Page 30 (1/1)

"You are better off with h with you"

"Better off!" Rhoda's appalled eyes cut the Indian deeper than words "Better off! Why, Kut-le, I a woman! You will just have to leave me dead beside the trail somewhere Look at me! Look at my hands! See how emaciated I am! See how I treo! Try, try to remember all that you learned of pity frootten what I learned fro man He looked off at the desert with a quiet smile "Noant the whites to learn fro? John DeWitt and Jack lea to spend a few days looking for the foolish Eastern girl who took a stroll and lost her way in the desert How can they drea her hands

"What shall I do! What shall I do! What an awful, awful thing to coh! This catastrophe! This disgrace!"

Kut-le eyed her speculatively

"It's all race prejudice, you know I have the education of the white with the intelligence and physical perfection of the Indian; DeWitt is nowhere near my equal"

Rhoda's eyes blazed

"Don't speak of DeWitt! You're not fit to!"

"Yet," very quietly, "you said the other night that I had as good a brain and was as attractive as any man of your acquaintance!"

"I was a fool!" exclaimed Rhoda

Kut-le rose and took a stride or two up and down the ledge Then he folded his arms across his chest and stopped before Rhoda, who leaned weakly against the boulder

"I a to tell you what ent and will understand me no matter how bitter my words may make you at first Now look here Lots of white men are in love with you Even Billy Porter went off his head But I guess DeWitt is a pretty fair sa, well-bred and Eastern to the backbone And they love you as you are, delicate, helpless, appealing, thoroughbred, but utterly useless!

"Except that they hate to see you suffer, they wouldn't want you to change Now I love you for the possibilities that I see in you I wouldn't think of ood blood Your beauty is marred by your illness You have absolutely no sense of responsibility toward life You think that life owes everything to you, that you pay your ith your beauty If you didn't die, but h life petted and babied, bridge-playing and going out to lectures, childless, incompetent, self-satisfied--and an utter failure!