"O Molly!" she cried. "I can't stand this! I want my own people! I
want my own people!"

Molly's eyes filled with tears.

"No! No cry, little Sun-streak!" she pleaded, putting an arm around
Rhoda and holding her to her tenderly. "Any peoples that loves you is
your own peoples. Kut-le loves you. Molly loves you. We your peoples
too!"

"No! No! Never!" sobbed Rhoda. "Molly, if you love me, take me back
to my own kind! You shall never leave me, Molly! I do love you. You
are an Indian but somehow I have a feeling for you I never had for any
one else."

A sudden light of passionate adoration burned in Molly's eyes, a light
that never was to leave them again when they gazed on Rhoda. But she
shook her head.

"You ask Molly to give up her peoples but you don't want to give up
yours. You stay with Molly and Kut-le. Learn what desert say 'bout
life, 'bout people. When you _sabe_ what the desert say 'bout that you
_sabe_ almost much as Great Spirit!"

"Molly, listen! When Kut-le and Alchise go off on one of their hunts
and Cesca goes to sleep, you and I will steal off and hide until night,
and you will show me how to get home again. O Molly, I'll be very good
to you if you will do this for me! Don't you see how foolish Kut-le
is? I can never, never marry him! His ways are not my ways. My ways