The Heart of the Desert (Kut-Le of the Desert)Morrow, Honoré
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The Heart of the Desert (Kut-Le of the Desert)
Morrow, Honoré
Indians of North America -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; Love stories; Western stories
Rhoda drew a quick breath. She stood staring from the Indian to the
desert, to her slender body, and back again. She held out her hands
and looked at them. They were scratched and brown and did not tremble.
Then she looked at the young Indian and he never was to forget the
light in her eyes.
"Kut-le!" she cried. "Kut-le! I am well again! I am well again!"
She paced back and forth along the ledge. Through the creamy tan her
cheeks flushed richly crimson. Finally she stopped before the Apache.
"You have outraged all my civilized instincts," she said slowly, "yet
you have saved my life and given me health. Whatever comes, Kut-le, I
never shall forget that!"
"I have changed more than that," said Kut-le quietly. "Where is your
old hatred of the desert?"
Rhoda turned to look. At the edge of the distant ranges showed a rim
of red. Crimson spokes of fire flashed to the zenith. The sky grew
brighter, more translucent, the ranges melted into molten gold. The
sun, hot and scarlet, rolled into view. Into Rhoda's heart flooded a
sense of infinite splendor, infinite beauty, infinite peace.
"Why!" she gasped to Kut-le, "it is beautiful! It's not terrible!
It's unadorned beauty!"
The Indian nodded but did not speak. Rhoda never was to forget that
day. Long years after she was to catch the afterglow of that day of
her rebirth. Suddenly she realized that never could a human have found
health in a setting more marvelous. The realization was almost too
much. Kut-le, with sympathy for which she was grateful, did not talk
to her much. Once, however, as she brought him a drink and
mechanically smoothed his blanket he said softly:
"You who have been served and demanded service all your life, why do
you do this?"
Rhoda answered slowly.
"I'm not serving you. I'm trying to pay up some of the debt of my
life."
Kut-le was about in a day or so and by the end of the week he was quite
himself. He resumed the daily expeditions with Rhoda and Alchise which
provided text for the girl's desert learning. Rhoda's old despondency,
her old agony of prayer for immediate rescue had given way to a strange
conflict of desires. She was eager for rescue, was conscious of a
constant aching desire for her own people, and yet the old sense of
outrage, of grief, of hopelessness was gone.
Of a sudden she found herself pausing, thrusting back the problems that
confronted her while she drank to the full this strange mad joy of life
which she felt must leave her when she left the desert. She knew only
that the fear of death was gone. That hours of fever and pain were no
more. That her mind had found its old poise but with an utterly new
view-point of life. Her blood ran red. Her lungs breathed deep. Her
eyes saw distances too big for their conception, beauties so deep that
her spirit had to expand to absorb them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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