopeless battle with circumstance.  She had learned the desert’s lesson of patience.

“I have thought,” she said slowly, “so much of the joy of my return to you!  God only knows how the picture of it has kept me alive from day to day.  All your joy seems swallowed up in your thirst for revenge.  All right, my friends.  Only, wherever you go, I go too!”

Billy Porter shook his head with a muttered “Gosh!” as if the ways of women were quite beyond him.

“I think you had better ride on to the ranch with Carlos,” said DeWitt, “while we take up Kut-le’s trail.  This will be no trip for a woman.”

“You’re foolish!” exclaimed Jack.  “We’ll not let her out of our sight again.  You can’t tell what stunt Kut-le is up to!”

“That’s right!” said Porter.  “It’ll be hard on her, but she’d better come with us.”

“Don’t trouble to discuss the matter,” said Rhoda coolly.  “I am coming with you.  Katherine probably sent some clothing for me, didn’t she?”

“Why, yes!” exclaimed Jack.  “That was one of the first things she thought of.  She sent her own riding things for you.  She spoke of the little silk dress you had on and said you hadn’t anything appropriate in your trunks for the rough trip you might have to take after we found you.”

Jack was talking rapidly, as if to relieve the tension of the situation.  He undid a pack that he had kept tied to his saddle during all the long weeks of pursuit.

“We can rig up a dressing-room of blankets in no time,” he went on, putting a bundle into Rhoda’s hands.

Rhoda stood holding the bundle in silence while all hands set to rigging up her dressing-room.  She felt suddenly cool-headed and resourceful.  Her mind was forced away from her own sorrow to the solution of another heavy problem.  In the little blanket tent she unrolled the bundle and smiled tenderly at the evidence of Katherine’s thoughtfulness.  There were underwear, handkerchiefs, toilet articles and Katherine’s own pretty corduroy divided skirt and Norfolk jacket with a little blouse and Ascot scarf.