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THE HEART OF THE DESERT

(Kut-Le of the Desert)

by

HONORE WILLSIE

Author of "Still Jim"

With Frontispiece in Colors by V. Herbert Dunton

A. L. Burt Company, Publishers
114-120 East Twenty-third Street ---- New York
Published by Arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Company

1913







[Frontispiece: Side by side, they rode off into the desert sunset.]





CONTENTS

CHAPTER

     I  THE VALLEY OF THE PECOS
    II  THE CAUCASIAN WAY
   III  THE INDIAN AND CAUCASIAN
    IV  THE INDIAN WAY
     V  THE PURSUIT
    VI  ENTERING THE DESERT KINDERGARTEN
   VII  THE FIRST LESSON
  VIII  A BROADENING HORIZON
    IX  TOUCH AND GO
     X  A LONG TRAIL
    XI  THE TURN IN THE TRAIL
   XII  THE CROSSING TRAILS
  XIII  AN INTERLUDE
   XIV  THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD
    XV  AN ESCAPE
   XVI  ADRIFT IN THE DESERT
  XVII  THE HEART'S OWN BITTERNESS
 XVIII  THE FORGOTTEN CITY
   XIX  THE TRAIL AGAIN
    XX  THE RUINED MISSION
   XXI  THE END OF THE TRAIL




The Heart of the Desert


CHAPTER I

THE VALLEY OF THE PECOS

Rhoda hobbled through the sand to the nearest rock.  On this she sank
with a groan, clasped her slender foot with both hands and looked about
her helplessly.

She felt very small, very much alone.  The infinite wastes of yellow
desert danced in heat waves against the bronze-blue sky.  The girl saw
no sign of living thing save a buzzard that swept lazily across the
zenith.  She turned dizzily from contemplating the vast emptiness about
her to a close scrutiny of her injured foot.  She drew off her thin
satin house slipper painfully and dropped it unheedingly into a bunch
of yucca that crowded against the rock.  Her silk stocking followed.
Then she sat in helpless misery, eying her blue-veined foot.

In spite of her evident invalidism, one could but wonder why she made
so little effort to help herself.  She sat droopingly on the rock,
gazing from her foot to the far lavender line of the mesas.  A tiny,
impotent atom of life, she sat as if the eternal why which the desert
hurls at one overwhelmed her, deprived her of hope, almost of
sensation.  There was something of nobility in the steadiness with
which she gazed at the melting distances, something of pathos in her
evident resignation, to her own helplessness and weakness.

The girl was quite unconscious of the fact that a young man was
tramping up the desert behind her.  He, however, had spied the white
gown long before Rhoda had sunk to the rock and had laid his course
directly for her.  He was a tall fellow, standing well over six feet
and he swung through the heavy sand with an easy stride that covered
distance with astonishing rapidity.  As he drew near enough to perceive
Rhoda's yellow head bent above her injured foot, he quickened his pace,
swung round the yucca thicket and pulled off his soft felt hat.

"Good-morning!" he said.  "What's the matter?"

Rhoda started, hastily covered her foot, and looked up at the tall
khaki-clad figure.  She never had seen the young man before, but the
desert is not formal.

"A thing like a little crayfish bit my foot," she answered; "and you
don't know how it hurts!"

"Ah, but I do!" exclaimed the young man.  "A scorpion sting!  Let me
see it!"

Rhoda flushed.

"Oh, never mind that!" she said.  "But if you will go to the Newman
ranch-house for me and ask them to send the buckboard I'll be very
grateful.  I--I feel dizzy, you know."

"Gee whiz!" exclaimed the young man.  "There's no time for me to run
about the desert if you have a scorpion sting in your foot!"

"Is a scorpion sting dangerous?" asked Rhoda.  Then she added,
languidly, "Not that I mind if it is!"

The young man gave her a curious glance.  Then he pulled a small case
from his pocket, knelt in the sand and lifted Rhoda's foot in one
slender, strong, brown hand.  The instep already was badly swollen.

"Hold tight a minute!" said the young man.

And before Rhoda could protest he had punctured the red center of the
swelling with a little scalpel, had held the cut open and had filled it
with a white powder that bit.  Then he pulled a clean handkerchief from
his pocket and tore it in two.  With one half he bound the ankle above
the cut tightly.  With the other he bandaged the cut itself.

"Are you a doctor?" asked Rhoda faintly.

"Far from it," replied the young man with a chuckle, tightening the
upper bandage until Rhoda's foot was numb.  "But I always carry this
little outfit with me; rattlers and scorpions are so thick over on the
ditch.  Somebody's apt to be hurt anytime