"I hear a train!" she cried. "O dear God, I hear a train!" Then, "The other Indians are too far away to reach you before the train does," she added calmly. "But I'll never loose my grip on you," returned the Indian grimly. He tore at the imprisoned foot, ripping the moccasin and tearing at the road bed. The rails began to sing. Far down the track they saw a star of light Rhoda's heart stood still. This, then, was to be the end! After all the months of distant menace, death was to be upon her in a moment! This, then, was to be the solution! And with all the horror of what life might mean to her, she cried out with a sob: "Oh, not this way! Not this way!" Kut-le gave her a quick push. "Hurry," he said, "and try to remember good things of me!" With a cry of joy, Rhoda jumped from the track, then stopped. There flashed across her inner vision the face of young Cartwell, debonair and dark, with unfathomable eyes; young Cartwell who had saved her life when the scorpion had stung her, who had spent hours trying to lead her back to health. Instantly she turned and staggered back to the Indian. "I can't let a human being die like a trapped animal!" she panted, and she threw herself wildly against him. Kut-le fell at the unexpected impact of her weight and his foot was freed! He lifted Rhoda, leaped from the track, and the second section of the tourist train thundered into the west. "You are as fine as I thought you were--" he began. But Rhoda was a limp heap at his feet. The girl came to her senses partially when Kut-le set her in the saddle and fastened her there with strap and blanket. But happily she was practically unconscious for the hour or two that remained till dawn. Just as day was breaking the Indians made their way across an arroyo and up a long slope to a group of cottonwoods. Here Rhoda was put to 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?"