"Kut-le kill Molly with cactus torture!"
"But you go with me!" The sobs ceased and Rhoda sat back on her blankets as the idea developed. "You go with me and I'll make you--"
Neither noticed the soft thud of moccasined feet. Suddenly Alchise seized Molly's black hair and with a violent jerk pulled the woman backward. Rhoda forgot her stiffened muscles, forgot her gentle ancestry. She sprang at Alchise with catlike fury and struck his fingers from Molly's hair.
"You fiend! I wish I could shoot you!" she panted, her fingers twitching.
Alchise retreated a step.
"She try help 'em run!" he said sullenly.
"She was not! And no matter if she was! Don't you touch a woman before me!"
A swift shadow crossed the camp and Alchise was hurled six feet away.
"What's the matter!" cried Kut-le. "Has he laid finger on you, Rhoda?" He strode to her side and looked down at her with eyes in which struggled anger and anxiety.
"No!" blazed Rhoda. "But he pulled Molly over backward by her hair!"
"Oh!" in evident relief. "And what was Molly doing?"
"She maybe help 'em run," said Alchise, coming forward.
The relief in Kut-le's voice increased Rhoda's anger.
"No such thing! She was persuading me not to go! Kut-le, you give Alchise orders not to touch Molly again. I won't have it!"
"Oh, that's not necessary," said Kut-le serenely. "Indians are pretty good to their women as a general thing. They average up with the whites, I guess. Molly, get up and help Cesca with these!" He flung some newly killed rabbits at the gaping squaw, who still lay where she had fallen.
Rhoda, trembling and glowering, walked unsteadily up and down beneath the cottonwoods. The details of her new existence, the dirt, the roughness, were beginning to sink in on her. She paced back and forth, lips compressed, eyes black. Kut-le stood with his back against a cottonwood eying the slender figure with frank delight. Now and again he chuckled as he rolled a cigarette with his facile finger. His hands were fine as only an Indian's can be: strong and sinewy yet supple with slender fingers and almond-shaped nails.
He smoked contentedly with his eyes on the girl. Inscrutable as was his face at a casual glance, had Rhoda observed keenly she might have read much in the changing light of his eyes. There was appreciation of her and love of her and a merciless determination to hold her at all costs. And still as he gazed there was that tragedy in his look which is part and portion of the Indian's face.
Silence in the camp had continued for some time when a strange young Indian strode up the slope, nodded to the group in the camp, and deliberately rolled himself in a blanket and dropped to sleep. Rhoda stared at him questioningly.