Molly was her devoted friend and Rhoda derived great comfort from this faithful servitor.  Rhoda sat in the camp one afternoon with the two squaws while Kut-le and Alchise were off on a turkey hunt.  Some of the girl’s pallor had given way to a delicate tan.  The dark circles about her eyes had lightened a little.  Molly was busily pounding grass-seeds between two stones.  Rhoda watched her idly.  Suddenly a new idea sent the blood to her thin cheeks.

Why shouldn’t she learn to make seed meal, to catch and cook rabbits, to distinguish edible cactus from inedible?  Then indeed she would be able to care for herself on the trail!  To Rhoda, who never had worked with her hands, who indeed had come to look on manual labor as belonging to inferiors, the idea was revolutionary.  For a long time she turned it over in her mind, watching Molly the while.  The most violent housewifely task that Rhoda ever had undertaken had been the concocting of chafing-dish messes at school.

“Molly,” she said suddenly, “teach me how to do that!”

Molly paused and grinned delightedly.

“All right!  You come help poor Molly!”

With Cesca looking on sardonically, Molly poured fresh seeds on her rude metate and showed Rhoda the grinding roll that flattened and broke the little grains.  Despite her weak fingers Rhoda took to the work easily.  As she emptied out the first handful of meal, a curious sense of pleasure came to her.  Squatting before the metate, she looked at the little pile of bruised seeds with the utmost satisfaction.  Molly poured more seeds on the metate and Rhoda began again.  She was hard at her task, her cheeks flushed with interest, when Kut-le returned.  Rhoda did not see the sudden look of pleasure in his eyes.

“You will tire yourself,” he said.

Rhoda did not answer, but poured another handful of seed on the metate.

“You’ll begin to like the life,” he went on, “by the time you are educated enough to leave us.”  He turned teasingly to Cesca.  “You think the white squaw can cross the desert soon by herself?”

Cesca spat disdainfully.

“No!  White squaw no good!  All time sit, sit, no work!  Kut-le heap fool!”

“Oh, Cesca,” cried Rhoda, “I’m too sick to work!  And see this meal I’ve made!  Isn’t it good?”

Cesca glanced disdainfully at the little heap of meal Rhoda had bruised out so painfully.

“Huh!” she grunted.  “Feed ’em to the horses.  Injuns no eat ’em!”

Rhoda looked from the meal to her slender, tired fingers.  Cesca’s contempt hurt her unaccountably.  In her weakness her cleft chin quivered.  She turned to Molly.

“Do you think it’s so bad, Molly?”

That faithful friend grunted with rage and aimed a vicious kick at Cesca.  Then she put a protecting arm about Rhoda.

“It’s heap fine!  Cesca just old fool.  You love Molly.  Let Cesca go to hell!”