The Heart of the Desert (Kut-Le of the Desert)Morrow, Honoré
General
The Heart of the Desert (Kut-Le of the Desert)
Morrow, Honoré
Indians of North America -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; Love stories; Western stories
The mellow, haunting melody caught Rhoda's fancy at once, as Cartwell
knew it would. She turned to the sinewy figure at the piano. DeWitt was
wholesome and strong, but this young Indian seemed vitality itself.
"Nina, if I should die and o'er ocean's foam
Softly at dusk a fair dove should come,
Open thy window, Nina, for it would be
My faithful soul come back to thee----"
Something in Cartwell's voice stirred Rhoda as had his eyes. For the
first time in months Rhoda felt poignantly that it would be hard to be
cut down with all her life unlived. The mellow voice ceased and
Cartwell, rising, lighted a fresh cigarette.
"I am going to get up with the rabbits, tomorrow," he said, "so I'll trot
to bed now."
DeWitt, impelled by that curious sense of liking for the young Indian
that fought down his aversion, said, "The music was bully, Cartwell!" but
Cartwell only smiled as if at the hint of patronage in the voice and
strolled to his own room.
Rhoda slept late the following morning. She had not, in her three nights
in the desert country, become accustomed to the silence that is not the
least of the desert's splendors. It seemed to her that the nameless
unknown Mystery toward which her life was drifting was embodied in this
infinite silence. So sleep would not come to her until dawn. Then the
stir of the wind in the trees, the bleat of sheep, the trill of
mocking-birds lulled her to sleep.
As the brilliancy of the light in her room increased there drifted across
her uneasy dreams the lilting notes of a whistled call. Pure and
liquidly sweet they persisted until there came to Rhoda that faint stir
of hope and longing that she had experienced the day before. She opened
her eyes and finally, as the call continued, she crept languidly from her
bed and peered from behind the window-shade. Cartwell, in his khaki
suit, his handsome head bared to the hot sun, leaned against a peach-tree
while he watched Rhoda's window.
"I wonder what he wakened me for?" she thought half resentfully. "I
can't go to sleep again, so I may as well dress and have breakfast."
Hardly had she seated herself at her solitary meal when Cartwell appeared.
"Dear me!" he exclaimed. "The birds and Mr. DeWitt have been up this
long time."
"What is John doing?" asked Rhoda carelessly.
"He's gone up on the first mesa for the wildcats I spoke of last night.
I thought perhaps you might care to take a drive before it got too hot.
You didn't sleep well last night, did you?"
Rhoda answered whimsically.
"It's the silence. It thunders at me so! I will get used to it soon.
Perhaps I ought to drive. I suppose I ought to try everything."
Not at all discouraged, apparently, by this lack of enthusiasm, Cartwell
said:
"I won't let you overdo. I'll have the top-buggy for you and we'll go
slowly and carefully."
"No," said Rhoda, suddenly recalling that, after all, Cartwell was an
Indian, "I don't think I will go. Katherine will have all sorts of
objections."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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