But the girl was giving his words small heed. Her eyes still were turned
toward the desert, as though she had forgotten her companion. Sand
whirls crossed the distant levels, ceaselessly. Huge and menacing, they
swirled out from the mesa's edge, crossed the desert triumphantly, then,
at contact with rock or cholla thicket, collapsed and disappeared.
Endless, merciless, hopeless the yellow desert quivered against the
bronze blue sky. For the first time dazed hopelessness gave way in Rhoda
to fear. The young Indian, watching the girl's face, beheld in it what
even DeWitt never had seen there--beheld deadly fear. He was silent for
a moment, then he leaned toward her and put a strong brown hand over her
trembling little fists. His voice was deep and soft.

"Don't," he said, "don't!"

Perhaps it was the subtle, not-to-be-fathomed influence of the desert
which fights all sham; perhaps it was that Rhoda merely had reached the
limit of her heroic self-containment and that, had DeWitt or Newman been
with her, she would have given way in the same manner; perhaps it was
that the young Indian's presence had in it a quality that roused new life
in her. Whatever the cause; the listless melancholy suddenly left
Rhoda's gray eyes and they were wild and black with fear.

"I can't die!" she panted. "I can't leave my life unlived! I can't
crawl on much longer like a sick animal without a soul. I want to live!
To live!"

"Look at me!" said Cartwell. "Look at me, not at the desert!" Then as
she turned to him, "Listen, Rhoda! You shall not die! I will make you
well! You shall not die!"