bed on a heap of blankets.

Sometime in the afternoon she woke with a clear head. It was the first
time in months that she had wakened without a headache. She stared
from the shade of the cottonwoods to the distant lavender haze of the
desert. There was not a sound in all the world. Mysterious, remote,
the desert stared back at her, mocking her little grief. More terrible
to her than her danger in Kut-le's hands, more appalling than the death
threat that had hung over her so long, was this sense of awful space,
of barren nothingness with which the desert oppressed her.
Instinctively she turned to look for human companionship. Kut-le and
Alchise were not to be seen but Molly nodded beside Rhoda's blankets
and the thin hag Cesca was curled in the grass near by, asleep.

"You awake? Heap hungry?" asked Molly suddenly.

Rhoda sat up, groaning at the torturing stiffness of her muscles.

"Where is Kut-le?" she asked.

"Gone get 'em supper. Alchise gone too."

"Molly," Rhoda took the rough brown hand between both her soft cold
palms, "Molly, will you help me to run away?"

Molly looked from the clasping fingers up to Rhoda's sweet face. Molly
was a squaw, dirty and ignorant. Rhoda was the delicate product of a
highly cultivated civilization, egoistic, narrow-viewed, self-centered.
And yet Rhoda, looking into Molly's deep brown eyes, saw there that
limitless patience and fortitude and gentleness which is woman's