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."
The Indian smiled sardonically.
"I already have Mrs. Jack's permission. Billy Porter will be in, in a moment. If you would rather have a white man than an Indian, as escort, I'm quite willing to retreat."
Rhoda flushed delicately.
"Your frankness is almost--almost impertinent, Mr. Cartwell."
"I don't mean it that way at all!" protested the Indian. "It's just that I saw so plainly what was going on in your mind and it piqued me. If it will be one bit pleasanter for you with Billy, I'll go right out and hunt him up for you now."
The young man's naïveté completely disarmed Rhoda.
"Don't be silly!" she said. "Go get your famous top-buggy and I'll be ready in a minute."
In a short time Rhoda and Cartwell, followed by many injunctions from Katherine, started off toward the irrigating ditch. At a slow pace they drove through the peach orchard into the desert. As they reached the open trail, thrush and to-hee fluttered from the cholla. Chipmunk and cottontail scurried before them. Overhead a hawk dipped in its reeling flight. Cartwell watched the girl keenly. Her pale face was very lovely in the brilliant morning light, though the somberness of her wide, gray eyes was deepened. That same muteness and patience in her trouble which so touched other men touched Cartwell, but he only said: "There never was anything bigger and finer than this open desert, was there?"
Rhoda turned from staring at the distant mesas and eyed the young Indian wonderingly.
"Why!" she exclaimed, "I hate it! You know that sick fear that gets you when you try to picture eternity to yourself? That's the way this barrenness and awful distance affects me. I hate it!"