Molly laughed.

"No! You no wash! No use! You just get cold--heap cold!"

"Molly!" called Kut-le's authoritative voice.

Molly went flying toward the packs, from which she returned with a
canteen and a tiny pitch-smeared basket. Kut-le followed with a towel.
He grinned at Rhoda.

"Molly is possessed with the idea that anything as frail as you would
be snuffed out like a candle by a drop of water. You and I each
possess a lone lorn towel which we must wash out ourselves till the end
of the trip. The squaws don't know when a thing is clean."

Rhoda took the towel silently, and the young Indian, after waiting a
minute as if in hope of a word from her, left the girl to her difficult
toilet. When Rhoda had finished she picked up the field-glasses that
Kut-le had left on her blankets and with her back to the Indians sat
down on a rock to watch the desert.

The sordid discomforts of the camp seemed to her unbearable. She hated
the blue haze of the desert below and beyond her. She hated the very
ponies that Alchise was leading up from water. It was the fourth day
since her abduction. Rhoda could not understand why John and the
Newmans were so slow to overtake her. She knew nothing as yet of the
skill of her abductors. She was like an ignorant child placed in a new
world whose very ABC was closed to her. After always having been cared
for and protected, after never having known a hardship, the girl