Katherine jumped up and took Rhoda’s thin little hand joyfully.

“Indeed you are!” she cried.  “Thanks to Kut-le!”

“Thanks to whom?” asked Rhoda.  “It was a tall young man.  He said his name was Charley Cartwell.”

“Yup!” answered Katherine.  “Charley Cartwell!  His other name is Kut-le.  He’ll be in to dinner with Jack, tonight.  Isn’t he good-looking, though!”

“I don’t know.  I was so dizzy I couldn’t see him.  He seemed very dark.  Is he a Spaniard?”

“Spaniard!  No!” Katherine was watching Rhoda’s languid eyes half mischievously.  “He’s part Mescallero, part Pueblo, part Mohave!”

Rhoda sat erect with flaming face.

“You mean that he’s an Indian and I let him carry me!  Katherine!”

The mischief in Katherine’s brown eyes grew to laughter.

“I thought that would get a rise out of you, you blessed tenderfoot!  What difference does that make?  He rescued you from a serious predicament; and more than that he’s a fine fellow and one of Jack’s dearest friends.”

Rhoda’s delicate face still was flushed.

“An Indian!  What did John DeWitt say?”

“Oh!” said Katherine, carelessly, “he offered to drive Kut-le back to the ditch, and he hasn’t got home yet.  They probably will be very congenial, John being a Harvard man and Kut-le a Yale!”

Rhoda’s curved lips opened, then closed again.  The look of interest died from her eyes.

“Well,” she said in her usual weary voice, “I think I’ll have a glass of milk, if I may.  Then I’ll go out on the porch.  You see I’m being all the trouble to you, Katherine, that I said I would be.”

“Trouble!” protested Katherine.  “Why, Rhoda Tuttle, if I could just see you with the old light in your eyes I’d wait on you by inches on my knees.  I would, honestly.”

Rhoda rubbed a thin cheek against the warm hand that still held hers, and the mute thanks said more than words.

The veranda of the Newman ranch-house was deep and shaded by green vines.  From the hammock where she lay, a delicate figure amid the vivid cushions, Rhoda looked upon a landscape that combined all the perfection of verdure of a northern park with a sense of illimitable breathing space that should have been fairly intoxicating to her.  Two huge cottonwoods stood beside the porch.  Beyond the lawn lay the peach orchard which vied with the bordering alfalfa fields in fragrance and color.  The yellow-brown of tree-trunks and the white of grazing sheep against vegetation of richest green were astonishing colors for Rhoda to find in the desert to which she had been exiled, and in the few days since her arrival she had not ceased to wonder at them.

DeWitt crossed the orchard, quickening his pace when he saw Rhoda.  He was a tall fellow, blond and well built, though not so tall and lithe as Cartwell.  His dark blue eyes were disconcertingly clear and direct.