Overland by John William De Forest (page 3)

lay him in a wagon.”

Meanwhile preparations had been made for an advance. The four dead or badly wounded draft mules were disentangled from the harness, and their places supplied with the four army mules, whose packs were thrown into the wagons. These animals, by the way, had escaped injury, partly because they had been tethered between the two lines of vehicles, and partly because they had been well covered by their loads, which were plentifully stuck-with arrows.

“We are ready to march,” said Thurstane to Coronado. “I am sorry we can’t try to recover your men back there.”

“No use,” commented Texas Smith. “The Patchies have been at ’em. They’re chuck full of spear holes by this time.”

Coronado shouted to the drivers to start. Commencing on the right, the wagons filed off two by two toward the mouth of the canon, while the Indians, gathered in a group half a mile away, looked on without a yell or a movement. The instant that the vehicle which contained the ladies had cleared itself of the others, Thurstane and Coronado rode alongside of it.

“So! you are safe!” said the former. “By Heavens, if they _had_ hurt you!”

“And you?” asked Clara, very quickly and eagerly, while scanning him from head to foot.

Coronado saw that look, anxious for Thurstane alone; and, master of dissimulation though he was, his face showed both pain and anger.

“Ah–oh–oh dear!” groaned Mrs. Stanley, as she made her appearance in the front of the vehicle. “Well! this is rather more than I can bear. This is just as much as a woman can put up with. Dear me! what is the matter with your arm, Lieutenant?”

“Just a pin prick,” said Thurstane.

Clara began to get out of the wagon, with the purpose of going to him, her eyes staring and her face pale.

“Don’t!” he protested, motioning her back. “It is nothing.”

And, although the lacerated arm hurt him and was not easy to manage, he raised it over his head to show that the damage was trifling.

“Do get in here and let us take care of you,” begged Clara.

“Certainly!” echoed Aunt Maria, who was a compassionate woman at heart, and who only lacked somewhat in quickness of sympathy, perhaps by reason of her strong-minded notions.

“I will when I need it,” said Ralph, flattered and gratified. “The arm will do without dressing till we reach camp. There are other wounded. Everybody has fought. Mr. Coronado here has done deeds worthy of his ancestors.”

“Ah, Mr. Coronado!” smiled Aunt Maria, delighted that her favorite had distinguished himself.

“Captain Glover, what’s the matter with your nose?” was the lady’s next outcry.

“Wal, it’s been bored,” replied Glover, tenderly fingering his sore proboscis. “It’s been, so to speak, eyelet-holed. I’m glad I hadn’t but one. The more noses a feller kerries in battle, the wuss for him. I hope the darned rip’ll heal up. I’ve no ‘casion to hev a line rove through it ‘n’ be towed, that I know of.”

“How did it feel when it went through?” asked Aunt Maria, full of curiosity and awe.

“Felt’s though I’d got the dreadfullest influenzee thet ever snorted. Twitched ‘n’ tickled like all possessed.”

“Was it an arrow?” inquired the still unsatisfied lady.

“Reckon ’twas. Never see it. But it kinder whished, ‘n’ I felt the feathers. Darn ’em! When I felt the feathers, tell ye I was ’bout half scairt. Hed ‘n idee ‘f th’ angel ‘f death, ‘n’ so on.”

Of course Aunt Maria and Clara wanted to do much nursing immediately; but there were no conveniences and there was no time; and so benevolence was postponed.

“So you are hurt?” said Thurstane to Texas Smith, noticing his torn and bloody shirt.

“It’s jest a scrape,” grunted the bushwhacker. “Mought’a’been worse.”

“It was bad generalship trying to save you. We nearly paid high for it.”

“That’s so. Cost four greasers, as ’twas. Well, I’m worth four greasers.”

“You’re a devil of a fighter,” continued the Lieutenant, surveying the ferocious face and sullen air of the cutthroat with a soldier’s admiration for whatever expresses pugnacity.

“Bet yer pile on it,” returned Texas, calmly conscious of his character. “So be you.”

The savage black eyes and the imperious blue ones stared into each other without the least flinching and with something like friendliness.

Coronado rode up to the pair and asked, “Is that boy alive yet?”

“It’s about time for him to flop round,” replied Texas indifferently. “Reckon you’ll find him in the off hind wagon. I shoved him in thar.”

Coronado cantered to the off hind wagon, peeped through the rear opening of its canvas cover, discovered the youth lying on a pile of luggage, addressed him in Spanish, and learned his story. He belonged to a hacienda in Bernalillo, a hundred miles or more west of Santa Fe. The Apaches had surprised the hacienda and plundered it, carrying him off because, having formerly been a captive among them, he could speak their language, manage the bow, etc.

For all this Coronado cared nothing; he wanted to know why the band had left Bernalillo; also why it had attacked his train. The boy explained that the raiders had been driven off the southern route by a party of United States cavalry, and that, having lost a number of their braves in the fight, they had sworn vengeance on Americans.

“Did you hear them say whose train this was?” demanded Coronado.

“No, Senor.”

“Do you think they knew?”

“Senor, I think not.”

“Whose band was this?”

“Manga Colorada’s.”

“Where is Delgadito?”

“Delgadito went the other side of the mountain. They were both going to fight the Moquis.”

“So we shall find Delgadito in the Moqui valley?”

“I think so, Senor.”

After a moment of reflection Coronado added, “You will stay with us and take care of mules. I will do well by you.”

“Thanks, Senor. Many thanks.”

Coronado rejoined Thurstane and told his news. The officer looked grave; there might be another combat in store for the train; it might be an affair with both bands of the Apaches.

“Well,” he said, “we must keep our eyes open. Every one of us must do his very utmost. On the whole, I can’t believe they can beat us.”

“Nombre de Dios!” thought Coronado. “How will this accursed job end? I wish I were out of it.”

They were now traversing the canon from which they had been so long debarred. It was a peaceful solitude; no life but their own stirred within its sandstone ramparts; and its windings soon carried them out of sight of their late assailants. For four hours they slowly threaded it, and when night came on they were still in it, miles away from their expected camping ground. No water and no grass; the animals were drooping with hunger, and all suffered with thirst; the worst was that the hurts of the wounded could not be properly dressed. But progress through this labyrinth of stones in the darkness was impossible, and the weary, anxious, fevered travellers bivouacked as well as might be.

Starting at dawn, they finished the canon in about an hour, traversed an uneven plateau which stretched beyond its final sinuous branch gullies, and found themselves on the brow of a lofty terrace, overlooking a sublime panorama. There was an immense valley, not smooth and verdurous, but a gigantic nest of savage buttes and crags and hills, only to be called a valley because it was enclosed by what seemed a continuous line of eminences. On the north and east rose long ranges and elevated table-lands; on the west, the savage rolls and precipices of the Sierra del Carrizo; and on the south, a more distant bordering of hazy mountains, closing to the southwest, a hundred miles away, in the noble snowy peaks of Monte San Francisco.

With his field-glass, Thurstane examined one after another of the mesas and buttes which diversified this enormous depression. At last his attention settled on an isolated bluff or mound, with a flattened surface three or four miles in length, the whole mass of which seemed to be solid and barren rock. On this truncated pyramid he distinguished, or thought he distinguished, one or more of the pueblos of the Moquis. He could not be quite sure, because the distance was fifteen miles, and the walls of these villages are of the same stone with the buttes upon which they stand.

“There is our goal, if I am not mistaken,” he said to Coronado. “When we get there we can rest.”

The train pushed onward, slowly descending the terrace, or rather the succession of terraces. After reaching a more level region, and while winding between stony hills of a depressing sterility, it came suddenly, at the bottom of a ravine, upon fresh green turf and thickets of willows, the environment of a small spring of clear water. There was a halt; all hands fell to digging a trench across the gully; when it had filled, the animals were allowed to drink; in an hour more they had closely cropped all the grass. This was using up time perilously, but it had to be done, for the beasts were tottering.

Moving again; five miles more traversed; another spring and patch of turf discovered; a rough ravine through a low sandstone ridge threaded; at last they were on one of the levels of the valley. Three of the Moqui towns were now about eight miles distant, and with his glass Thurstane could distinguish the horizontal lines of building. The trail made straight for the pueblos, but it was almost impassable to wagons, and progress was very slow. It was all the slower because of the weakness of the mules, which throughout all this hair-brained journey had been severely worked, and of late had been poorly fed.

Presently the travellers turned the point of a naked ridge which projected laterally into the valley. There they came suddenly upon a wide-spread sweep of turf, contrasting so brilliantly with the bygone infertilities that it seemed to them a paradise, and stretching clear on to the bluff of the pueblos.

There, too, with equal suddenness, they came upon peril. Just beyond the nose of the sandstone promontory there was a bivouac of half naked, dark-skinned horsemen, recognizable at a glance as Apaches. It was undoubtedly the band of Delgadito.

The camp was half a mile distant. The Indians, evidently surprised at the appearance of the train, were immediately in commotion. There was a rapid mounting, and in five minutes they were all on horseback, curveting in circles, and brandishing their lances, but without advancing.

“Manga Colorada hasn’t reached here yet,” observed Thurstane.

“That’s so,” assented Texas Smith. “They hain’t heerd from the cuss, or they’d a bushwhacked us somewhar. Seein’ he dasn’t follow our trail, he had to make a big turn to git here. But he’ll be droppin’ along, an’ then we’ll hev a fight. I reckon we’ll hev one any way. Them cusses ain’t friendly. If they was, they’d a piled in helter-skelter to hev a talk an’ ask fur whiskey.”

“We must keep them at a distance,” said Thurstane.

“You bet! The first Injun that comes nigh us. I’ll shute him. They mustn’t be ‘lowed to git among us. First you know you’d hear a yell, an’ find yourself speared in the back. An’ them that’s speared right off is the lucky ones.”

“Not one of us must fall into their hands,” muttered the officer, thinking of Clara.

“Cap, that’s so,” returned Texas grimly. “When I fight Injuns, I never empty my revolver. I keep one barl for myself. You’d better do the same. Furthermore, thar oughter be somebody detailed to shute the women folks when it comes to the last pinch. I say this as a friend.”

As a friend! It was the utmost stretch of Texas Smith’s humanity and sympathy. Obviously the fellow had a soft side to him.

The fact is that he had taken a fancy to Thurstane since he had learned his fighting qualities, and would rather have done him a favor than murder him. At all events his hatred to “Injuns” was such that he wanted the lieutenant to kill a great many of them before his own turn came.

“So you think we’ll have a tough job of it?” inferred Ralph.

“Cap, we ain’t so many as we was. An’ if Manga Colorada comes up, thar’ll be a pile of red-skins. It may be they’ll outlast us; an’ so I say as a friend, save one shot; save it for yourself, Cap.”

But the Apaches did not advance. They watched the train steadily; they held a long consultation which evidently referred to it; at last they seemed to decide that it was in too good order to fall an easy prey; there was some wild capering along its flanks, at a safe distance; and then, little by little, the gang resettled in its bivouac. It was like a swarm of hornets, which should sally out to reconnoitre an enemy, buzz about threateningly for a while, and sail back to their nest.

The plain, usually dotted with flocks of sheep, was now a solitude. The Moquis had evidently withdrawn their woolly wealth either to the summit of the bluff, or to the partially sheltered pasturage around its base. The only objects which varied the verdant level were scattered white rocks, probably gypsum or oxide of manganese, which glistened surprisingly in the sunlight, reminding one of pearls sown on a mantel of green velvet. But already the travellers could see the peach orchards of the Moquis, and the sides of the lofty butte laid out in gardens supported by terrace-walls of dressed stone, the whole mass surmounted by the solid ramparts of the pueblos.

At this moment, while the train was still a little over two miles from the foot of the bluff, and the Apache camp more than three miles to the rear, Texas Smith shouted, “The cusses hev got the news.”

It was true; the foremost riders, or perhaps only the messengers, of Manga Colorada had readied Delgadito; and a hundred warriors were swarming after the train to avenge their fallen comrades.

Now ensued a race for life, the last pull of the mules being lashed out of them, and the Indians riding at the topmost speed of their wiry ponies.

CHAPTER XIII.

When the race for life and death commenced between the emigrants and the Apaches, it seemed as if the former would certainly be able to go two miles before the latter could cover six.

But the mules were weak, and the soil of the plain was a thin loam into which the wheels sank easily, so that the heavy wagons could not be hurried beyond a trot, and before long were reduced to a walk. Thus, while the caravan was still half a mile from its city of refuge, the foremost hornets of Delgadito’s swarm were already circling around it.

The chief could not charge at once, however, for the warriors whom he had in hand numbered barely a score, and their horses, blown with a run of over five miles, were unfit for sharp fighting work. For a few minutes nothing happened, except that the caravan continued its silent, sullen retreat, while the pursuers cantered yelling around it at a safe distance. Not a shot was fired by the emigrants; not a brave dashed up to let fly his arrows. At last there were fifty Apaches; then there was a hurried council; then a furious rush. Evidently the savages were ashamed to let their enemies escape for lack of one audacious assault.

This charge was led by a child. A boy not more than fourteen years of age, screaming like a little demon and discharging his arrows at full speed with wicked dexterity, rode at the head of this savage _hourra_ of the Cossacks of the American desert. As the fierce child came on, Coronado saw him and recognized him with a mixture of wonder, dread, and hate. Here was the son of the false-hearted savage who had accepted his money, agreed to do his work, and then turned against him. Should he kill him? It would open an account of blood between himself and the father. Never mind; vengeance is sweet; moreover, the youngster was dangerous.

Coronado raised his revolver, steadied it across his left arm, took a calm aim, and fired. The handsome, headlong, terrible boy swayed forward, rolled slowly over the pommel of his saddle, and fell to the ground motionless. In the next moment there was a general rattle of firearms from the train, and the mass of the charging column broke up into squads which went off in aimless caracolings. Barring a short struggle by half a dozen braves to recover the young chief’s body, the contest was over; and in two minutes more the Apaches were half a mile distant, looking on in sulky silence while the train crawled toward the protecting bluff.

“Hurrah!” shouted Thurstane. “That was quick work. Delgadito doesn’t take his punishment well.”

“Reckon they see we had friends,” observed Captain Glover. “Jest look at them critters pile down the mounting. Darned if they don’t skip like nanny-goats.”

Down the huge steep slope, springing along rocky, sinuous paths or over the walls of the terraces, came a hundred or a hundred and fifty men, running with a speed which, considering the nature of the footing, was marvellous. Before many in the train were aware of their approach, they were already among the wagons, rushing up to the travellers with outstretched hands, the most cordial, cheerful, kindly-eyed people that Thurstane had seen in New Mexico. Good features, too; that is, they were handsomer than the usual Indian type; some even had physiognomies which reminded one of Italians. Their hair was fine and glossy for men of their race; and, stranger still, it bore an appearance of careful combing. Nearly all wore loose cotton trousers or drawers reaching to the knee, with a kind of blouse of woollen or cotton, and over the shoulders a gay woollen blanket tied around the waist. In view of their tidy raiment and their general air of cleanliness, it seemed a mistake to class them as Indians. These were the Moquis, a remnant of one of the semi-civilizations of America, perhaps a colony left behind by the Aztecs in their migrations, or possibly by the temple-builders of Yucatan.

Impossible to converse with them. Not a person in the caravan spoke the Moqui tongue, and not a Moqui spoke or understood a word of Spanish or English. But it was evident from their faces and gestures that they were enthusiastically friendly, and that they had rushed down from their fastness to aid the emigrants against the Apaches. There was even a little sally into the plain, the Moquis running a quarter of a mile with amazing agility, spreading out into a loose skirmishing line of battle, brandishing their bows and defying the enemy to battle. But this ended in nothing; the Apaches sullenly cantered away; the others soon checked their pursuit.

Now came the question of encampment. To get the wagons up the bluff, eight hundred feet or so in height, along a path which had been cut in the rock or built up with stone, was obviously impossible. Would there be safety where they were, just at the base of the noble slope? The Moquis assured them by signs that the plundering horse-Indians never came so near the pueblos. Camp then; the wagons were parked as usual in a hollow square; the half-starved animals were unharnessed and allowed to fly at the abundant grass; the cramped and wearied travellers threw themselves on the ground with delight.

“What a charming people these Monkeys are!” said Aunt Maria, surveying the neat and smiling villagers with approval.

“Moquis,” Coronado corrected her, with a bow.

“Oh, Mo-kies,” repeated Aunt Maria, this time catching the sound exactly. “Well, I propose to see as much of them as possible. Why shouldn’t the women and the wounded sleep in the city?”

“It is an excellent idea,” assented Coronado, although he thought with distaste that this would bring Clara and Thurstane together, while he would be at a distance.

“I suppose we shall get an idea from it of the ancient city of Mexico, as described by Prescott,” continued the enthusiastic lady.

“You will discover a few deviations in the ground plan,” returned Coronado, for once ironical.

Aunt Maria’s suggestion with regard to the women and the wounded was adopted. The Moquis seemed to urge it; so at least they were understood. Within a couple of hours after the halt a procession of the feebler folk commenced climbing the bluff, accompanied by a crowd of the hospitable Indians. The winding and difficult path swarmed for a quarter of a mile with people in the gayest of blankets, some ascending with the strangers and some coming down to greet them.

“I should think we were going up to the Temple of the Sun to be sacrified,” said Clara, who had also read Prescott.

“To be worshipped,” ventured Thurstane, giving her a look which made her blush, the boldest look that he had yet ventured.

The terraces, as we have stated, were faced with partially dressed stone. They were in many places quite broad, and were cultivated everywhere with admirable care, presenting long green lines of corn fields or of peach orchards. Half-way up the ascent was a platform of more than ordinary spaciousness which contained a large reservoir, built of chipped stone strongly cemented, and brimming with limpid water. From this cistern large earthen pipes led off in various directions to irrigate the terraces below.

“It seems to me that we are discovering America,” exclaimed Aunt Maria, her face scarlet with exercise and enthusiasm.

Presently she asked, in full faith that she was approaching a metropolis, “What is the name of the city?”

“This must be Tegua,” replied Thurstane. “Tegua is the most eastern of the Moqui pueblos. There are three on this bluff. Mooshaneh and two others are on a butte to the west. Oraybe is further north.”

“What a powerful confederacy!” said Aunt Maria. “The United States of the Moquis!”

After a breathless ascent of at least eight hundred feet, they reached the undulated, barren, rocky surface of a plateau. Here the whole population of Tegua had collected; and for the first time the visitors saw Moqui women and children. Aunt Maria was particularly pleased with the specimens of her own sex; she went into ecstasies over their gentle physiognomies and their well-combed, carefully braided, glossy hair; she admired their long gowns of black woollen, each with a yellow stripe around the waist and a border of the same at the bottom.

“Such a sensible costume!” she said. “So much more rational and convenient than our fashionable fripperies!”

Another fact of great interest was that the Moquis were lighter complexioned than Indians in general. And when she discovered a woman with fair skin, blue eyes, and yellow hair–one of those albinos who are found among the inhabitants of the pueblos–she went into an excitement which was nothing less than ethnological.

“These are white people,” she cried, losing sight of all the brown faces. “They are some European race which colonized America long before that modern upstart, Columbus. They are undoubtedly the descendants of the Northmen who built the old mill at Newport and sculptured the Dighton Rock.”

“There is a belief,” said Thurstane, “that some of these pueblo people, particularly those of Zuni, are Welsh. A Welsh prince named Madoc, flying before the Saxons, is said to have reached America. There are persons who hold that the descendants of his followers built the mounds in the Mississippi Valley, and that some of them became the white Mandans of the upper Missouri, and that others founded this old Mexican civilization. Of course it is all guess-work. There’s nothing about it in the Regulations.”

“I consider it highly probable,” asserted Aunt Maria, forgetting her Scandinavian hypothesis. “I don’t see how you can doubt that that flaxen-haired girl is a descendant of Medoc, Prince of Wales.”

“Madoc,” corrected Thurstane.

“Well, Madoc then,” replied Aunt Maria rather pettishly, for she was dreadfully tired, and moreover she didn’t like Thurstane.

A few minutes’ walk brought them to the rampart which surrounded the pueblo. Its foundation was a solid blind wall, fifteen feet or so in height, and built of hewn stone laid in clay cement. Above was a second wall, rising from the first as one terrace rises from another, and surmounted by a third, which was also in terrace fashion. The ground tier of this stair-like structure contained the storerooms of the Moquis, while the upper tiers were composed of their two-story houses, the entire mass of masonry being upward of thirty feet high, and forming a continuous line of fortification. This rampart of dwellings was in the shape of a rectangle, and enclosed a large square or plaza containing a noble reservoir. Compact and populous, at once a castle and a city, the place could defy all the horse Indians of North America.

“Bless me! this is sublime but dreadful,” said Aunt Maria when she learned that she must ascend to the landing of the lower wall by a ladder. “No gate? Isn’t there a window somewhere that I could crawl through? Well, well! Dear me! But it’s delightful to see how safe these excellent people have made themselves.”

So with many tremblings, and with the aid of a lariat fastened around her waist and vigorously pulled from above by two Moquis, Aunt Maria clutched and scraped her way to the top of the foundation terrace.

“I shall never go down in the world,” she remarked with a shuddering glance backward. “I shall pass the rest of my days here.”

From the first platform the travellers were led to the second and third by stone stairways. They were now upon the inside of the rectangle, and could see two stories of doors facing the plaza and the reservoir in its centre, the whole scene cheerful with the gay garments and smiling faces of the Moquis.

“Beautiful!” said Aunt Maria. “That court is absolutely swept and dusted. One might give a ball there. I should like to hear Lucretia Mott speak in it.”

Her reflections were interrupted by the courteous gestures of a middle-aged, dignified Moqui, who was apparently inviting the party to enter one of the dwellings.

Pepita and the other two Indian women, with the wounded muleteers, were taken to another house. Aunt Maria, Clara, Thurstane, and Phineas Glover entered the residence of the chief, and found themselves in a room six or seven feet high, fifteen feet in length and ten in breadth. The floor was solid, polished clay; the walls were built of the large, sunbaked bricks called adobes; the ceilings were of beams, covered by short sticks, with adobes over all. Skins, bows and arrows, quivers, antlers, blankets, articles of clothing, and various simple ornaments hung on pegs driven into the walls or lay packed upon shelves.

“They are a musical race, I see,” observed Aunt Maria, pointing to a pair of painted drumsticks tipped with gay feathers, and a reed wind-instrument with a bell-shaped mouth like a clarionet. “Of course they are. The Welsh were always famous for their bards and their harpers. Does anybody in our party speak Welsh? What a pity we are such ignoramuses! We might have an interesting conversation with these people. I should so like to hear their traditions about the voyage across the Atlantic and the old mill at Newport.”

Her remarks were interrupted by a short speech from the chief, whom she at first understood as relating the adventures of his ancestors, but who finally made it clear that he was asking them to take seats. After they were arranged on a row of skins spread along the wall, a shy, meek, and pretty Moqui woman passed around a vase of water for drinking and a tray which contained something not unlike a bundle of blue wrapping paper.

“Is this to wipe our hands on?” inquired Aunt Maria, bringing her spectacles to bear on the contents of the tray.

“It smells like corn bread,” said Clara.

So it was. The corn of the Moquis is blue, and grinding does not destroy the color. The meal is stirred into a thin gruel and cooked by pouring over smooth, flat, heated stones, the light shining tissues being rapidly taken off and folded, and subsequently made up in bundles.

The party made a fair meal off the blue wrapping paper. Then the meek-eyed woman reappeared, removed the dishes, returned once more, and looked fixedly at Thurstane’s bloody sleeve.

“Certainly!” said Aunt Maria. “Let her dress your arm. I have no doubt that unpretending woman knows more about surgery than all the men doctors in New York city. Let her dress it.”

Thurstane partially threw off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeve. Clara gave one glance at the huge white arm with the small crimson hole in it, and turned away with a thrill which was new to her. The Moqui woman washed the wound, applied a dressing which looked like chewed leaves, and put on a light bandage.

“Does it feel any better?” asked Aunt Maria eagerly.

“It feels cooler,” said Thurstane.

Aunt Maria looked as if she thought him very ungrateful for not saying that he was entirely well.

“An’ my nose,” suggested Glover, turning up his lacerated proboscis.

“Yes, certainly; your poor nose,” assented Aunt Maria. “Let the lady cure it.”

The female surgeon fastened a poultice upon the tattered cartilage by passing a bandage around the skipper’s sandy and bristly head.

“Works like a charm ‘n’ smells like peach leaves,” snuffled the patient. “It’s where it’s handy to sniff at–that’s a comfort.”

After much dumb show, arrangements were made for the night. One of the inner rooms was assigned to Mrs. Stanley and Clara, and another to Thurstane and Glover. Bedding, provisions, and some small articles as presents for the Moquis were sent up from the train by Coronado.

But would the wagons, the animals, and the human members of the party below be safe during the night? Young as he was, and wounded as he was, Thurstane was so badgered by his army habit of incessant responsibility that he could not lie down to rest until he had visited the camp and examined personally into probabilities of attack and means of defence. As he descended the stony path which scored the side of the butte, his anxiety was greatly increased by the appearance of a party of armed Moquis rushing like deer down the steep slope, as if to repel an attack.

CHAPTER XIV.

Thurstane found the caravan in excellent condition, the mules being tethered at the reservoir half-way up the acclivity, and the wagons parked and guarded as usual, with Weber for officer of the night.

“We are in no tanger, Leftenant,” said the sergeant. “A large barty of these bueplo beeble has shust gone to the vront. They haf daken atfandage of our bresence to regover a bortion of the blain. I haf sent Kelly along to look after them a leetle und make them keep a goot watch. We are shust as safe as bossible. Und to-morrow we will basture the animals. It is a goot blace for a gamp, Leftenant, und we shall pe all right in a tay or two.”

“Does Shubert’s leg need attention?”

“No. It is shust nothing. Shupert is for tuty.”

“And you feel perfectly able to take care of yourselves here?”

“Berfectly, Leftenant.”

“Forty rounds apiece!”

“They are issued, Leftenant.”

“If you are attacked, fire heavily; and if the attack is sharp, retreat to the bluff. Never mind the wagons; they can be recovered.”

“I will opey your instructions, Leftenant.”

Thurstane was feverish and exhausted; he knew that Weber was as good a soldier as himself; and still he went back to the village with an anxious heart; such is the tenderness of the military conscience as to _duty_.

By the time he reached the upper landing of the wall of the pueblo it was sunset, and he paused to gaze at a magnificent landscape, the _replica_ of the one which he had seen at sunrise. There were buttes, valleys, and canons, the vast and lofty plateaus of the north, the ranges of the Navajo country, the Sierra del Carrizo, and the ice peaks of Monte San Francisco. It was sublime, savage, beautiful, horrible. It seemed a revelation from some other world. It was a nightmare of nature.

Clara met him on the landing with the smile which she now often gave him. “I was anxious about you,” she said. “You were too weak to go down there. You look very tired. Do come and eat, and then rest. You will make yourself sick. I was quite anxious about you.”

It was a delightful repetition. How his heart and his eyes thanked her for being troubled for his sake! He was so cheered that in a moment he did not seem to be tired at all. He could have watched all that night, if it had been necessary for her safety, or even for her comfort. The soul certainly has a great deal to do with the body.

While our travellers sleep, let us glance at the singular people among whom they have found refuge.

It is said hesitatingly, by scholars who have not yet made comparative studies of languages, that the Moquis are not _red men_, like the Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Lenni-Lenape, the Sioux, and in general those whom we know as _Indians_. It is said, moreover, that they are of the same generic stock with the Aztecs of Mexico, the ancient Peruvians, and all the other city-building peoples of both North and South America.

It was an evil day for the brown race of New Mexico when horses strayed from the Spanish settlements into the desert, and the savage red tribes became cavalry. This feeble civilization then received a more cruel shock than that which had been dealt it by the storming columns of the conquistadors. The horse transformed the Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and Navajos from snapping-turtles into condors. Thenceforward, instead of crawling in slow and feeble bands to tease the dense populations of the pueblos, they could come like a tornado, and come in a swarm. At no time were the Moquis and their fellow agriculturists and herdsmen safe from robbery and slaughter. Such villages as did not stand upon buttes inaccessible to horsemen, and such as did not possess fertile lands immediately under the shelter of their walls, were either abandoned or depopulated by slow starvation.

It is thus that we may account for many of the desolate cities which are now found in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Not of course for all; some, we know, were destroyed by the early Spaniards; others may have been forsaken because their tillable lands became exhausted; others doubtless fell during wars between different tribes of the brown race. But the cavalry of the desert must necessarily have been a potent instrument of destruction.

It is a pathetic spectacle, this civilization which has perished, or is perishing, without the poor consolation of a history to record its sufferings. It comes near to being a repetition of the silent death of the flint and bronze races, the mound-raisers, and cave-diggers, and cromlech-builders of Europe.

Captain Phineas Glover, rising at an early hour in the morning, and having had his nosebag of medicament refilled and refitted, set off on an appetizer around the ramparts of the pueblo, and came back marvelling.

“Been out to shake hands with these clever critters,” he said. “Best behavin’ ‘n’ meekest lookin’ Injuns I ever see. Put me in mind o’ cows ‘n’ lambs. An’ neat! ‘Most equal to Amsterdam Dutch. Seen a woman sweepin’ up her husband’s tobacco ashes ‘n’ carryin’ ’em out to throw over the wall. Jest what they do in Broek. Ever been in Broek? Tell ye ’bout it some time. But how d’ye s’pose this town was built? _I_ didn’t see no stun up here that was fit for quarryin’. So I put it to a lot of fellers where they got their buildin’ m’ter’ls. Wal, after figurin’ round a spell, ‘n’ makin’ signs by the schuner load, found out the hull thing. Every stun in this place was whittled out ‘f the ruff-scuff at the bottom of the mounting, ‘n’ fetched up here in blankets on men’s shoulders. All the mud, too, to make their bricks, was backed up in the same way. Feller off with his blanket ‘n’ showed me how they did it. Beats all. Wust of it was, couldn’t find out how long it took ’em, nor how the job was lotted out to each one.”

“I suppose they made their women do it,” said Aunt Maria grimly. “Men usually put all the hard work on women.”

“Wal, women folks do a heap,” admitted Glover, who never contradicted anybody. “But there’s reason to entertain a hope that they didn’t take the brunt of it here. I looked over into the gardens down b’low the town, ‘n’ see men plantin’ corn, ‘n’ tendin’ peach trees, but didn’t see no women at it. The women was all in the houses, spinnin’, weavin’, sewin’, ‘n’ fixin’ up ginerally.”

“Remarkable people!” exclaimed Aunt Maria. “They are at least as civilized as we. Very probably more so. Of course they are. I must learn whether the women vote, or in any way take part in the government. If so, these Indians are vastly our superiors, and we must sit humbly at their feet.”

During this talk the worn and wounded Thurstane had been lying asleep. He now appeared from his dormitory, nodded a hasty good-morning, and pushed for the door.

“Train’s all right,” said Glover. “Jest took a squint at it. Peaceful’s a ship becalmed. Not a darned Apache in sight.”

“You are sure?” demanded the young officer.

“Better get some more peach-leaf pain-killer on your arm ‘n’ set straight down to breakfast.”

“If the Apaches have vamosed, Coronado might join us,” suggested Thurstane.

“Never!” answered Mrs. Stanley with solemnity. “His ancestor stormed Cibola and ravaged this whole country. If these people should hear his name pronounced, and suspect his relationship to their oppressor, they might massacre him.”

“That was three hundred years ago,” smiled the wretch of a lieutenant.

“It doesn’t matter,” decided Mrs. Stanley.

And so Coronado, thanks to one of his splendid inventions, was not invited up to the pueblo.

The travellers spent the day in resting, in receiving a succession of pleasant, tidy visitors, and in watching the ways of the little community. The weather was perfect, for while the season was the middle of May, and the latitude that of Algeria and Tunis, they were nearly six thousand feet above the level of the sea, and the isolated butte was wreathed with breezes. It was delightful to sit or stroll on the landings of the ramparts, and overlook the flourishing landscape near at hand, and the peaceful industry which caused it to bloom.

Along the hillside, amid the terraced gardens of corn, pumpkins, guavas, and peaches, many men and children were at work, with here and there a woman.

The scene had not only its charms, but its marvels. Besides the grand environment of plateaus and mountains in the distance, there were near at hand freaks of nature such as one might look for in the moon. Nowhere perhaps has the great water erosion of bygone aeons wrought more grotesquely and fantastically than in the Moqui basin. To the west rose a series of detached buttes, presenting forms of castles, towers, and minarets, which looked more like the handiwork of man than the pueblo itself. There were piles of variegated sandstone, some of them four hundred feet in height, crowned by a hundred feet of sombre trap. Internal fire had found vent here; its outflowings had crystallized into columnar trap; the trap had protected the underlying sandstone from cycles of water-flow; thus had been fashioned these sublime donjons and pinnacles.

They were not only sublime but beautiful. The sandstone, reduced by ages to a crumbling marl, was of all colors. There were layers of green, reddish-brown, drab, purple, red, yellow, pinkish, slate, light-brown, orange, white, and banded. Nature, not contented with building enchanted palaces, had frescoed them. At this distance, indeed, the separate tints of the strata could not be discerned, but their general effect of variegation was distinctly visible, and the result was a landscape of the Thousand and One Nights.

To the south were groups of crested mounds, some of them resembling the spreading stumps of trees, and others broad-mouthed bells, all of vast magnitude. These were of sandstone marl, the caps consisting of hard red and green shales, while the swelling boles, colored by gypsum, were as white as loaf-sugar. It was another specimen of the handiwork of deluges which no man can number.

Far away to the southwest, and yet faintly seen through the crystalline atmosphere, were the many-colored knolls and rolls and cliffs of the Painted Desert. Marls, shales, and sandstones, of all tints, were strewn and piled into a variegated vista of sterile splendor. Here surely enchantment and glamour had made undisputed abode.

All day the wounded and the women reposed, gazing a good deal, but sleeping more. During the afternoon, however, our wonder-loving Mrs. Stanley roused herself from her lethargy and rushed into an adventure such as only she knew how to find. In the morning she had noticed, at the other end of the pueblo from her quarters, a large room which was frequented by men alone. It might be a temple; it might be a hall for the transaction of public business; such were the diverse guesses of the travellers. Into the mysteries of this apartment Aunt Maria resolved to poke.

She reached it; nobody was in it; suspicious circumstance! Aunt Maria put an end to this state of questionable solitude by entering. A dark room; no light except from a trap door; a very proper place for improper doings. At one end rose a large, square block of red sandstone, on which was carved a round face environed by rays, probably representing the sun. Aunt Maria remembered the sacrificial altars of the Aztecs, and judged that the old sanguinary religion of Tenochtitlan was not yet extinct. She became more convinced of this terrific fact when she discovered that the red tint of the stone was deepened in various places by stains which resembled blood.

Three or four horrible suggestions arose in succession to jerk at her heartstrings. Were these Moquis still in the habit of offering human sacrifices? Would a woman answer their purpose, and particularly a white woman? If they should catch her there, in the presence of their deity, would they consider it a leading of Providence? Aunt Maria, notwithstanding her curiosity and courage, began to feel a desire to retreat.

Her reflections were interrupted and her emotions accelerated by darkness. Evidently the door had been shut; then she heard a rustling of approaching feet and an awful whispering; then projected hands impeded her gropings toward safety. While she stood still, too completely blinded to fly and too frightened to scream, a light gleamed from behind the altar and presently rose into a flame. The sacred fire!–she knew it as soon as she saw it; she remembered Prescott, and recognized it at a glance.

By its flickering rays she perceived that the apartment was full of men, all robed in blankets of ebony blackness, and all gazing at her in solemn silence. Two of them, venerable elders with long white hair, stood in front of the others, making genuflexions and signs of adoration toward the carved face on the altar. Presently they advanced to her, one of them suddenly seizing her by the shoulders and pinioning her arms behind her, while the other drew from beneath his robe a long sharp knife of the glassy flint known as obsidian.

At this point the horrified Aunt Maria found her voice, and uttered a piercing scream.

At the close of her scream she by a supreme effort turned on her side, raised her hands to her face, rubbed her eyes open, stared at Clara, who was lying near her, and mumbled, “I’ve had an awful nightmare.”

That was it. There was no altar, nor holy fire, nor high priest, nor flint lancet. She hadn’t been anywhere, and she hadn’t even screamed, except in imagination. She was on her blanket, alongside of her niece, in the house of the Moqui chief, and as safe as need be.

CHAPTER XV.

But the visionary terror had scarcely gone when a real one came. Coronado appeared–Coronado, the descendant of the great Vasquez–Coronado, whom the Moquis would destroy if they heard his name–of whom they would not leave two limbs or two fingers together. From her dormitory she saw him walk into the main room of the house in his airiest and cheeriest manner, bowing and smiling to right, bowing and smiling to left, winning Moqui hearts in a moment, a charmer of a Coronado. He shook hands with the chief; he shook hands with all the head men; next a hand to Thurstane and another to Glover. Mrs. Stanley heard him addressed as Coronado; she looked to see him scattered in rags on the floor; she tried to muster courage to rush to his rescue.

There was no outcry of rage at the sound of the fatal name, and she could not perceive that a Moqui countenance smiled the less for it.

Coronado produced a pipe, filled it, lighted it, and handed it to the chief. That dignitary took it, bowed gravely to each of the four points of the compass, exhaled a few whiffs, and passed it to his next blanketed neighbor, who likewise saluted the four cardinal points, smoked a little, and sent it on. Mrs. Stanley drew a sigh of relief; the pipe of peace had been used, and there would be no bloodshed; she saw the whole bearing of her favorite’s audacious manoeuvre at a glance.

Coronado now glided into the obscure room where she and Clara were sitting on their blankets and skins. He kissed his hand to the one and the other, and rolled out some melodious congratulations.

“You reckless creature!” whispered Aunt Maria. “How dared you come up here?”

“Why so?” asked the Mexican, for once puzzled.

“Your name! Your ancestor!”

“Ah!!” and Coronado smiled mysteriously. “There is no danger. We are under the protection of the American eagle. Moreover, hospitalities have been interchanged.”

Next the experiences of the last twenty-four hours, first Mrs. Stanley’s version and then Coronado’s, were related. He had little to tell: there had been a quiet night and much slumber; the Moquis had stood guard and been every way friendly; the Apaches had left the valley and gone to parts unknown.

The truth is that he had slept more than half of the time. Journeying, fighting, watching, and anxiety had exhausted him as well as every one else, and enabled him to plunge into slumber with a delicious consciousness of it as a restorative and a luxury.

Now that he was himself again, he wondered at what he had been. For two days he had faced death, fighting like a legionary or a knight-errant, and in short playing the hero. What was there in his nature, or what had there been in his selfish and lazy life, that was akin to such fine frenzies? As he remembered it all, he hardly knew himself for the same old Coronado.

Well, being safe again, he was a devoted lover again, and he must get on with his courtship. Considering that Clara and Thurstane, if left much together here in the pueblo, might lead each other into the temptation of a betrothal, he decided that he must be at hand to prevent such a catastrophe, and so here he was. Presently he began to talk to the girl in Spanish; then he begged the aunt’s pardon for speaking what was to her an unknown tongue; but he had, he said, some family matters for his cousin’s ear; would Mrs. Stanley be so good as to excuse him?

“Certainly,” returned that far-sighted woman, guessing what the family matters might be, and approving them. “By the way, I have something to do,” she added. “I must attend to it immediately.”

By this time she remembered all about her nightmare, and she was in a state of inflammation as to the Moqui religion. If the dream were true, if the Moquis were in the habit of sacrificing strong-minded women or any kind of women, she must know it and put a stop to it. Stepping into the central room, where Thurstane and Glover were smoking with a number of Indians, she said in her prompt, positive way, “I must look into these people’s religion. Does anybody know whether they have any?”

The Lieutenant had a spark or two of information on the subject. Through the medium of a Navajo who had strolled into the pueblo, and who spoke a little Spanish and a good deal of Moqui, he had been catechising the chief as to manners, customs, etc.

“I understand,” he said, “that they have a sacred fire which they never suffer to go out. They are believed to worship the sun, like the ancient Aztecs. The sacred fire seems to confirm the suspicion.”

“Sacred fire! vestal virgins, too, I suppose! can they be Romans?” reasoned Aunt Maria, beginning to doubt Prince Madoc.

“The vestal virgins here are old men,” replied Ralph, wickedly pleased to get a joke on the lady.

“Oh! The Moquis are not Romans,” decided Mrs Stanley. “Well, what do these old men do?”

“Keep the fire burning.”

“What if it should go out? What would happen?”

“I don’t know,” responded the sub-acid Thurstane.

“I didn’t suppose you did,” said Aunt Maria pettishly. “Captain Glover, I want you to come with me.”

Followed by the subservient skipper, she marched to the other end of the pueblo. There was the mysterious apartment; it was not really a temple, but a sort of public hall and general lounging place; such rooms exist in the Spanish-speaking pueblos of Zuni and Laguna, and are there called _estufas_. The explorers soon discovered that the only entrance into the estufa was by a trapdoor and a ladder. Now Aunt Maria hated ladders: they were awkward for skirts, and moreover they made her giddy; so she simply got on her knees and peeped through the trap-door. But there was a fire directly below, and there was also a pretty strong smell of pipes of tobacco, so that she saw nothing and was stifled and disgusted. She sent Glover down, as people lower a dog into a mine where gases are suspected. After a brief absence the skipper returned and reported.

“Pooty sizable room. Dark’s a pocket ‘n’ hot’s a footstove. Three or four Injuns talkin’ ‘n’ smokin’. Scrap ‘f a fire smoulder’in a kind ‘f standee fireplace without any top.”

“That’s the sacred fire,” said Aunt Maria. “How many old men were watching it?”

“Didn’t see _any_.”

“They must have been there. Did you put the fire out?”

“No water handy,” explained the prudent Glover.

“You might have–expectorated on it.”

“Reckon I didn’t miss it,” said the skipper, who was a chewer of tobacco and a dead shot with his juice.

“Of course nothing happened.”

“Nary.”

“I knew there wouldn’t,” declared the lady triumphantly. “Well, now let us go back. We know something about the religion of these people. It is certainly a very interesting study.”

“Didn’t appear to me much l’k a temple,” ventured Glover. “Sh’d say t’was a kind ‘f gineral smokin’ room ‘n’ jawin’ place. Git together there ‘n’ talk crops ‘n’ ‘lections ‘n’ the like.”

“You must be mistaken,” decided Aunt Maria. “There was the sacred fire.”

She now led the willing captain (for he was as inquisitive as a monkey) on a round of visits to the houses of the Moquis. She poked smiling through their kitchens and bedrooms, and gained more information than might have been expected concerning their spinning and weaving, cheerfully spending ten minutes in signs to obtain a single idea.

“Never shear their sheep till they are dead!” she exclaimed when that fact had been gestured into her understanding. “Absurd! There’s another specimen of masculine stupidity. I’ll warrant you, if the women had the management of things, the good-for-nothing brutes would be sheared every day.”

“Jest as they be to hum,” slily suggested Glover, who knew better.

“Certainly,” said Aunt Maria, aware that cows were milked daily.

The Moquis were very hospitable; they absolutely petted the strangers. At nearly every house presents were offered, such as gourds full of corn, strings of dried peaches, guavas as big as pomegranates, or bundles of the edible wrapping paper, all of which Aunt Maria declined with magnanimous waves of the hand and copious smiles. Curious and amiable faces peeped at the visitors from the landings and doorways.

“How mild and good they all look!” said Aunt Maria. “They put me in mind somehow of Shenstone’s pastorals. How humanizing a pastoral life is, to be sure! On the whole, I admire their way of not shearing their sheep alive. It isn’t stupidity, but goodness of heart. A most amiable people!”

“Jest so,” assented Glover. “How it must go ag’in the grain with ’em to take a skelp when it comes in the way of dooty! A man oughter feel willin’ to be skelped by sech tender-hearted critters.”

“Pshaw!” said Aunt Maria. “I don’t believe they ever scalp anybody–unless it is in self-defence.”

“Dessay. Them fellers that went down to fight the Apaches was painted up’s savage’s meat-axes. Probably though ’twas to use up some ‘f their paint that was a wastin’. Equinomical, I sh’d say.”

Mrs. Stanley did not see her way clear to comment either upon the fact or the inference. There were times when she did not understand Glover, and this was one of the times. He had queer twistical ways of reasoning which often proved the contrary of what he seemed to want to prove; and she had concluded that he was a dark-minded man who did not always know what he was driving at; at all events, a man not invariably comprehensible by clear intellects.

Her attention was presently engaged by a stir in the pueblo. Great things were evidently at hand; some spectacle was on the point of presentation; what was it? Aunt Maria guessed marriage, and Captain Glover guessed a war-dance; but they had no argument, for the skipper gave in. Meantime the Moquis, men, women, and children, all dressed in their gayest raiment, were gathering in groups on the landings and in the square. Presently there was a crowd, a thousand or fifteen hundred strong; at last appeared the victims, the performers, or whatever they were.

“Dear me!” murmured Aunt Maria. “Twenty weddings at once! I hope divorce is frequent.”

Twenty men and twenty women advanced to the centre of the plaza in double file and faced each other.

The dance began; the performers furnished their own music; each rolled out a deep _aw aw aw_ under his visor.

“Sounds like a swarm of the biggest kind of blue-bottle flies inside the biggest kind ‘f a sugar hogset,” was Glover’s description.

The movement was as monotonous as the melody. The men and women faced each other without changing positions; there was an alternate lifting of the feet, in time with the _aw aw_ and the rattling of the gourds; now and then there was a simultaneous about face.

After a while, open ranks; then rugs and blankets were brought; the maidens sat down and the men danced at them; trot trot, aw aw, and rattle rattle.

Every third girl now received a large empty gourd, a grooved board, and the dry shoulder-bone of a sheep. Laying the board on the gourd, she drew the bone sharply across the edges of the wood, thus producing a sound like a watchman’s rattle.

They danced once on each side of the square; then retired to a house and rested fifteen minutes; then recommenced their trot. Meanwhile maidens with large baskets ran about among the spectators, distributing meat, roasted ears of corn, sheets of bread, and guavas.

So the gayety went on until the sun and the visitors alike withdrew.

“After all, I think it is more interesting than our marriages,” declared Aunt Maria. “I wonder if we ought to make presents to the wedded couples. There are a good many of them.”

She was quite amazed when she learned that this was not a wedding, but a rain-dance, and that the maidens whom she had admired were boys dressed up in female raiment, the customs of the Moquis not allowing women to take part in public spectacles.

“What exquisite delicacy!” was her consolatory comment. “Well, well, this is the golden age, truly.”

When further informed that in marriage among the Moquis it is woman who takes the initiative, the girl pointing out the young man of her heart and the girl’s father making the offer, which is never refused, Mrs. Stanley almost shed tears of gratification. Here was something like woman’s rights; here was a flash of the glorious dawn of equality between the sexes; for when she talked of equality she meant female preeminence.

“And divorces?” she eagerly asked.

“They are at the pleasure of the parties,” explained Thurstane, who had been catechising the chief at great length through his Navajo.

“And who, in case of a divorce, cares for the children?”

“The grandparents.”

Aunt Maria came near clapping her hands. This was better than Connecticut or Indiana. A woman here might successively marry all the men whom she might successively fancy, and thus enjoy a perpetual gush of the affections and an unruffled current of happiness.

To such extreme views had this excellent creature been led by brooding over what she called the wrongs of her sex and the legal tyranny of the other.

But we must return to Coronado and Clara. The man had come up to the pueblo on purpose to have a plain talk with the girl and learn exactly what she meant to do with him. It was now more than a week since he had offered himself, and in that time she had made no sign which indicated her purpose. He had looked at her and sighed at her without getting a response of any sort. This could not go on; he must know how she felt towards him; he must know how much, she cared for Thurstane. How else could he decide what to do with her and with _him_?

Thus, while the other members of the party were watching the Moqui dances, Coronado and Clara were talking matters of the heart, and were deciding, unawares to her, questions of life and death.

CHAPTER XVI.

It must be remembered that when Mrs. Stanley carried off skipper Glover to help her investigate the religion of the Moquis, she left Coronado alone with Clara in one of the interior rooms of the chief’s house.

Thurstane, to be sure, was in the next room and in sight; but he had with him the chief, two other leading Moquis, and his chance Navajo interpreter; they were making a map of the San Juan country by scratching with an arrow-point on the clay floor; everybody was interested in the matter, and there was a pretty smart jabbering. Thus Coronado could say his say without being overheard or interrupted.

For a little while he babbled commonplaces. The truth is that the sight of the girl had unsettled his resolutions a little. While he was away from her, he could figure to himself how he would push her into taking him at once, or how, if she refused him, he would let loose upon her the dogs of fate. But once face to face with her, he found that his resolutions had dispersed like a globule of mercury under a hammer, and that he needed a few moments to scrape them together again. So he prattled nothings while he meditated; and you would have thought that he cared for the nothings. He had that faculty; he could mentally ride two horses at once; he would have made a good diplomatist.

His mind glanced at the past while it peered into the future. What a sinuous underground plot the superficial incidents of this journey covered! To his fellow-travellers it was a straight line; to him it was a complicated and endless labyrinth. How much more he had to think of than they! Only he knew that Pedro Munoz was dead, that Clara Van Diemen was an heiress, that she was in danger of being abandoned to the desert, that Thurstane was in danger of assassination. Nothing that he had set out to do was yet done, and some of it he must absolutely accomplish, and that shortly. How much? That depended upon this girl. If she accepted him, his course would be simple, and he would be spared the perils of crime.

Meantime, he looked at Clara even more frankly and calmly than she looked at him. He showed no guilt or remorse in his face, because he felt none in his heart. It must be understood distinctly that the man was almost as destitute of a conscience as it is possible for a member of civilized society to be. He knew what the world called right and wrong; but the mere opinion of the world had no weight with him; that is, none as against his own opinion. His rule of life was to do what he wanted to do, providing he could accomplish it without receiving a damage. You can hardly imagine a being whose interior existence was more devoid of complexity and of mixed motives than was Coronado’s. Thus he was quite able to contemplate the possible death of Clara, and still look her calmly in the face and tell her that he loved her.

The girl returned his gaze tranquilly, because she had no suspicions of his profound wickedness. By nature confiding and reverential, she trusted those who professed friendship, and respected those who were her elders, especially if they belonged in any manner to her own family. Considering herself under obligations to Coronado, and not guessing that he was capable of doing her a harm, she was truly grateful to him and wished him well with all her heart. If her eye now and then dropped under his, it was because she feared a repetition of his offer of marriage, and hated to pain him with a refusal.

The commonplaces lasted longer than the man had meant, for he could not bring himself promptly to take the leap of fate. But at last came the dance; the chief and his comrades led Thurstane away to look at it; now was the time to talk of this fateful betrothal.

“Something is passing outside,” observed Clara. “Shall we go to see?”

“I am entirely at your command,” replied Coronado, with his charming air of gentle respect. “But if you can give me a few minutes of your time, I shall be very grateful.”

Clara’s heart beat violently, and her cheeks and neck flushed with spots of red, as she sank back upon her seat. She guessed what was coming; she had been a good deal afraid of it all the time; it was her only cause of dreading Coronado.

“I venture to hope that you have been good enough to think of what I said to you a week ago,” he went on. “Yes, it was a week ago. It seems to me a year.”

“It seems a long time,” stammered Clara. So it did, for the days since had been crammed with emotions and events, and they gave her young mind an impression of a long period passed.

“I have been so full of anxiety!” continued Coronado. “Not about our dangers,” he asserted with a little bravado. “Or, rather, not about mine. For you I have been fearful. The possibility that you might fall into the hands of the Apaches was a horror to me. But, after all, my chief anxiety was to know what would be your final answer to me. Yes, my beautiful and very dear cousin, strange as it may seem under our circumstances, this thought has always outweighed with me all our dangers.”

Coronado, as we have already declared, was really in love with Clara. It seems incredible, at first glance, that a man who had no conscience could have a heart. But the assertion is not a fairy story; it is founded in solid philosophy. It is true that Coronado’s moral education had been neglected or misdirected; that he was either born indifferent to the idea of duty, or had become indifferent to it; and that he was an egotist of the first water, bent solely upon favoring and gratifying himself. But while his nature was somewhat chilled by these things, he had the hottest of blood in his veins, he possessed a keen perception of the beautiful, and so he could desire with fury. His love could not be otherwise than selfish; but it was none the less capable of ruling him tyrannically.

Just at this moment his intensity of feeling made him physically imposing and almost fascinating. It seemed to remove a veil from his usually filmy black eyes, and give him power for once to throw out all of truth that there was in his soul. It communicated to his voice a tremor which made it eloquent. He exhaled, as it were, an aroma of puissant emotion which was intoxicating, and which could hardly fail to act upon the sensitive nature of woman. Clara was so agitated by this influence, that for the moment she seemed to herself to know no man in the world but Coronado. Even while she tried to remember Thurstane, he vanished as if expelled by some enchantment, and left her alone in life with her tempter. Still she could not or would not answer; though she trembled, she remained speechless.

“I have asked you to be my wife,” resumed Coronado, seeing that he must urge her. “I venture now to ask you again. I implore you not to refuse me. I cannot be refused. It would make me utterly wretched. It might perhaps bring wretchedness upon you. I hope not. I could not wish you a pain, though you should give me many. My very dear Clara, I offer you the only love of my life, and the only love that I shall ever offer to any one. Will you take it?”

Clara was greatly moved. She could not doubt his sincerity; no one who heard him could have doubted it; he _was_ sincere. To her, young, tender-hearted, capable of loving earnestly, beginning already to know what love is, it seemed a horrible thing to spurn affection. If it had not been for Thurstane, she would have taken Coronado for pity.

“Oh, my cousin!” she sighed, and stopped there.

Coronado drew courage from the kindly title of relationship, and, leaning gently towards her, attempted to take her hand. It was a mistake; she was strangely shocked by his touch; she perceived that she did not like him, and she drew away from him.

“Thank you for that word,” he whispered. “Is it the kindest that you can give me? Is there–?”

“Coronado!” she interrupted. “This is all an error. See here. I am not an independent creature. I am a young girl. I owe some duty somewhere. My father and mother are gone, but I have a grandfather. Coronado, he is the head of my family, and I ought not to marry without his permission. Why can you not wait until we are with Munoz?”

There she suddenly dropped her head between the palms of her hands. It struck her that she was hypocritical; that even with the consent of Munoz she would not marry Coronado; that it was her duty to tell him so.

“My cousin, I have not told the whole truth,” she added, after a terrible struggle. “I would not marry any one without first laying the case before my grandfather. But that is not all. Coronado, I cannot–no, I cannot marry you.”

The man without a conscience, the man who was capable of planning and ordering murder, turned pale under this announcement.

Notwithstanding its commonness, notwithstanding that it has been described until the subject is hackneyed, notwithstanding that it has become a laughing-stock for many, even including poets and novelists, there is probably no heart-pain keener than disappointment in love. The shock of it is like a deep stab; it not merely tortures, but it instantly sickens; the anguish is much, but the sense of helplessness is more; the lover who is refused feels not unlike the soldier who is wounded to death.

This sorrow compares in dignity and terror with the most sublime sorrows of which humanity is capable. The death of a parent or child, though rendered more imposing to the spectator by the ceremonies of the sepulchre, does not chill the heart more deeply than the death of love. It lasts also; many a human being has carried the marks of it for life; and surely duration of effect is proof of power. We are serious in making these declarations, strange as they may seem to a satirical age. What we have said is strictly true, notwithstanding the mockery of those who have never loved, or the incredulity of those who, having loved, have never lost. But probably only the wretchedly initiated will believe.

Coronado, though selfish, infamous, and atrocious, was so far susceptible of affection that he was susceptible of suffering. The simple fact of pallor in that hardened face was sufficient proof of torture.

However, it stood him in hand to recover his self-possession and plead his suit. There was too much at stake in this cause for him to let it go without a struggle and a vehement one. Although he had seen at once that the girl was in earnest, he tried to believe that she was not so, and that he could move her.

“My dear cousin!” he implored in a voice that was mellow with agitation, “don’t decide against me at once and forever. I must have some hope. Pity me.”

“Ah, Coronado! Why will you?” urged Clara, in great trouble.

“I must! You must not stop me!” he persisted eagerly. “My life is in it. I love you so that I don’t know how I shall end if you will not hearken to me. I shall be driven to desperation. Why do you turn away from me? Is it my fault that I care for you? It is your own. You are _so_ beautiful!”

“Coronado, I wish I were very ugly,” murmured Clara, for the moment sincere in so wishing.

“Is there anything you dislike in me? I have been as kind as I knew how to be.”

“It is true, Coronado. You have overwhelmed me with your goodness. I could go on my knees to thank you.”

“Then–why?”

“Ah! why will you force me to say hard things? Don’t you see that it tortures me to refuse you?”

“Then why refuse me? Why torture us both?”

“Better a little pain now than much through life.”

“Do you mean to say that you never can–?” He could not finish the question.

“It is so, Coronado. I never could have said it myself. But you have said it. I never shall love you.”

Once more the man felt a cutting and sickening wound, as of a bullet penetrating a vital part. Unable for the moment to say another word, he rose and walked the room in silence.

“Coronado, you don’t know how sorry I am to grieve you so,” cried the girl, almost sobbing. “It seems, too, as if I were ungrateful. I can only beg your pardon for it, and pray that Heaven will reward you.”

“Heaven!” he returned impatiently. “You are my heaven. You are the only heaven that I know.”

“Oh, Coronado! Don’t say that. I am a poor, sinful, unworthy creature. Perhaps I could not make any one happy long. Believe me, Coronado, I am not worthy to be loved as you love me.”

“You are!” he said, turning on her passionately and advancing close to her. “You are worthy of my life-long love, and you shall have it. You shall have it, whether you wish it or not. You shall not escape it. I will pursue you with it wherever you go and as long as you live.”

“Oh! You frighten me. Coronado, I beg of you not to talk to me in that way. I am afraid of you.”

“What is the cause of this?” he demanded, hoping to daunt her into submission. “There is something in my way. What is it? Who is it?”

Clara’s paleness turned in an instant to scarlet.

“Who is it?” he went on, his voice suddenly becoming hoarse with excitement. “It is some one. Is it this American? This boy of a lieutenant?”

Clara, trembling with an agitation which was only in part dismay, remained speechless.

“Is it?” he persisted, attempting to seize her hands and looking her fiercely in the eyes. “Is it?”

“Coronado, stand back!” said Clara. “Don’t you try to take my hands!”

She was erect, her eyes flashing, her cheeks spotted with crimson, her expression strangely imposing.

The man’s courage drooped the moment he saw that she had turned at bay. He walked to the other side of the room, pressed his temples between his palms to quiet their throbbing, and made an effort to recover his self-possession. When he returned to her, after nearly a minute of silence, he spoke quite in his natural manner.

“This must pass for the present,” he said. “I see that it is useless to talk to you of it now.”

“I hope you are not angry with me, Coronado.”

“Let it go,” he replied, waving his hand. “I can’t speak more of it now.”

She wanted to say, “Try never to speak of it again;” but she did not dare to anger him further, and she remained silent.

“Shall we go to see the dance?” he asked.

“I will, if you wish it.”

“But you would rather stay alone?”

“If you please, Coronado.”

Bowing with an air of profound respect, he went his way alone, glanced at the games of the Moquis, and hurried back to camp, meditating as he went.

What now should be done? He was in a state of fury, full of plottings of desperation, swearing to himself that he would show no mercy. Thurstane must die at the first opportunity, no matter if his death should kill Clara. And she? There he hesitated; he could not yet decide what to do with her; could not resolve to abandon her to the wilderness.

But to bring about any part of his projects he must plunge still deeper into the untraversed. To him, by the way, as to many others who have had murder at heart, it seemed as if the proper time and place for it would never be found. Not now, but by and by; not here, but further on. Yes, it must be further on; they must set out as soon as possible for the San Juan country; they must get into wilds never traversed by civilized man.

To go thither in wagons he had already learned was impossible. The region was a mass of mountains and rocky plateaux, almost entirely destitute of water and forage, and probably forever impassable by wheels. The vehicles must be left here; the whole party must take saddle for the northern desert; and then must come death–or deaths.

But while Coronado was thus planning destruction for others, a noiseless, patient, and ferocious enmity was setting its ambush for him.

CHAPTER XVII.

Shortly after the safe arrival of the train at the base of the Moqui bluff, and while the repulsed and retreating warriors of Delgadito were still in sight two strange Indians cantered up to the park of wagons.

They were fine-looking fellows, with high aquiline features, the prominent cheek-bones and copper complexion of the red race, and a bold, martial, trooper-like expression, which was not without its wild good-humor and gayety. One was dressed in a white woollen hunting-shirt belted around the waist, white woollen trousers or drawers reaching to the knee, and deerskin leggins and moccasins. The other had the same costume, except that his drawers were brown and his hunting-shirt blue, while a blanket of red and black stripes drooped from his shoulders to his heels. Their coarse black hair was done up behind in thick braids, and kept out of their faces by a broad band around the temples. Each had a lance eight or ten feet long in his hand, and a bow and quiver slung at his waist-belt. These men were Navajos (Na-va-hos).

Two jolly and impudent braves were these visitors. They ate, smoked, lounged about, cracked jokes, and asked for liquor as independently as if the camp were a tavern. Rebuffs only made them grin, and favors only led to further demands. It was hard to say whether they were most wonderful for good-nature or impertinence.

Coronado was civil to them. The Navajos abide or migrate on the south, the north, and the west of the Moqui pueblas. He was in a manner within their country, and it was still necessary for him to traverse a broad stretch of it, especially if he should attempt to reach the San Juan. Besides, he wanted them to warn the Apaches out of the neighborhood and thus avert from his head the vengeance of Manga Colorada. Accordingly he gave this pair of roystering troopers a plentiful dinner and a taste of aguardiente. Toward sunset they departed in high good-humor, promising to turn back the hoofs of the Apache horses; and when in the morning Coronado saw no Indians on the plain, he joyously trusted that his visitors had fulfilled their agreement.

Somewhere or other, within the next day or two, there was a grand council of the two tribes. We know little of it; we can guess that Manga Colorada must have made great concessions or splendid promises to the Navajos; but it is only certain that he obtained leave to traverse their country. Having secured this privilege, he posted himself fifteen or twenty miles to the southwest of Tegua, behind a butte which was extensive enough to conceal his wild cavalry, even in its grazings. He undoubtedly supposed that, when the train should quit its shelter, it would go to the west or to the south. In either case he was in a position to fall upon it.

Did the savage know anything about Coronado? Had he attacked his wagons without being aware that they belonged to the man who had paid him five hundred dollars and sent him to harry Bernalillo? Or had he attacked in full knowledge of this fact, because he had been beaten off the southern trail, and believed that he had been lured thither to be beaten? Had he learned, either from Apaches or Navajos, whose hand it was that slew his boy? We can only ask these questions.

One thing alone is positive: there was a debt of blood to be paid. An Indian war is often the result of a private vendetta. The brave is bound, not only by natural affection and family pride, but still more powerfully by sense of honor and by public opinion, to avenge the slaughter of a relative. Whether he wishes it or not, and frequently no doubt when he does not wish it, he must black his face, sing his death-song, set out alone if need be, encounter labors, hardships, and dangers, and never rest until his sanguinary account is settled. The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy in civilized cities and villages is nothing to the despotism which she exercises among those slaves of custom, the red men of the American wildernesses. Manga Colorada, bereaved and with blackened face, lay in wait for the first step of the emigrants outside of their city of refuge.

We must return to Coronado. Although Clara’s rejection of his suit left him vindictively and desperately eager for a catastrophe of some sort, a week elapsed before he dared take his mad plunge into the northern desert. It was a hundred miles to the San Juan; the intervening country was a waste of rocks, almost entirely destitute of grass and water; the mules and horses must recruit their full strength before they could undertake such a journey. They must not only be strong enough to go, but they must have vital force left to return.

It is astonishing what labors and dangers the man was willing to face in his vain search for a spot where he might commit a crime in safety. Such a spot is as difficult to discover as the Fountain of Youth or the Terrestrial Paradise. More than once Coronado sickened of his seemingly hopeless and ever lengthening pilgrimage of sin. Not because it was sinful–he had little or no conscience, remember–only because it was perplexing and perilous.

It was in vain that Thurstane protested against the crazy trip northward. Coronado sometimes argued for his plan; said the route improved as it approached the river; hoped the party would not be broken up in this manner; declared that he could not spare his dear friend the lieutenant. Another time he calmly smoked his cigarito, looked at Thurstane with filmy, expressionless eyes, and said, “Of course you are not obliged to accompany us.”

“I have not the least intention of quitting you,” was the rather indignant reply of the young fellow.

At this declaration Coronado’s long black eyebrows twitched, and his lips curled with the smile of a puma, showing his teeth disagreeably.

“My dear lieutenant, that is so like you!” he said. “I own that I expected it. Many thanks.”

Thurstane’s blue-black eyes studied this enigmatic being steadily and almost angrily. He could not at all comprehend the fellow’s bland obstinacy and recklessness.

“Very well,” he said sullenly. “Let us start on our wild-goose chase. What I object to is taking the women with us. As for myself, I am anxious to reach the San Juan and get something to report about it.”

“The ladies will have a day or two of discomfort,” returned Coronado; “but you and I will see that they run no danger.”

Nine days after the arrival of the emigrants at Tegua they set out for the San Juan. The wagons were left parked at the base of the butte under the care of the Moquis. The expedition was reorganized as follows: On horseback, Clara, Coronado, Thurstane, Texas Smith, and four Mexicans; on mules, Mrs. Stanley, Glover, the three Indian women, the four soldiers, and the ten drivers and muleteers. There were besides eighteen burden mules loaded with provisions and other baggage. In all, five women, twenty-two men, and forty-five animals.

The Moquis, to whom some stores and small presents were distributed, overflowed with hospitable offices. The chief had a couple of sheep slaughtered for the travellers, and scores of women brought little baskets of meal, corn, guavas, etc. As the strangers left the pueblo both sexes and all ages gathered on the landings, grouped about the stairways and ladders which led down the rampart, and followed for some distance along the declivity of the butte, holding out their simple offerings and urging acceptance. Aunt Maria was more than ever in raptures with Moquis and women.

The chief and several others accompanied the cavalcade for eight or ten miles in order to set it on the right trail for the river. But not one would volunteer as a guide; all shook their heads at the suggestion. “Navajos! Apaches! Comanches!”

They had from the first advised against the expedition, and they now renewed their expostulations. Scarcely any grass; no water except at long distances; a barren, difficult, dangerous country: such was the meaning of their dumb show. On the summit of a lofty bluff which commanded a vast view toward the north, they took their leave of the party, struck off in a rapid trot toward the pueblo, and never relaxed their speed until they were out of sight.

The adventurers now had under their eyes a large part of the region which they were about to traverse. For several miles the landscape was rolling; then came elevated plateaux rising in successive steps, the most remote being apparently sixty miles away; and the colossal scene was bounded by isolated peaks, at a distance which could not be estimated with anything like accuracy. Ranges, buttes, pinnacles, monumental crags, gullies, shadowy chasms, the beds of perished rivers, the stony wrecks left by unrecorded deluges, diversified this monstrous, sublime, and savage picture. Only here and there, separated by vast intervals of barrenness, could be seen minute streaks of verdure. In general the landscape was one of inhospitable sterility. It could not be imagined by men accustomed only to fertile regions. It seemed to have been taken from some planet not yet prepared for human, nor even for beastly habitation. The emotion which it aroused was not that which usually springs from the contemplation of the larger aspects of nature. It was not enthusiasm; it was aversion and despair.

Clara gave one look, and then drew her hat over her eyes with a shudder, not wishing to see more. Aunt Maria, heroic and constant as she was or tried to be, almost lost faith in Coronado and glanced at him suspiciously. Thurstane, sitting bolt upright in his saddle, stared straight before him with a grim frown, meanwhile thinking of Clara. Coronado’s eyes were filmy and incomprehensible; he was planning, querying, fearing, almost trembling; when he gave the word to advance, it was without looking up. There was a general feeling that here before them lay a fate which could only be met blindfold.

Now came a long descent, avoiding precipices and impracticable slopes, winding from one stony foot-hill to another, until the party reached what had seemed a plain. It was a plain because it was amid mountains; a plain consisting of rolls, ridges, ravines, and gullies; a plain with hardly an acre of level land. All day they journeyed through its savage interstices and struggled with its monstrosities of trap and sandstone. Twice they halted in narrow valleys, where a little loam had collected and a little moisture had been retained, affording meagre sustenance to some thin grass and scattered bushes. The animals browsed, but there was nothing for them to drink, and all began to suffer with thirst.

It was seven in the evening, and the sun had already gone down behind the sullen barrier of a gigantic plateau, when they reached the mouth of the canon which had once contained a river, and discovered by the merest accident that it still treasured a shallow pool of stagnant water. The fevered mules plunged in headlong and drank greedily; the riders were perforce obliged to slake their thirst after them. There was a hastily eaten supper, and then came the only luxury or even comfort of the day, the sound and delicious sleep of great weariness.

Repose, however, was not for all, inasmuch as Thurstane had reorganized his system of guard duty, and seven of the party had to stand sentry. It was Coronado’s _tour_; he had chosen to take his watch at the start; there would be three nights on this stretch, and the first would be the easiest. He was tired, for he had been fourteen hours in the saddle, although the distance covered was only forty miles. But much as he craved rest, he kept awake until midnight, now walking up and down, and now smoking his eternal cigarito.

There was a vast deal to remember, to plan, to hope for, to dread, and to hate. Once he sat down beside the unconscious Thurstane, and meditated shooting him through the head as he lay, and so making an end of that obstacle. But he immediately put this idea aside as a frenzy, generated by the fever of fatigue and sleeplessness. A dozen times he was assaulted by a lazy or cowardly temptation to give up the chances of the desert, push back to the Bernalillo route, leave everything to fortune, and take disappointment meekly if it should come. When the noon of night arrived, he had decided upon nothing but to blunder ahead by sheer force of momentum, as if he had been a rolling bowlder instead of a clever, resolute Garcia Coronado.

The truth is, that his circumstances were too mighty for him. He had launched them, but he could not steer them as he would, and they were carrying him he knew not whither. At one o’clock he awoke Texas Smith, who was now his sergeant of the guard; but instead of enjoining some instant atrocity upon him, as he had more than once that night purposed, he merely passed the ordinary instructions of the watch; then, rolling himself in his blankets, he fell asleep as quickly and calmly as an infant.

At daybreak commenced another struggle with the desert. It was still sixty miles to the San Juan, over a series of savage sandstone plateaux, said to be entirely destitute of water. If the animals could not accomplish the distance in two days, it seemed as if the party must perish. Coronado went at his work, so to speak, head foremost and with his hat over his eyes. Nevertheless, when it came to the details of his mad enterprise, he managed them admirably. He was energetic, indefatigable, courageous, cheerful. All day he was hurrying the cavalcade, and yet watching its ability to endure. His “Forward, forward,” alternated with his “Carefully, carefully.” Now “_Adelante_” and now “_Con juicio_”

About two in the afternoon they reached a little nook of sparse grass, which the beasts gnawed perfectly bare in half an hour. No water; the horses were uselessly jaded in searching for it; beds of trap and gullies of ancient rivers were explored in vain; the horrible rocky wilderness was as dry as a bone. Meanwhile, the fatigue of scrambling and stumbling thus far had been enormous. It had been necessary to ascend plateau after plateau by sinuous and crumbling ledges, which at a distance looked impracticable to goats. More than once, in face of some beetling precipice, or on the brink of some gaping chasm, it seemed as if the journey had come to an end. Long detours had to be made in order to connect points which were only separated by slight intervals. The whole region was seamed by the jagged zigzags of canons worn by rivers which had flowed for thousands of years, and then for thousands of years more had been non-existent. If, at the commencement of one of these mighty grooves, you took the wrong side, you could not regain the trail without returning to the point of error, for crossing was impossible.

A trail there was. It is by this route that the Utes and Payoches of the Colorado come to trade with the Moquis or to plunder them. But, as may be supposed, it is a journey which is not often made even by savages; and the cavalcade, throughout the whole of its desperate push, did not meet a human being. Amid the monstrous expanse of uninhabited rock it seemed lost beyond assistance, forsaken and cast out by mankind, doomed to a death which was to have no spectator. Could you have seen it, you would have thought of a train of ants endeavoring to cross a quarry; and you would have judged that the struggle could only end in starvation, or in some swifter destruction.

The most desperate venture of the travellers was amid the wrecks of an extinct volcano. It seemed here as if the genius of fire had striven to outdo the grotesque extravagances of the genii of the waters. Crags, towers, and pinnacles of porphyry were mingled with huge convoluted masses of light brown trachyte, of tufa either pure white or white veined with crimson, of black and gray columnar basalts, of red, orange, green, and black scoria, with adornments of obsidian, amygdaloids, rosettes of quartz crystal and opalescent chalcedony. A thousand stony needles lifted their ragged points as if to defy the lightning. The only vegetation was a spiny cactus, clinging closely to the rocks, wearing their grayish and yellowish colors, lending no verdure to the scene, and harmonizing with its thorny inhospitality.

As the travellers gazed on this wilderness of scorched summits, glittering in the blazing sunlight, and yet drawing from it no life–as stark, still, unsympathizing, and cruel as death–they seemed to themselves to be out of the sweet world of God, and to be in the power of malignant genii and demons. The imagination cannot realize the feeling of depression which comes upon one who finds himself imprisoned in such a landscape. Like uttermost pain, or like the extremity of despair, it must be felt in order to be known.

“It seems as if Satan had chosen this land for himself,” was the perfectly serious and natural remark of Thurstane.

Clara shuddered; the same impression was upon her mind; only she felt it more deeply than he. Gentle, somewhat timorous, and very impressionable, she was almost overwhelmed by the terrific revelations of a nature which seemed to have no pity, or rather seemed full of malignity. Many times that day she had prayed in her heart that God would help them. Apparently detached from earth, she was seeking nearness to heaven. Her look at this moment was so awe-struck and piteous, that the soul of the man who loved her yearned to give her courage.

“Miss Van Diemen, it shall all turn out well,” he said, striking his fist on the pommel of his saddle.

“Oh! why did we come here?” she groaned.

“I ought to have prevented it,” he replied, angry with himself. “But never mind. Don’t be troubled. It shall all be right. I pledge my life to bring it all to a good end.”

She gave him a look of gratitude which would have repaid him for immediate death. This is not extravagant; in his love for her he did not value himself; he had the sublime devotion of immense adoration.

That night another loamy nook was found, clothed with a little thin grass, but waterless. Some of the animals suffered so with thirst that they could not graze, and uttered doleful whinneys of distress. As it was the Lieutenant’s tour on guard, he had plenty of time to study the chances of the morrow.

“Kelly, what do you think of the beasts?” he said to the old soldier who acted as his sergeant.

“One more day will finish them, Leftenant.”

“We have been fifteen hours in the saddle. We have made about thirty-five miles. There are twenty-five miles more to the river. Do you think we can crawl through?”

“I should say, Leftenant, we could just do it.”

At daybreak the wretched animals resumed their hideous struggle. There was a plateau for them to climb at the start, and by the time this labor was accomplished they were staggering with weakness, so that a halt had to be ordered on the windy brink of the acclivity. Thurstane, according to his custom, scanned the landscape with his field-glass, and jotted down topographical notes in his journal. Suddenly he beckoned to Coronado, quietly put the glass in his hands, nodded toward the desert which lay to the rear, and whispered, “Look.”

Coronado looked, turned slightly more yellow than his wont, and murmured “Apaches!”

“How far off are they?”

“About ten miles,” judged Coronado, still gazing intently.

“So I should say. How do you know they are Apaches?”

“Who else would follow us?” asked the Mexican, remembering the son of Manga Colorada.

“It is another race for life,” calmly pronounced Thurstane, facing about toward the caravan and making a signal to mount.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Yes, it was a life and death race between the emigrants and the Apaches for the San Juan. Positions of defence were all along the road, but not one of them could be held for a day, all being destitute of grass and water.

“There is no need of telling the ladies at once,” said Thurstane to Coronado, as they rode side by side in rear of the caravan. “Let them be quiet as long as they can be. Their trouble will come soon enough.”

“How many were there, do you think?” was the reply of a man who was much occupied with his own chances. “Were there a hundred?”

“It’s hard to estimate a mere black line like that. Yes, there must be a hundred, besides stragglers. Their beasts have suffered, of course, as well as ours. They have come fast, and there must be a lot in the rear. Probably both bands are along.”

“The devils!” muttered Coronado. “I hope to God they will all perish of thirst and hunger. The stubborn, stupid devils! Why should they follow us _here_?” he demanded, looking furiously around upon the accursed landscape.

“Indian revenge. We killed too many of them.”

“Yes,” said Coronado, remembering anew the son of the chief. “Damn them! I wish we could have killed them all.”

“That is just what we must try to do,” returned Thurstane deliberately.

“The question is,” he resumed after a moment of business-like calculation of chances–“the question is mainly this, whether we can go twenty-five miles quicker than they can go thirty-five. We must be the first to reach the river.”

“We can spare a few beasts,” said Coronado. “We must leave the weakest behind.”

“We must not give up provisions.”

“We can eat mules.”

“Not till the last moment. We shall need them to take us back.”

Coronado inwardly cursed himself for venturing into this inferno, the haunting place of devils in human shape. Then his mind wandered to Saratoga, New York, Newport, and the other earthly heavens that were known to him. He hummed an air; it was the _brindisi_ of Lucrezia Borgia; it reminded him of pleasures which now seemed lost forever; he stopped in the middle of it. Between the associations which it excited–the images of gayety and splendor, real or feigned–a commingling of kid gloves, bouquets, velvet cloaks, and noble names–between these glories which so attracted his hungry soul and the present environment of hideous deserts and savage pursuers, what a contrast there was! There, far away, was the success for which he longed; here, close at hand, was the peril which must purchase it. At that moment he was willing to deny his bargain with Garcia and the devil. His boldest desire was, “Oh that I were in Santa Fe!”

By Coronado’s side rode a man who had not a thought for himself. A person who has not passed years in the army can hardly imagine the sense of _responsibility_ which is ground into the character of an officer. He is a despot, but a despot who is constantly accountable for the welfare of his subjects, and who never passes a day without many grave thoughts of the despots above him. Superior officers are in a manner his deities, and the Army Regulations have for him the weight of Scripture. He never forgets by what solemn rules of duty and honor he will be judged if he falls short of his obligations. This professional conscience becomes a destiny to him, and guides his life to an extent inconceivable by most civilians. He acquires a habit of watching and caring for others; he cannot help assuming a charge which falls in his way. When he is not governed by the rule of obedience, he is governed by the rule of responsibility. The two make up his duty, and to do his duty is his existence.

At this moment our young West Pointer, only twenty-three or four years old, was gravely and grimly anxious for his four soldiers, for all these people whom circumstance had placed under his protection, and even for his army mules, provisions, and ammunition. His only other sentiment was a passionate desire to prevent harm or even fear from approaching Clara Van Diemen. These two sentiments might be said to make up for the present his entire character. As we have already observed, he had not a thought for himself.

Presently it occurred to the youngster that he ought to cheer on his fellow-travellers.

Trotting up with a smile to Mrs. Stanley and Clara, he asked, “How do you bear it?”

“Oh, I am almost dead,” groaned Aunt Maria. “I shall have to be tied on before long.”

The poor woman, no longer youthful, it must be remembered, was indeed badly jaded. Her face was haggard; her general get-up was in something like scarecrow disorder; she didn’t even care how she looked. So fagged was she that she had once or twice dozed in the saddle and come near falling.

“It was outrageous to bring us here,” she went on pettishly. “Ladies shouldn’t be dragged into such hardships.”

Thurstane wanted to say that he was not responsible for the journey; but he would not, because it did not seem manly to shift all the blame upon Coronado.

“I am very, very sorry,” was his reply. “It is a frightful journey.”

“Oh, frightful, frightful!” sighed Aunt Maria, twisting her aching back.

“But it will soon be over,” added the officer. “Only twenty miles more to the river.”

“The river! It seems to me that I could live if I could see a river. Oh, this desert! These perpetual rocks! Not a green thing to cool one’s eyes. Not a drop of water. I seem to be drying up, like a worm in the sunshine.”

“Is there no water in the flasks?” asked Thurstane.

“Yes,” said Clara. “But my aunt is feverish with fatigue.”

“What I want is the sight of it–and rest,” almost whimpered the elder lady.

“Will our horses last?” asked Clara. “Mine seems to suffer a great deal.”

“They _must_ last,” replied Thurstane, grinding his teeth quite privately. “Oh, yes, they will last,” he immediately added. “Even if they don’t, we have mules enough.”

“But how they moan! It makes me cringe to hear them.”

“Twenty miles more,” said Thurstane. “Only six hours at the longest. Only half a day.”

“It takes less than half a day for a woman to die,” muttered the nearly desperate Aunt Maria.

“Yes, when she sets about it,” returned the officer. “But we haven’t set about it, Mrs. Stanley. And we are not going to.”

The weary lady had no response ready for words of cheer; she leaned heavily over the pommel of her saddle and rode on in silence.

“Ain’t the same man she was,” slyly observed Phineas Glover with a twist of his queer physiognomy.

Thurstane, though not fond of Mrs. Stanley, would not now laugh at her expense, and took no notice of the sarcasm. Glover, fearful lest he had offended, doubled the gravity of his expression and tacked over to a fresh subject.

“Shouldn’t know whether to feel proud ‘f myself or not, ‘f I’d made this country, Capm. Depends on what ’twas meant for. If ’twas meant to live in, it’s the poorest outfit I ever did see. If ’twas meant to scare folks, it’s jest up to the mark. ‘Nuff to frighten a crow into fits. Capm, it fairly seems more than airthly; puts me in mind ‘f things in the Pilgrim’s Progress–only worse. Sh’d say it was like five thousin’ Valleys ‘f the Shadow ‘f Death tangled together. Tell ye, believe Christian ‘d ‘a’ backed out ‘f he’d had to travel through here. Think Mr. Coronado ‘s all right in his top hamper, Capm? Do, hey? Wal, then I’m all wrong; guess I’m ‘s crazy’s a bedbug. Wouldn’t ‘a’ketched me steerin’ this course of my own free will ‘n’ foreknowledge. Jest look at the land now. Don’t it look like the bottomless pit blowed up ‘n’ gone to smash? Tell ye, ‘f the Old Boy himself sh’d ride up alongside, shouldn’t be a mite s’prised to see him. Sh’d reckon he had a much bigger right to be s’prised to ketch me here.”