“Are the Mohaves so pig-headed then?” asked DeWitt, smiling.

Cartwell returned the smile with a flash of white teeth.

“You bet they are!  My mother was part Mohave and she used to say that only the Pueblo in her kept her from being as stiff-necked as yucca.  You’re all over the dizziness, Miss Tuttle?”

“Yes,” said Rhoda.  “You were very good to me.”

Cartwell shook his head.

“I’m afraid I can’t take special credit for that.  Will you two ride to the ditch with me tomorrow?  I think Miss Tuttle will be interested in Jack’s irrigation dream, don’t you, Mr. DeWitt?”

DeWitt answered a little stiffly.

“It’s out of the question for Miss Tuttle to attempt such a trip, thank you.”

But to her own as well as DeWitt’s astonishment Rhoda spoke protestingly.

“You must let me refuse my own invitations, John.  Perhaps the ditch would interest me.”

DeWitt replied hastily, “Good gracious, Rhoda!  If anything will interest you, don’t let me interfere.”

There was protest in his voice against Rhoda’s being interested in an Indian’s suggestion.  Both Rhoda and Cartwell felt this and there was an awkward pause.  This was broken by a faint halloo from the corral and DeWitt rose abruptly.

“I’ll go down and meet Jack,” he said.

“We’ll do a lot of stunts if you’re willing,” Cartwell said serenely, his eyes following DeWitt’s broad back inscrutably.  “The desert is like a story-book if one learns to read it.  If you would be interested to learn, I would be keen to teach you.”

Rhoda’s gray eyes lifted to the young man’s somberly.

“I’m too dull these days to learn anything,” she said.  “But I—­I didn’t used to be!  Truly I didn’t!  I used to be so alive, so strong!  I believed in everything, myself most of all!  Truly I did!” She paused, wondering at her lack of reticence.

Cartwell, however, was looking at her with something in his gaze so quietly understanding that Rhoda smiled.  It was a slow smile that lifted and deepened the corners of Rhoda’s lips, that darkened her gray eyes to black, an unforgetable smile to the loveliness of which Rhoda’s friends never could accustom themselves.  At the sight of it, Cartwell drew a deep breath, then leaned toward her and spoke with curious earnestness.

“You make me feel the same way that starlight on the desert makes me feel.”

Rhoda replied in astonishment, “Why, you mustn’t speak that way to me!  It’s not—­not—­”

“Not conventional?” suggested Cartwell.  “What difference does that make, between you and me?”

Again came the strange stirring in Rhoda in response to Cartwell’s gaze.  He was looking at her with something of tragedy in the dark young eyes, something of sternness and determination in the clean-cut lips.  Rhoda wondered, afterward, what would have been said if Katherine had not chosen this moment to come out on the porch.