“I can’t start yet,” she said.  “I’m too worn out.”

Kut-le’s expression was amused while it was impatient.

“I suppose you may be sleepy, but I think you can walk a little way.  Hurry, Rhoda!  Hurry!”

Rhoda sat staring calmly into the palpitating blue above.

“I hate to have you carry me,” she said after a moment, “but I don’t feel at all like walking!”

Her tired face was irresistibly lovely as she looked up at the Apache, but by an effort he remained obdurate.

“You must walk as long as you can,” he insisted.  “We have got to hustle today!”

“I really don’t feel like hustling!” sighed Rhoda.

“Rhoda!” cried Kut-le impatiently, “get up and walk after me!  Cesca, see that the white squaw keeps moving!” and he handed his rifle to the brown hag who took it with evident pleasure.  Molly ran forward as if to protest but at a look from Kut-le she dropped back.

Rhoda rose slowly, with her lower lip caught between her teeth.  She followed silently after Kut-le, Cesca and the rifle at her shoulder and Molly in the rear.  It seemed to the girl that of all the strange scenes through which the past weeks had carried her this was of all the most unreal.  All about her was a world of vivid rock heaps so intensely colored that she doubted her vision.  Away to the south lay the boundless floor of the desert, a purple and gold infinity that rolled into the horizon.  Far to the north mountains were faintly blue in the yellow sunlight.

Kut-le headed straight for the mountains.  His pace was swift and unrelenting.  Almost immediately Rhoda felt the debilitating effects of overheat.  The sun, now sailing high, burned through her flannel shirt until her flesh was blistered beneath it.  The light on the brilliantly colored rocks made her eyes blink with pain.  Before long she was parched with thirst and faint with hunger.  This was her first experience in tramping for any distance under the desert sun.  But Kut-le kept the pace long after the two squaws were half leading, half carrying the girl.

Rhoda had long since learned the uselessness of protesting.  She kept on until the way danced in reeling colors before her eyes.  Then without a sound she dropped in the scant shadow of a rock.  At the cry from Molly, Kut-le turned, and after one glance at Rhoda’s white face and limp figure he knelt in the sand and lifted the drooping, yellow head.  Molly unslung her canteen and forced a few drops of water between Rhoda’s lips.  Then she tenderly chafed the small hands and the delicate throat and Rhoda opened her eyes.  Immediately Kut-le lifted her in his arms and the flight was resumed.

At short intervals during the morning, Rhoda walked, but for the most part Kut-le packed her as dispassionately as if she had been a lame puppy.  He held her across his broad chest as if her fragile weight were nothing.  Lying so, Rhoda watched the merciless landscape or the brown squaws jogging at Kut-le’s heels.  Surely, she thought, the ancient mesa never had seen a stranger procession or known of a wilder mission.  She looked up into Kut-le’s face and wondered as she stared at his bare head how his eyes could look so steadily into the sun-drenched landscape.