E-text prepared by Al Haines Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustration. See 16777-h.htm or 16777-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/7/16777/16777-h/16777-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/7/7/16777/16777-h.zip) THE HEART OF THE DESERT (Kut-Le of the Desert) by HONORE WILLSIE Author of "Still Jim" With Frontispiece in Colors by V. Herbert Dunton A. L. Burt Company, Publishers 114-120 East Twenty-third Street ---- New York Published by Arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Company 1913 [Frontispiece: Side by side, they rode off into the desert sunset.] CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE VALLEY OF THE PECOS II THE CAUCASIAN WAY III THE INDIAN AND CAUCASIAN IV THE INDIAN WAY V THE PURSUIT VI ENTERING THE DESERT KINDERGARTEN VII THE FIRST LESSON VIII A BROADENING HORIZON IX TOUCH AND GO X A LONG TRAIL XI THE TURN IN THE TRAIL XII THE CROSSING TRAILS XIII AN INTERLUDE XIV THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD XV AN ESCAPE XVI ADRIFT IN THE DESERT XVII THE HEART'S OWN BITTERNESS XVIII THE FORGOTTEN CITY XIX THE TRAIL AGAIN XX THE RUINED MISSION XXI THE END OF THE TRAIL The Heart of the Desert CHAPTER I THE VALLEY OF THE PECOS Rhoda hobbled through the sand to the nearest rock. On this she sank with a groan, clasped her slender foot with both hands and looked about her helplessly. She felt very small, very much alone. The infinite wastes of yellow desert danced in heat waves against the bronze-blue sky. The girl saw no sign of living thing save a buzzard that swept lazily across the zenith. She turned dizzily from contemplating the vast emptiness about her to a close scrutiny of her injured foot. She drew off her thin satin house slipper painfully and dropped it unheedingly into a bunch of yucca that crowded against the rock. Her silk stocking followed. Then she sat in helpless misery, eying her blue-veined foot. In spite of her evident invalidism, one could but wonder why she made so little effort to help herself. She sat droopingly on the rock, gazing from her foot to the far lavender line of the mesas. A tiny, impotent atom of life, she sat as if the eternal why which the desert hurls at one overwhelmed her, deprived her of hope, almost of sensation. There was something of nobility in the steadiness with which she gazed at the melting distances, something of pathos in her evident resignation, to her own helplessness and weakness.