Thurstane had no great difficulty in making a sort of let-me-alone-and-I'll-let-you-alone treaty with the embattled Hualpais.
After some minutes of dumb show they came down from their stronghold and dispersed to their dwellings. They seemed to be utterly without curiosity; the warriors put aside their bows and lay down to sleep; the old squaw hurried off to pick up her bundle of fuel; even the papooses were silent and stupid. It was a race lower than the Hottentots or the Australians. Short, meagre, badly built, excessively ugly, they were nearly naked, and their slight clothing was rags of skins. Thurstane tried to buy food of them, but either they had none to spare or his buttons seemed to them of no value. Nor could he induce any one to accompany him as a guide.
"Do ye think Godamighty made thim paple?" inquired Sweeny.
"Reckon so," replied Glover.
"I don't belave it," said Sweeny. "He'd be in more rispactable bizniss. It's me opinyin the divil made um for a joke on the rest av us. An' it's me opinyin he made this whole counthry for the same rayson."
"The priest'll tell ye God made all men, Sweeny."
"They ain't min at all. Thim crachurs ain't min. They're nagurs, an' a mighty poor kind at that. I hate um. I wish they was all dead. I've kilt some av um, an' I'm goin' to kill slathers more, God willin'. I belave it's part av the bizniss av white min to finish off the nagurs."
Profound and potent sentiment of race antipathy! The contempt and hatred of white men for yellow, red, brown, and black men has worked all over earth, is working yet, and will work for ages. It is a motive of that tremendous tragedy which Spencer has entitled "the survival of the fittest," and Darwin, "natural selection."
The party continued to ascend the cañon. At short intervals branch cañons exhibited arid and precipitous gorges, more and more gloomy with twilight. It was impossible to choose between one and another. The travellers could never see three hundred yards in advance. To right and left they were hemmed in by walls fifteen hundred feet in height. Only one thing was certain: these altitudes were gradually diminishing; and hence they knew that they were mounting the plateau. At last, four hours after leaving Diamond Creek, wearied to the marrow with incessant toil, they halted by a little spring, stretched themselves on a scrap of starveling grass, and chewed their meagre, musty supper.
The scenery here was unearthly. Barring the bit of turf and a few willows which had got lost in the desert, there was not a tint of verdure. To right and left rose two huge and steep slopes of eroded and ragged rocks, tortured into every conceivable form of jag, spire, pinnacle, and imagery. In general the figures were grotesque; it seemed as if the misshapen gods of India and of China and of barbarous lands had gathered there; as if this were a place of banishment and punishment for the fallen idols of all idolatries. Above this coliseum of monstrosities rose a long line of sharp, jagged needles, like a vastchevaux-de-frise, forbidding escape. Still higher, lighted even yet by the setting sun, towered five cones of vast proportions. Then came cliffs capped by shatters of tableland, and then the long, even, gleaming ledge of the final plateau.
Locked in this bedlam of crazed strata, unable to see or guess a way out of it, the wanderers fell asleep. There was no setting of guards; they trusted to the desert as a sentinel.
At daylight the blind and wearisome climbing recommenced. Occasionally they found patches of thin turf and clumps of dwarf cedars struggling with the rocky waste. These bits of greenery were not the harbingers of a new empire of vegetation, but the remnants of one whose glory had vanished ages ago, swept away by a vandalism of waters. Gradually the cañon dwindled to a ravine, narrow, sinuous, walled in by stony steeps or slopes, and interlocking continually with other similar chasms. A creek, which followed the chasm, appeared and disappeared at intervals of a mile or so, as if horrified at the face of nature and anxious to hide from it in subterranean recesses.
The travellers stumbled on until the ravine became a gully and the gully a fissure. They stepped out of it; they were on the rolling surface of the tableland; they were half a mile above the Colorado.
Here they halted, gave three cheers, and then looked back upon the northern desert as men look who have escaped an enemy. A gigantic panorama of the country which they had traversed was unrolled to their vision. In the foreground stretched declining tablelands, intersected by numberless ravines, and beyond these a lofty line of bluffs marked the edge of the Great Cañon of the Colorado. Through one wide gap in these heights came a vision of endless plateaux, their terraces towering one above another until they were thousands of feet in the air, the horizontal azure bands extending hundreds of miles northward, until the deep blue faded into a lighter blue, and that into the sapphire of the heavens.
"It looks a darned sight finer than it is," observed Glover.
"Bedad, ye may say that," added Sweeny. "It's a big hippycrit av a counthry. Ye'd think, to luk at it, ye could ate it wid a spoon."
Now came a rolling region, covered with blue grass and dotted with groves of cedars, the earth generally hard and smooth and the marching easy. Striking southward, they reached a point where the plateau culminated in a low ridge, and saw before them a long gentle slope of ten miles, then a system of rounded hills, and then mountains.
"Halt here," said Thurstane. "We must study our topography and fix on our line of march."
"You'll hev to figger it," replied Glover. "I don't know nothin' in this part o' the world."
"Ye ain't called on to know," put in Sweeny. "The liftinant'll tell ye."
"I think," hesitated Thurstane, "that we are about fifty miles north of Cactus Pass, where we want to strike the trail."
"And I'm putty nigh played out," groaned Glover.
"Och!youhowld up yer crazy head," exhorted Sweeny. "It'll do ye iver so much good."
"It's easy talkin'," sighed the jaded and rheumatic skipper.
"It's as aisy talkin' right as talkin' wrong," retorted Sweeny. "Ye've no call to grunt the curritch out av yer betthers. Wait till the liftinant says die."
Thurstane was studying the landscape. Which of those ranges was the Cerbat, which the Aztec, and which the Pinaleva? He knew that, after leaving Cactus Pass, the overland trail turns southward and runs toward the mouth of the Gila, crossing the Colorado hundreds of miles away. To the west of the pass, therefore, he must not strike, under peril of starving amid untracked plains and ranges. On the whole, it seemed probable that the snow-capped line of summits directly ahead of him was the Cerbat range, and that he must follow it southward along the base of its eastern slope.
"We will move on," he said. "Mr. Glover, we must reach those broken hills before night in order to find water. Can you do it?"
"Reckon I kin jest about do it, 's the feller said when he walked to his own hangin'," returned the suffering skipper.
The failing man marched so slowly and needed so many halts that they were five hours in reaching the hills. It was now nightfall; they found a bright little spring in a grassy ravine; and after a meagre supper, they tried to stifle their hunger with sleep. Thurstane and Sweeny took turns in watching, for smoke of fires had been seen on the mountains, and, poor as they were, they could not afford to be robbed. In the morning Glover seemed refreshed, and started out with some vigor.
"Och! ye'll go round the worrld," said Sweeny, encouragingly. "Bones can march furder than fat anny day. Yer as tough as me rations. Dried grizzly is nothin' to ye."
After threading hills for hours they came out upon a wide, rolling basin prettily diversified by low spurs of the encircling mountains and bluish green with the long grasses known aspinandgrama. A few deer and antelopes, bounding across the rockier places, were an aggravation to starving men who could not follow them.
"Why don't we catch some o' thim flyin' crachurs?" demanded Sweeny.
"We hain't got no salt to put on their tails," explained Glover, grinning more with pain than with his joke.
"I'd ate 'em widout salt," said Sweeny. "If the tails was feathers, I'd ate 'em."
"We must camp early, and try our luck at hunting," observed Thurstane.
"I go for campin' airly," groaned the limping and tottering Glover.
"Och! yees ud like to shlape an shnore an' grunt and rowl over an' shnore agin the whole blissid time," snapped Sweeny, always angered by a word of discouragement. "Yees ought to have a dozen o' thim nagurs wid their long poles to make a fither bed for yees an' tuck up the blankets an' spat the pilly. Why didn't ye shlape all ye wanted to whin yees was in the boat?"
"Quietly, Sweeny," remonstrated Thurstane. "Mr. Glover marches with great pain."
"I've no objiction to his marchin' wid great pain or annyway Godamighty lets him, if he won't grunt about it."
"But you must be civil, my man."
"I ax yer pardon, Liftinant. I don't mane no harrum by blatherin'. It's a way we have in th' ould counthry. Mebbe it's no good in th' arrmy."
"Let him yawp, Capm," interposed Glover. "It's a way they hev, as he says. Never see two Paddies together but what they got to fightin' or pokin' fun at each other. Me an' Sweeny won't quarrel. I take his clickatyclack for what it's worth by the cart-load. 'Twon't hurt me. Dunno but what it's good for me."
"Bedad, it's betther for ye nor yer own gruntin'," added the irrepressible Irishman.
By two in the afternoon they had made perhaps fifteen miles, and reached the foot of the mountain which they proposed to skirt. As Glover was now fagged out, Thurstane decided to halt for the night and try deer-stalking. A muddy water-hole, surrounded by thickets of willows, indicated their camping ground. The sick man wascachedin the dense foliage; his canteen was filled for him and placed by his side; there could be no other nursing.
"If the nagurs kill ye, I'll revenge ye," was Sweeny's parting encouragement. "I'll git ye back yer scallup, if I have to cut it out of um."
Late in the evening the two hunters returned empty. Sweeny, in spite of his hunger and fatigue, boiled over with stories of the hairbreadth escapes of the "antyloops" that he had fired at. Thurstane also had seen game, but not near enough for a shot.
"I didn't look for such bad luck," said the weary and half-starved young fellow, soberly. "No supper for any of us. We must save our last ration to make to-morrow's march on."
"It's a poor way of atin' two males in wan," remarked Sweeny. "I niver thought I'd come to wish I had me haversack full o' dried bear."
The next day was a terrible one. Already half famished, their only food for the twenty-four hours was about four ounces apiece of bear meat, tough, ill-scented, and innutritious. Glover was so weak with hunger and his ailments that he had to be supported most of the way by his two comrades. His temper, and Sweeny's also, gave out, and they snarled at each other in good earnest, as men are apt to do under protracted hardships. Thurstane stalked on in silence, sustained by his youth and health, and not less by his sense of responsibility. These men were here through his doing; he must support them and save them if possible; if not, he must show them how to die bravely; for it had come to be a problem of life and death. They could not expect to travel two days longer without food. The time was approaching when they would fall down with faintness, not to rise again in this world.
In the morning their only provision was one small bit of meat which Thurstane had saved from his ration of the day before. This he handed to Glover, saying with a firm eye and a cheerful smile, "My dear fellow, here is your breakfast."
The starving invalid looked at it wistfully, and stammered, with a voice full of tears, "I can't eat when the rest of ye don't."
Sweeny, who had stared at the morsel with hungry eyes, now broke out, "I tell ye, ate it. The liftinant wants ye to."
"Divide it fair," answered Glover, who could hardly restrain himself from sobbing.
"I won't touch a bit av it," declared Sweeny. "It's the liftinant's own grub."
"We won't divide it," said Thurstane. "I'll put it in your pocket, Glover. When you can't take another step without it, you must go at it."
"Bedad, if ye don't, we'll lave yees," added Sweeny, digging his fists into his empty stomach to relieve its gnawing.
Very slowly, the well men sustaining the sick one, they marched over rolling hills until about noon, accomplishing perhaps ten miles. They were now on a slope looking southward; above them the wind sighed through a large grove of cedars; a little below was a copious spring of clear, sweet water. There they halted, drinking and filling their canteens, but not eating. The square inch of bear meat was still in Glover's pocket, but he could not be got to taste it unless the others would share.
"Capm, I feel's though Heaven'd strike me if I should eat your victuals," he whispered, his voice having failed him. "I feel a sort o' superstitious 'bout it. I want to die with a clear conscience."
But when they rose his strength gave out entirely, and he dropped down fainting.
"Now ate yer mate," said Sweeny, in a passion of pity and anxiety. "Ate yer mate an' stand up to yer marchin'."
Glover, however, could not eat, for the fever of hunger had at last produced nausea, and he pushed away the unsavory morsel when it was put to his lips.
"Go ahead," he whispered. "No use all dyin'. Go ahead." And then he fainted outright.
"I think the trail can't be more than fifteen miles off," said Thurstane, when he had found that his comrade still breathed. "One of us must push on to it and the other stay with Glover. Sweeny, I can track the country best. You must stay."
For the first time in this long and suffering and perilous journey Sweeny's courage failed him, and he looked as if he would like to shirk his duty.
"My lad, it is necessary," continued the officer. "We can't leave this man so. You have your gun. You can try to hunt. When he comes to, you must get him along, following the course you see me take. If I find help, I'll save you. If not, I'll come back and die with you."
Sitting down by the side of the insensible Glover, Sweeny covered his face with two grimy hands which trembled a little. It was not till his officer had got some thirty feet away that he raised his head and looked after him. Then he called, in his usual quick, sharp, chattering way, "Liftinant, is this soldierin'?"
"Yes, my lad," replied Thurstane with a sad, weary smile, thinking meantime of hardships past, "this is soldiering."
"Thin I'll do me dooty if I rot jest here," declared the simple hero.
Thurstane came back, grasped Sweeny's hand in silence, turned away to hide his shaken face, and commenced his anxious journey.
There were both terrible and beautiful thoughts in his soul as he pushed on into the desert. Would he find the trail? Would he encounter the rare chance of traders or emigrants? Would there be food and rest for him and rescue for his comrades? Would he meet Clara? This last idea gave him great courage; he struggled to keep it constantly in his mind; he needed to lean upon it.
By the time that he had marched ten miles he found that he was weaker than he had supposed. Weeks of wretched food and three days of almost complete starvation had taken the strength pretty much out of his stalwart frame. His breath was short; he stumbled over the slightest obstacles; occasionally he could not see clear. From time to time it struck him that he had been dreaming or else that his mind was beginning to wander. Things that he remembered and things that he hoped for seemed strangely present. He spoke to people who were hundreds of miles away; and, for the most part, he spoke to them pettishly or with downright anger; for in the main he felt more like a wretched, baited animal than a human being.
It was only when he called Clara to mind that this evil spirit was exorcised, and he ceased for a moment to resemble a hungry, jaded wolf. Then he would be for a while all sweetness, because he was for the while perfectly happy. In the next instant, by some hateful and irresistible magic, happiness and sweetness would be gone, and he could not even remember them nor rememberher.
Meantime he struggled to command himself and pay attention to his route. He must do this, because his starving comrades lay behind him, and he must know how to lead men back to their rescue. Well, here he was; there were hills to the left; there was a mountain to the right; he would stop and fix it all in his memory.
He sat down beside a rock, leaned his back against it to steady his dizzy head, had a sensation of struggling with something invincible, and was gone.
Leaving Thurstane in the desert, we return to Clara in the desert. It will be remembered that she stood on the roof of the Casa Grande when her lover was swept oarless down the San Juan.
She was watching him; of course she was watching him; at the moment of the catastrophe she saw him; she felt sure also that he was looking at her. The boat began to fly down the current; then the two oarsmen fell to paddling violently; what did it mean? Far from guessing that the towline had snapped, she was not aware that there was one.
On went the boat; presently it whirled around helplessly; it was nearing the rocks of the rapid; there was evidently danger. Running to the edge of the roof, Clara saw a Mexican cattle-driver standing on the wall of the enclosure, and called to him, "What is the matter?"
"The lariats have broken," he replied. "They are drifting."
Clara uttered a little gasp of a shriek, and then did not seem to breathe again for a minute. She saw Thurstane led away in captivity by the savage torrent; she saw him rise up in the boat and wave her a farewell; she could not lift her hand to respond; she could only stand and stare. She had a look, and there was within her a sensation, as if her soul were starting out of her eyes. The whole calamity revealed itself to her at once and without mercy. There was no saving him and no going after him; he was being taken out of her sight; he was disappearing; he was gone. She leaned forward, trying to look around the bend of the river, and was balked by a monstrous, cruel advance of precipices. Then, when she realized that he had vanished, there was a long scream ending in unconsciousness.
When she came to herself everybody was talking of the calamity. Coronado, Aunt Maria, and others overflowed with babblings of regret, astonishment, explanations, and consolation. The lariats had broken. How could it have happened! How dreadful! etc.
"But he will land," cried Clara, looking eagerly from face to face.
"Oh, certainly," said Coronado. "Landings can be made. There are none visible, but doubtless they exist."
"And then he will march back here?" she demanded.
"Not easily. I am afraid, my dear cousin, not very easily. There would be cañons to turn, and long ones. Probably he would strike for the Moqui country."
"Across the desert? No water!"
Coronado shrugged his shoulders as if to say that he could not help it.
"If we go back to-morrow," she began again, "do you think we shall overtake them?"
"I think it very probable," lied Coronado.
"And if we don't overtake them, will they join us at the Moqui pueblos?"
"Yes, yes. I have little doubt of it."
"When do you think we ought to start?"
"To-morrow morning."
"Won't that be too early?"
"Day after to-morrow then."
"Won't that be too late?"
Coronado nearly boiled over with rage. This girl was going to demand impossibilities of him, and impossibilities that he would not perform if he could. He must be here and he must be there; he must be quick enough and not a minute too quick; and all to save his rival from the pit which he had just dug for him. Turning his back on Clara, he paced the roof of the Casa in an excitement which he could not conceal, muttering, "I will do the best I can—the best I can."
Presently the remembrance that he had at least gained one great triumph enabled him to recover his self-possession and his foxy cunning.
"My dear cousin," he said gently, "you must not suppose that I am not greatly afflicted by this accident. I appreciate the high merit of Lieutenant Thurstane, and I grieve sincerely at his misfortune. What can I do? I will do the best I can for all. Trusting to your good sense, I will do whatever you say. But if you want my advice, here it is. We ought for our own sakes to leave here to-morrow; but for his sake we will wait a day. In that time he may rejoin us, or he may regain the Moqui trail. So we will set out, if you have no objection, on the morning of day after to-morrow, and push for the pueblos. When we do start, we must march, as you know, at our best speed."
"Thank you, Coronado," said Clara. "It is the best you can do."
There were not five minutes during that day and the next that the girl did not look across the plain to the gorge of the dry cañon, in the hope that she might see Thurstane approaching. At other times she gazed eagerly down the San Juan, although she knew that he could not stem the current. Her love and her sorrow were ready to believe in miracles. How is it possible, she often thought, that such a brief sweep of water should carry him so utterly away? In spite of her fear of vexing Coronado, she questioned him over and over as to the course of the stream and the nature of its banks, only to find that he knew next to nothing.
"It will be hard for him to return to us," the man finally suggested, with an air of being driven unwillingly to admit it. "He may have to go on a long way down the river."
The truth is that, not knowing whether the lost men could return easily or not, he was anxious to get away from their neighborhood.
Before the second day of this suspense was over, Aunt Maria had begun to make herself obnoxious. She hinted that Thurstane knew what he was about; that the river was his easiest road to his station; that, in short, he had deserted. Clara flamed up indignantly and replied, "I know him better."
"Why, what has he got to do with us?" reasoned Aunt Maria. "He doesn't belong to our party."
"He has his men here. He wouldn't leave his soldiers."
"His men! They can take care of themselves. If they can't, I should like to know what they are good for. I think it highly probable he went off of his own choice."
"I think it highly probable you know nothing about it," snapped Clara. "You are incapable of judging him."
The girl was not just now herself. Her whole soul was concentrated in justifying, loving, and saving Thurstane; and her manner, instead of being serenely and almost lazily gentle, was unpleasantly excited. It was as if some charming alluvial valley should suddenly give forth the steam and lava of a volcano.
Finding no sympathy in Aunt Maria, and having little confidence in the good-will of Coronado, she looked about her for help. There was Sergeant Meyer; he had been Thurstane's right-hand man; moreover, he looked trustworthy. She seized the first opportunity to beckon him up to her eerie on the roof of the Casa.
"Sergeant, I must speak with you privately," she said at once, with the frankness of necessity.
The sergeant, a well-bred soldier, respectful to ladies, and especially to ladies who were the friends of officers, raised his forefinger to his cap and stood at attention.
"How came Lieutenant Thurstane to go down the river?" she asked.
"It was the lariat proke," replied Meyer, in a whispering, flute-like voice which he had when addressing his superiors.
"Did it break, or was it cut?"
The sergeant raised his small, narrow, and rather piggish gray eyes to hers with a momentary expression of anxiety.
"I must pe gareful what I zay," he answered, sinking his voice still lower. "We must poth pe gareful. I examined the lariat. I fear it was sawed. But we must not zay this."
"Who sawed it?" demanded Clara with a gasp.
"It was no one in the poat," replied Meyer diplomatically.
"Was it that man—that hunter—Smith?"
Another furtive glance between the sandy eyelashes expressed an uneasy astonishment; the sergeant evidently had a secret on his mind which he must not run any risk of disclosing.
"I do not zee how it was Schmidt" he fluted almost inaudibly. "He was watching the peasts at their basture."
"Then who did saw it?"
"I do not know. I do not feel sure that it was sawed."
Perceiving that, either from ignorance or caution, he would not say more on this point, Clara changed the subject and asked, "Can Lieutenant Thurstane go down the river safely?"
"I would like noting petter than to make the exbedition myself," replied Meyer, once more diplomatic.
Now came a silence, the soldier waiting respectfully, the girl not knowing how much she might dare to say. Not that she doubted Meyer; on the contrary, she had a perfect confidence in him; how could she fail to trust one who had been trusted by Thurstane?
"Sergeant," she at last whispered, "we must find him."
"Yes, miss," touching his cap as if he were taking an oath by it.
"And you," she hesitated, "must protectme."
"Yes, miss," and the sergeant repeated his gesture of solemn affirmation.
"Perhaps I will say more some time."
He saluted again, and seeing that she had nothing to add, retired quietly.
For two nights there was little sleep for Clara. She passed them in pondering Thurstane's chances, or in listening for his returning footsteps. Yet when the train set out for the Moqui pueblos, she seemed as vigorous and more vivacious than usual. What supported her now and for days afterward was what is called the strength of fever.
The return across the desert was even more terrible than the advance, for the two scant water-holes had been nearly exhausted by the Apaches, so that both beasts and human beings suffered horribly with thirst. There was just this one good thing about the parched and famished wilderness, that it relieved the emigrants from all fear of ambushing enemies. Supernatural beings alone could have, bushwhacked here. The Apaches had gone.
Meanwhile Sergeant Meyer had a sore conscience. From the moment the boat went down the San Juan he had more or less lain awake with the idea that, according to the spirit of his instructions from Thurstane, he ought to have Texas Smith tied up and shot. Orders were orders; there was no question about that, as a general principle; the sergeant had never heard the statement disputed. But when he came to consider the case now before him, he was out-generalled by a doubt. This, drifting of a boat down a strange river, was it murder in the sense intended by Thurstane? And, supposing it to be murder, could it be charged in any way upon Smith? In the whole course of his military experience Sergeant Meyer had never been more perplexed. On the evening of the first day's march he could bear his sense of responsibility no longer, and decided to call a council of war. Beckoning his sole remaining comrade aside from the bivouac, he entered upon business.
"Kelly, we are unter insdructions," he began in his flute-like tone.
"I know it, sergeant," replied Kelly, decorously squirting his tobacco-juice out of the corner of his mouth furthest from his superior.
"The question is, Kelly, whether Schmidt should pe shot."
"The responsibility lies upon you, sergeant. I will shoot him if so be such is orders."
"Kelly, the insdructions were to shoot him if murder should habben in this barty. The instructions were loose."
"They were so, sergeant—not defining murder."
"The question is, Kelly, whether what has habbened to the leftenant is murder. If it is murder, then Schmidt must go."
The two men were sitting on a bowlder side by side, their hands on their knees and their muskets leaning against their shoulders. They did not look at each other at all, but kept their grave eyes on the ground. Kelly squirted his tobacco-juice sidelong two or three times before he replied.
"Sergeant," he finally said, "my opinion is we can't set this down for murder until we know somebody is dead."
"Shust so, Kelly. That is my obinion myself."
"Consequently it follows, sergeant, if you don't see to the contrary, that until we know that to be a fact, it would be uncalled for to shoot Smith."
"What you zay, Kelly, is shust what I zay."
"Furthermore, however, sergeant, it might be right and is the way of duty, to call up Smith and make him testify as to what he knows of this business, whether it be murder, or meant for murder."
"Cock your beece, Kelly."
Both men cocked their pieces.
"Now I will gall Schmidt out and question him," continued Meyer, "You will stand on one side and pe ready to opey my orders."
"Very good, sergeant," said Kelly, and dropped back a little into the nearly complete darkness.
Meyer sang out sharply, "Schmidt! Texas Schmidt!"
The desperado heard the summons, hesitated a moment, cocked the revolver in his belt, loosened his knife in its sheath, rose from his blanket, and walked slowly in the direction of the voice. Passing Kelly without seeing him, he confronted Meyer, his hand on his pistol. There was not the slightest tremor in the hoarse, low croak with which he asked, "What's the game, sergeant?"
"Schmidt, stand berfectly still," said Meyer in his softest fluting. "Kelly has his beece aimed at your head. If you stir hant or foot, you are a kawn koose."
Texas Smith was too old a borderer to attempt to draw his weapons while such a man as Kelly was sighting him at ten feet distance.
"Play yer hand, sergeant," he said; "you've got the keerds."
"You know, Schmidt, that our leftenant has been garried down the river," continued Meyer.
The bushwhacker responded with a grunt which expressed neither pleasure nor sorrow, but merely assent.
"You know," went on the sergeant, "that such things cannot habben to officers without investigations."
"He war a squar man, an' a white man," said Texas. "I didn't have nothin' to do with cuttin' him loose, if he war cut loose."
"You didn't saw the lariat yourself, Schmidt, I know that. But do you know who did saw it?"
"I dunno the first thing about it."
"Bray to pe struck tead if you do."
"I dunno how to pray."
"Then holt up your hants and gurse yourself to hell if you do."
Lifting his hands over his head, the ignorant savage blasphemed copiously.
"Do you think you can guess how it was pusted?" persisted the soldier.
"Look a hyer!" remonstrated Smith, "ain't you pannin' me out a leetle too fine? It mought 'a' been this way, an' it mought 'a' been that. But I've no business to point if I can't find. When a man's got to the bottom of his pile, you can't fo'ce him to borrow. 'Sposin' I set you barkin' up the wrong tree; what good's that gwine to do?"
"Vell, Schmidt, I don't zay but what you zay right. You mustn't zay anyting you don't know someting apout."
After another silence, during which Texas continued to hold his hands above his head, Meyer added, "Kelly, you may come to an order. Schmidt, you may put down your hants. Will you haf a jew of topacco?"
The three men now approached each other, took alternate bites of the sergeant's last plug of pigtail, and masticated amicably.
"You army fellers run me pootty close," said Texas, after a while, in a tone of complaint and humiliation. "I don't want to fight brass buttons. They're too many for me. The Capm he lassoed me, an' choked me some; an' now you're on it."
"When things habben to officers, they must pe looked into," replied Meyer.
"I dunno how in thunder the lariat got busted," repeated Texas. "An' if I should go for to guess, I mought guess wrong."
"All right, Schmidt; I pelieve you. If there is no more drubble, you will not pe called up again."
"Ask him what he thinks of the leftenant's chances," suggested Kelly to his superior.
"Reckon he'll hev to run the river a spell," returned the borderer. "Reckon he'll hev to run it a hell of a ways befo' he'll be able to git across the dam country."
"Ask him what the chances be of running the river safely," added Kelly.
"Dam slim," answered Texas; and there the talk ended. There was some meditative chewing, after which the three returned to the bivouac, and either lay down to sleep or took their tours at guard duty.
At dawn the party recommenced its flight toward the Moqui country. There were sixty hours more of hard riding, insufficient sleep, short rations, thirst, and anxiety. Once the suffering animals stampeded after water, and ran for several miles over plateaux of rock, dashing off burdens and riders, and only halting when they were plunged knee-deep in the water-hole which they had scented. One of the wounded rancheros expired on the mule to which he was strapped, and was carried dead for several hours, his ashy-brown face swinging to and fro, until Coronado had him thrown into a crevice.
Amid these hardships and horrors Clara showed no sign of flagging or flinching. She was very thin; bad food, excessive fatigue, and anxiety had reduced her; her face was pinched, narrowed, and somewhat lined; her expression was painfully set and eager. But she never asked for repose, and never complained. Her mind was solely fixed upon finding Thurstane, and her feverish bright eyes continually searched the horizon for him. She seemed to have lost her power of sympathizing with any other creature. To Mrs. Stanley's groanings and murmurings she vouchsafed rare and brief condolences. The dead muleteer and the tortured, bellowing animals attracted little of her notice. She was not hard-hearted; she was simply almost insane. In this state of abnormal exaltation she continued until the party reached the quiet and safety of the Moqui pueblos.
Then there was a change; exhausted nature required either apathy or death; and for two days she lay in a sort of stupor, sleeping a great deal, and crying often when awake. The only person capable of rousing her was Sergeant Meyer, who made expeditions to the other pueblos for news of Thurstane, and brought her news of his hopes and his failures.
After a three days' rest Coronado decided to resume his journey by moving southward toward the Bernalillo trail. Freed from Thurstane, he no longer contemplated losing Clara in the desert, but meant to marry her, and trusted that he could do it. Two of his wagons he presented to the Moquis, who were, of course, delighted with the acquisition, although they had no more use for wheeled vehicles than for gunboats. With only four wagons, his animals were more than sufficient, and the train made tolerably rapid progress, in spite of the roughness of the country.
The land was still a wonder. The water wizards of old had done their grotesque utmost here. What with sculpturing and frescoing, they had made that most fantastic wilderness the Painted Desert. It looked like a mirage. The travellers had an impression that here was some atmospheric illusion. It seemed as if it could not last five minutes if the sun should shine upon it. There were crowding hills so variegated and gay as to put one in mind of masses of soap-bubbles. But the coloring was laid on fifteen hundred feet deep. It consisted of sandstone marls, red, blue, green, orange, purple, white, brown, lilac, and yellow, interstratified with magnesian limestone in bands of purple, bluish-white, and mottled, with here and there shining flecks or great glares of gypsum.
Among the more delicate wonders of the scene were the petrified trunks which had once been pines and cedars, but which were now flint or jasper. The washings of geologic aeons have exposed to view immense quantities of these enchanted forests. Fragments of silicified trees are not only strewn over the lowlands, but are piled by the hundred cords at the bases of slopes, seeming like so much drift-wood from wonder-lands far up the stream of time. Generally they are in short bits, broken square across the grain, as if sawed. Some are jasper, and look like masses of red sealing-wax; others are agate, or opalescent chalcedony, beautifully lined and variegated; many retain the graining, layers, knots, and other details of their woody structure.
In places where the marls had been washed away gently, the emigrants found trunks complete, from root to summit, fifty feet in length and three in diameter. All the branches, however, were gone; the tree had been uprooted, transported, whirled and worn by deluges; then to commemorate the victory of the water sprites, it had been changed into stone. The sight of these remnants of antediluvian woodlands made history seem the reminiscence of a child. They were already petrifactions when the human race was born.
The Painted Desert has other marvels. Throughout vast stretches you pass between tintedmesas, or tables, which face each other across flat valleys like painted palaces across the streets of Genova la Superba. They are giant splendors, hundreds of feet in height, built of blood-red sandstone capped with variegated marls. The torrents, which scooped out the intersecting levels, amused their monstrous leisure with carving the points and abutments of themesainto fantastic forms, so that the traveller sees towers, minarets, and spires loftier than the pinnacles of cathedrals.
The emigrants were often deceived by these freaks of nature. Beheld from a distance, it seemed impossible that they should not be ruins, the monuments of some Cyclopean race. Aunt Maria, in particular, discovered casas grandes and casas de Montezuma very frequently.
"There is another casa," she would say, staring through her spectacles (broken) at a butte three hundred feet high. "What a people it must have been which raised such edifices!"
And she would stick to it, too, until she was close up to the solid rock, and then would renew the transforming miracle five or ten miles further on.
During this long and marvellous journey Coronado renewed his courtship. He was cautious, however; he made a confidant of his friend Aunt Maria; begged her favorable intercession.
"Clara," said Mrs. Stanley, as the two women jolted along in one of the lumbering wagons, "there is one thing in your life which perhaps you don't suspect."
The girl, who wanted to hear about Thurstane all the time, and expected to hear about him, asked eagerly, "What is it?"
"You have made Mr. Coronado fall in love with you," said Aunt Maria, thinking it wise to be clear and straightforward, as men are reputed to be.
The young lady, instantly revolting from the subject, made no reply.
"I think, Clara, that if you take a husband—and most women do—he would be just the person for you."
Clara, once the gentlest of the gentle, was perfectly angelic no longer. She gave her relative a stare which was partly intense misery, but which had much the look of pure anger, as indeed it was in a measure.
The expressions of violent emotion are alarming to most people. Aunt Maria, beholding this tortured soul glaring at her out of its prison windows, recoiled in surprise and awe. There was not another word spoken at the time concerning the obnoxious match-making. A single stare of Marius had put to flight the executioner.
In one way and another Clara continued to baffle her suitor and her advocate. The days dragged on; the expedition steadily traversed the desert; the Santa Anna region was crossed, and the Bernalillo trail reached; one hundred, two hundred, three hundred miles and more were left behind; and still Coronado, though without a rival, was not accepted.
Then came an adventure which partly helped and partly hindered his plans. The train was overtaken by a detachment of the Fifth United States Cavalry, commanded by Major John Robinson, pushing for California. Of course Sergeant Meyer reported himself and Kelly to the Major, and of course the Major ordered them to join his party as far as Fort Yuma. This deprived Clara of her trusted protectors; but on the other hand, she threatened to take advantage of the escort of Robinson for the rest of her journey; and the mere mention of this at once brought Coronado on his soul's marrow-bones. He swore by the heaven above, by all the saints and angels, by the throne of the Virgin Mary, by every sacred object he could think of, that not another word of love should pass his lips during the journey, that he would live the life of a dead man, etc. Overcome by his pleadings, and by the remonstrances of Aunt Maria, who did not want to have her favorite driven to commit suicide, Clara agreed to continue with the train.
After this scene followed days of hot travelling over hard, gravelly plains, thinly coated with grass and dotted with cacti, mezquit trees, the leafless palo verde, and the greasewood bush. Here and there towered that giant cactus, the saguarra, a fluted shaft, thirty, forty, and even sixty feet high, with a coronet of richly-colored flowers, the whole fabric as splendid as a Corinthian column. Prickly pears, each one large enough to make a thicket, abounded. Through the scorching sunshine ran scorpions and lizards, pursued by enormous rattlesnakes. During the days the heat ranged from 100 to 115 deg. in the shade, while the nights were swept by winds as parching as the breath of an oven. The distant mountains glared at the eye like metals brought to a white heat. Not seldom they passed horses, mules, cattle, and sheep, which had perished in this terrible transit and been turned to mummies by the dry air and baking sun. Some of these carcasses, having been set on their legs by passing travellers, stood upright, staring with blind eyeballs, grinning through dried lips, mockeries of life, statues of death.
In spite of these hardships and horrors, Clara kept up her courage and was almost cheerful; for in the first place Coronado had ceased his terrifying attentions, and in the second place they were nearing Cactus Pass, where she hoped to meet Thurstane. When love has not a foot of certainty to stand upon, it can take wing and soar through the incredible. The idea that they two, divided hundreds of miles back, should come together at a given point by pure accident, was obviously absurd. Yet Clara could trust to the chance and live for it.
The scenery changed to mountains. There were barren, sublime, awful peaks to the right and left. To the girl's eyes they were beautiful, for she trusted that Thurstane beheld them. She was always on horseback now, scanning every feature of the landscape, searching of course for him. She did not pass a cactus, or a thicket of mezquit, or a bowlder without anxious examination. She imagined herself finding him helpless with hunger, or passing him unseen and leaving him to die. She was so pale and thin with constant anxiety that you might have thought her half starved, or recovering from some acute malady.
About five one afternoon, as the train was approaching its halting-place at a spring on the western side of the pass, Clara's feverish mind fixed on a group of rocks half a mile from the trail as the spot where she would find Thurstane. In obedience to similar impressions she had already made many expeditions of this nature. Constant failure, and a consciousness that all this searching was folly, could not shake her wild hopes. She set off at a canter alone; but after going some four hundred yards she heard a gallop behind her, and, looking over her shoulder, she saw Coronado. She did not want to be away from the train with him; but she must at all hazards reach that group of rocks; something within impelled her. Better mounted than she, he was soon by her side, and after a while struck out in advance, saying, "I will look out for an ambush."
When Coronado reached the rocks he was fifty yards ahead of Clara. He made the circuit of them at a slow canter; in so doing he discovered the starving and fainted Thurstane lying in the high grass beneath a low shelf of stone; he saw him, he recognized him, and in an instant he trembled from head to foot. But such was his power of self-control that he did not check his horse, nor cast a second look to see whether the man was alive or dead. He turned the last stone in the group, met Clara with a forced smile, and said gently, "There is nothing."
She reined up, drew a long sigh, thought that here was another foolish hope crushed, and turned her horse's head toward the train.