Rhoda looked at the stalwart figure in the firelight.  The young eyes so tragic in their youth, the beautiful mouth, sad in its firm curves, were strangely appealing.  Just for an instant the horrors of the past weeks vanished.

“Good-night!” said Rhoda.  Then she rolled herself in her blankets and slept.  By the next morning, however, the old repulsion had returned and she made no response to Kut-le’s overtures.

Day succeeded day now, until Rhoda lost all track of time.  Endlessly they crossed desert and mountain ridges.  Endlessly they circled through dusky canon and sun-baked arroyo.  Always Rhoda looked forward to each new camping-place with excitement.  Here, the rescuers might stumble upon them!  Always she started at each unexpected shadow along the trail.  Always she thrilled at a wisp of smokelike cloud beyond the canon edge.  Always she felt a quiver of certainty at sudden break of twig or fall of stone.  But the days passed and gradually hope changed to desperation.

The difficulties of the camp life would have been unbearable to her had not her natural fortitude and her intense pride come to her rescue.  The estimate of her that Kut-le had so mercilessly presented to her the first day of her abduction returned to her more and more clearly as the days wore on.  At first she thought of them only with scorn.  Then as her loneliness increased and she was forced back upon herself she grew to wonder what in her had given the Indian such an opinion.  There was something in the nakedness of the desert, something in its piercing austerity that forced her to truthfulness with herself.  Little by little she found herself trying to acquire Kut-le’s view of her.

Her liking for Molly grew.  She spent long afternoons with the squaw, picking up desert lore.

“Do you like to work, Molly?” she asked the squaw one afternoon, as she sorted seed for Molly to bruise.

“What else to do?” asked Molly.  “Sit with hands folded on stomach, so?  No!  Still hands make crazy head.  Now you work with your hands you no so sorry in head, huh?”

Rhoda thought for a moment.  There was a joy in the rude camp tasks that she had assumed that she never had found in golf or automobiling.  She nodded, then said wistfully: 

“You think I’m no good at all, don’t you, Molly?”

Molly shrugged her shoulders.

“Me not got papooses.  You not got papooses.  Molly and you no good!  Molly is heap strong.  What good is that?  When she die she no has given her strength to tribe, no done any good that will last.  You are heap beautiful.  What good is that?  You no give your face to your tribe.  What good are you?  Molly and you might as well die tomorrow.  Work, have papooses, die.  That all squaws are for.  Great Spirit says so.  Squaw’s own heart says so.”

Rhoda sat silently looking at the squaw’s squat figure, the toil-scarred fingers, the good brown eyes out of which looked a woman’s soul.  Vaguely Rhoda caught a point of view that made her old ideals seem futile.  She smoothed the Indian woman’s hands.