disgraced forever! Let me go, Kut-le! Let me go! I'll not even ask
you for a horse. Just let me go by myself!"

"You are better off with me. You will acknowledge that, yourself,
before I am through with you."

"Better off!" Rhoda's appalled eyes cut the Indian deeper than words.
"Better off! Why, Kut-le, I am a dying woman! You will just have to
leave me dead beside the trail somewhere. Look at me! Look at my
hands! See how emaciated I am! See how I tremble! I am a sick wreck,
Kut-le. You cannot want me! Let me go! Try, try to remember all that
you learned of pity from the whites! O Kut-le, let me go!"

"I haven't forgotten what I learned from the whites," replied the young
man. He looked off at the desert with a quiet smile. "Now I want the
whites to learn from me.

"But can't you see what a futile game you are playing? John DeWitt and
Jack must be on your trail now!"

There was a cruel gleam in the Apache's eyes.

"Don't be too sure! They are going to spend a few days looking for the
foolish Eastern girl who took a stroll and lost her way in the desert.
How can they dream that you are stolen?"

Rhoda wrung her hands.

"What shall I do! What shall I do! What an awful, awful thing to come
to me! As if life had not been hard enough! This catastrophe! This