"What route do you take from here?" asked the officer.

"Pass Washington, as you call it. Then the Moqui country. Then the San Juan."

"There is no possible road down the San Juan and the Colorado."

"If we find that to be so, we will sweep southward. I am, in a measure, exploring. Garcia wants a route to Middle California."

"I also have a sort of exploring leave. I shall take the liberty to keep along with you. It may be best for both."

The announcement sounded like a threat of surveillance, and Coronado's dark cheek turned darker with angry blood. This stolid and intrusive brute was absolutely demanding his own death. After saying, with a forced smile, "You will be invaluable to us, Lieutenant," the Mexican lounged away to where Texas Smith was examining his firearms, and whispered, "Well, will you do it?"

"I ain't afeared of him," muttered the borderer. "It's his clothes. I don't like to shute at jackets with them buttons. I mought git into big trouble. The army is a big thing."

"Two hundred dollars," whispered Coronado.

"You said that befo'," croaked Texas. "Go it some better."

"Four hundred."

"Stranger," said Texas, after debating his chances, "it's a big thing. But I'll do it for that."

Coronado walked away, hurried up his muleteers, exchanged a word with Mrs. Stanley, and finally returned to Thurstane. His thin, dry, dusky fingers trembled a little, but he looked his man steadily in the face, while he tendered him another cigarito.

"Who is your hunter?" asked the officer. "I must say he is a devilish bad-looking fellow."

"He is one of the best hunters Garcia ever had," replied the Mexican. "He is one of your own people. You ought to like him."

Further journeying brought with it topographical adventures. The country into which they were penetrating is one of the most remarkable in the world for its physical peculiarities. Its scenery bears about the same relation to the scenery of earth in general, that a skeleton's head or a grotesque mask bears to the countenance of living humanity. In no other portion of our planet is nature so unnatural, so fanciful and extravagant, and seemingly the production of caprice, as on the great central plateau of North America.

They had left far behind the fertile valley of the Rio Grande, and had placed between it and them the barren, sullen piles of the Jemez mountains. No more long sweeps of grassy plain or slope; they were amid the debris of rocks which hedge in the upper heights of the great plateau; they were struggling through it like a forlorn hope through chevaux-de-frise. The morning sun came upon them over treeless ridges of sandstone, and disappeared at evening behind ridges equally naked and arid. The sides of these barren masses, seamed by the action of water in remote geologic ages, and never softened or smoothed by the gentle attrition of rain, were infinitely more wild and jagged in their details than ruins. It seemed as if the Titans had built here, and their works had been shattered by thunderbolts.

Many heights were truncated mounds of rock, resembling gigantic platforms with ruinous sides, such as are known in this Western land as mesas or buttes. They were Nature's enormous mockery of the most ambitious architecture of man, the pyramids of Egypt and the platform of Baalbek. Terrace above terrace of shattered wall; escarpments which had been displaced as if by the explosion of some incredible mine; ramparts which were here high and regular, and there gaping in mighty fissures, or suddenly altogether lacking; long sweeps of stairway, winding dizzily upwards, only to close in an impossible leap: there was no end to the fantastic outlines and the suggestions of destruction.

Nor were the open spaces between these rocky mounds less remarkable. In one valley, the course of a river which vanished ages ago, the power of fire had left its monuments amid those of the power of water. The sedimentary rock of sandstone, shales, and marl, not only showed veins of ignitible lignite, but it was pierced by the trap which had been shot up from earth's flaming recesses. Dikes of this volcanic stone crossed each other or ran in long parallels, presenting forms of fortifications, walls of buildings, ruined lines of aqueducts. The sandstone and marl had been worn away by the departed river, and by the delicately sweeping, incessant, tireless wings of the afreets of the air, leaving the iron-like trap in bold projection.

Some of these dikes stretched long distances, with a nearly uniform height of four or five feet, closely resembling old field-walls of the solidest masonry. Others, not so extensive, but higher and pierced with holes, seemed to be fragments of ruined edifices, with broken windows and shattered portals. As the trap is columnar, and the columns are horizontal in their direction, the joints of the polygons show along the surface of the ramparts, causing them to look like the work of Cyclopean builders. The Indians and Mexicans of the expedition, deceived by the similarity between these freaks of creation and the results of human workmanship, repeatedly called out, "Casas Grandes! Casas de Montezuma!"

It would seem, indeed, as if the ancient peoples of this country, in order to arrive at the idea of a large architecture, had only to copy the grotesque rock-work of nature. Who knows but that such might have been the germinal idea of their constructions? Mrs. Stanley was quite sure of it. In fact, she was disposed to maintain that the trap walls were really human masonry, and the production of Montezuma, or of the Amazons invented by Coronado.

"Those four-sided and six-sided stones look altogether too regular to be accidental," was her conclusion. Notwithstanding her belief in a superintending Deity, she had an idea that much of this world was made by hazard, or perhaps by the Old Harry.

In one valley the ancient demon of water-force had excelled himself in enchantments. The slopes of the alluvial soil were dotted with little buttes of mingled sandstone and shale, varying from five to twenty feet in height, many of them bearing a grotesque likeness to artificial objects. There were columns, there were haystacks, there were enormous bells, there were inverted jars, there were junk bottles, there were rustic seats. Most of these fantastic figures were surmounted by a flat capital, the remnant of a layer of stone harder than the rest of the mass, and therefore less worn by the water erosion.

One fragment looked like a monstrous gymnastic club standing upright, with a broad button to secure the grip. Another was a mighty centre-table, fit for the halls of the Scandinavian gods, consisting of a solid prop or pedestal twelve feet high, swelling out at the top into a leaf fifteen feet across. Another was a stone hat, standing on its crown, with a brim two yards in diameter. Occasionally there was a figure which had lost its capital, and so looked like a broken pillar, a sugar loaf, a pear. Imbedded in these grotesques of sandstone were fossils of wood, of fresh-water shells, and of fishes.

It was a land of extravagances and of wonders. The marvellous adventures of the "Arabian Nights" would have seemed natural in it. It reminded you after a vague fashion of the scenery suggested to the imagination by some of its details or those of the "Pilgrim's Progress." Sindbad the Sailor carrying the Old Man of the Sea; Giant Despair scowling from a make-believe window in a fictitious castle of eroded sandstone; a roc with wings eighty feet long, poising on a giddy pinnacle to pounce upon an elephant; pilgrim Christian advancing with sword and buckler against a demon guarding some rocky portal, would have excited no astonishment here.

Of a sudden there came an adventure which gave opening for knight-errantry. As Thurstane, Coronado, and Texas Smith were riding a few hundred yards ahead of the caravan, and just emerging from what seemed an enormous court or public square, surrounded by ruined edifices of gigantic magnitude, they discovered a man running toward them in a style which reminded the Lieutenant of Timorous and Mistrust flying from the lions. Impossible to see what he was afraid of; there was a broad, yellow plain, dotted with monuments of sandstone; no living thing visible but this man running.

He was an American; at least he had the clothes of one. As he approached, he appeared to be a lean, lank, narrow-shouldered, yellow-faced, yellow-haired creature, such as you might expect to find on Cape Cod or thereabouts. Hollow-chested as he was, he had a yell in him which was quite surprising. From the time that he sighted the three horsemen he kept up a steady screech until he was safe under their noses. Then he fell flat and gasped for nearly a minute without speaking. His first words were, "That's pooty good sailin' for a man who ain't used to't."

"Did you run all the way from Down East?" asked Thurstane.

"All the way from that bewt there—the one that looks most like a haystack."

"Well, who the devil are you?"

"I'm Phineas Glover—Capm Phineas Glover—from Fair Haven, Connecticut. I'm goin' to Californy after gold. Got lost out of the caravan among the mountings. Was comin' along alone, 'n' run afoul of some Injuns. They're hidin' behind that bewt, 'n' they've got my mewl."

"Indians! How many are there?"

"Only three. 'N' I expect they a'nt the real wild kind, nuther. Sorter half Injun, half engineer, like what come round in the circuses. Didn't make much of 'n offer towards carvin' me. But I judged best to quit, the first boat that put off. Ah, they're there yit, 'n' the mewl tew."

"You'll find our train back there," said Thurstane. "You had better make for it. We'll recover your property."

He dashed off at a full run for the butte, closely followed by Texas Smith and Coronado. The Mexican had the best horse, and he would soon have led the other two; but his saddle-girth burst, and in spite of his skill in riding he was nearly thrown. Texas Smith pulled up to aid his employer, but only for an instant, as Coronado called, "Go on."

The borderer now spurred after Thurstane, who had got a dozen rods the lead of him. Coronado rapidly examined his saddle-bags and then his pockets without finding the cord or strap which he needed. He swore a little at this, but not with any poignant emotion, for in the first place fighting was not a thing that he yearned for, and in the second place he hardly anticipated a combat. The robbers, he felt certain, were only vagrant rancheros, or the cowardly Indians of some village, who would have neither the weapons nor the pluck to give battle.

But suddenly an alarming suspicion crossed his mind. Would Texas Smith seize this chance to send a bullet through Thurstane's head from behind? Knowing the cutthroat's recklessness and his almost insane thirst for blood, he feared that this might happen. And there was the train in view; the deed would probably be seen, and, if so, would be seen as murder; and then would come pursuit of the assassin, with possibly his seizure and confession. It would not do; no, it would not do here and now; he must dash forward and prevent it.

Swinging his saddle upon his horse's back, he vaulted into it without touching pommel or stirrup, and set off at full speed to arrest the blow which he desired. Over the plain flew the fiery animal, Coronado balancing himself in his unsteady seat with marvellous ease and grace, his dark eyes steadily watching every movement of the bushwhacker. There were sheets of bare rock here and there; there were loose slates and detached blocks of sandstone. The beast dashed across the first without slipping, and cleared the others without swerving; his rider bowed and swayed in the saddle without falling.

Texas Smith was now within a few yards of Thurstane, and it could be seen that he had drawn his revolver. Coronado asked himself in horror whether the man had understood the words "Go on" as a command for murder. He was thinking very fast; he was thinking as fast as he rode. Once a terrible temptation came upon him: he might let the fatal shot be fired; then he might fire another. Thus he would get rid of Thurstane, and at the same time have the air of avenging him, while ridding himself of his dangerous bravo. But he rejected this plan almost as soon as he thought of it. He did not feel sure of bringing down Texas at the first fire, and if he did not, his own life was not worth a second's purchase. As for the fact that he had been lately saved from death by the borderer, that would not have checked Coronado's hand, even had he remembered it. He must dash on at full speed, and prevent a crime which would be a blunder. But already it was nearly too late, for the Texan was close upon the officer. Nothing could save the doomed man but Coronado's magnificent horsemanship. He seemed a part of his steed; he shot like a bird over the sheets and bowlders of rock; he was a wonder of speed and grace.

Suddenly the outlaw's pistol rose to a level, and Coronado uttered a shout of anxiety and horror.



CHAPTER VII.

At the shout which Coronado uttered on seeing Texas Smith's pistol aimed at Thurstane, the assassin turned his head, discovered the train, and, lowering his weapon, rode peacefully alongside of his intended victim.

Captain Phin Glover's mule was found grazing behind the butte, in the midst of the gallant Captain's dishevelled baggage, while the robbers had vanished by a magic which seemed quite natural in this scenery of grotesque marvels. They had unquestionably seen or heard their pursuers; but how had they got into the bowels of the earth to escape them?

Thurstane presently solved the mystery by pointing out three crouching figures on the flat cap of stone which surmounted the shales and marl of the butte. Bare feet and desperation of terror could alone explain how they had reached this impossible refuge. Texas Smith immediately consoled himself for his disappointment as to Thurstane by shooting two of these wretches before his hand could be stayed.

"They're nothin' but Injuns," he said, with a savage glare, when the Lieutenant struck aside his revolver and called him a murdering brute.

The third skulker took advantage of the cessation of firing to tumble down from his perch and fly for his life. The indefatigable Smith broke away from Thurstane, dashed after the pitiful fugitive, leaned over him as he ran, and shot him dead.

"I have a great mind to blow your brains out, you beast," roared the disgusted officer, who had followed closely. "I told you not to shoot that man." And here he swore heartily, for which we must endeavor to forgive him, seeing that he belonged to the army.

Coronado interfered. "My dear Lieutenant! after all, they were robbers. They deserved punishment." And so on.

Texas Smith looked less angry and more discomfited than might have been expected, considering his hardening life and ferocious nature.

"Didn't s'p'ose you really keered much for the cuss," he said, glancing respectfully at the imperious and angry face of the young officer.

"Well, never mind now," growled Thurstane. "It's done, and can't be undone. But, by Jove, I do hate useless massacre. Fighting is another thing."

Sheathing his fury, he rode off rapidly toward the wagons, followed in silence by the others. The three dead vagabonds (perhaps vagrants from the region of Abiquia) remained where they had fallen, one on the stony plain and two on the cap of the butte. The train, trending here toward the northwest, passed six hundred yards to the north of the scene of slaughter; and when Clara and Mrs. Stanley asked what had happened, Coronado told them with perfect glibness that the robbers had got away.

The rescued man, delighted at his escape and the recovery of his mule and luggage, returned thanks right and left, with a volubility which further acquaintance showed to be one of his characteristics. He was a profuse talker; ran a stream every time you looked at him; it was like turning on a mill-race.

"Yes, capm, out of Fair Haven," he said. "Been in the coastin' 'n' Wes' Injy trade. Had 'n unlucky time out las' few years. Had a schuner burnt in port, 'n' lost a brig at sea. Pooty much broke me up. Wife 'n' dahter gone into th' oyster-openin' business. Thought I'd try my han' at openin' gold mines in Californy. Jined a caravan at Fort Leavenworth, 'n' lost my reckonin's back here a ways."

We must return to love matters. However amazing it may be that a man who has no conscience should nevertheless have a heart, such appears to have been the case with that abnormal creature Coronado. The desert had made him take a strong liking to Clara, and now that he had a rival at hand he became impassioned for her. He began to want to marry her, not alone for the sake of her great fortune, but also for her own sake. Her beauty unfolded and blossomed wonderfully before his ardent eyes; for he was under that mighty glamour of the emotions which enables us to see beauty in its completeness; he was favored with the greatest earthly second-sight which is vouchsafed to mortals.

Only in a measure, however; the money still counted for much with him. He had already decided what he would do with the Munoz fortune when he should get it. He would go to New York and lead a life of frugal extravagance, economical in comforts (as we understand them) and expensive in pleasures. New York, with its adjuncts of Saratoga and Newport, was to him what Paris is to many Americans. In his imagination it was the height of grandeur and happiness to have a box at the opera, to lounge in Broadway, and to dance at the hops of the Saratoga hotels. New Mexico! he would turn his back on it; he would never set eyes on its dull poverty again. As for Clara? Well, of course she would share in his gayeties; was not that enough for any reasonable woman?

But here was this stumbling-block of a Thurstane. In the presence of a handsome rival, who, moreover, had started first in the race, slow was far from being sure. Coronado had discovered, by long experience in flirtation and much intelligent meditation upon it, that, if a man wants to win a woman, he must get her head full of him. He decided, therefore, that at the first chance he would give Clara distinctly to understand how ardently he was in love with her, and so set her to thinking especially of him, and of him alone. Meantime, he looked at her adoringly, insinuated compliments, performed little services, walked his horse much by her side, did his best in conversation, and in all ways tried to outshine the Lieutenant.

He supposed that he did outshine him. A man of thirty always believes that he appears to better advantage than a man of twenty-three or four. He trusts that he has more ideas, that he commits fewer absurdities, that he carries more weight of character than his juvenile rival. Coronado was far more fluent than Thurstane; had a greater command over his moods and manners, and a larger fund of animal spirits; knew more about such social trifles as women like to hear of; and was, in short, a more amusing prattler of small talk. There was a steady seriousness about the young officer—something of the earnest sentimentality of the great Teutonic race—which the mercurial Mexican did not understand nor appreciate, and which he did not imagine could be fascinating to a woman. Knowing well how magnetic passion is in its guise of Southern fervor, he did not know that it is also potent under the cloak of Northern solemnity.

Unluckily for Coronado, Clara was half Teutonic, and could comprehend the tone of her father's race. Notwithstanding Thurstane's shyness and silences, she discovered his moral weight and gathered his unspoken meanings. There was more in this girl than appeared on the surface. Without any power of reasoning concerning character, and without even a disposition to analyze it, she had an instinctive perception of it. While her talk was usually as simple as a child's, and her meditations on men and things were not a bit systematic or logical, her decisions and actions were generally just what they should be.

Some one may wish to know whether she was clever enough to see through the character of Coronado. She was clever enough, but not corrupt enough. Very pure people cannot fully understand people who are very impure. It is probable that angels are considerably in the dark concerning the nature of the devil, and derive their disagreeable impression of him mainly from a consideration of his actions. Clara, limited to a narrow circle of good intentions and conduct, might not divine the wide regions of wickedness through which roved the soul of Coronado, and must wait to see his works before she could fairly bring him to judgment.

Of course she perceived that in various ways he was insincere. When he prattled compliments and expressions of devotion, whether to herself or to others, she made Spanish allowance. It was polite hyperbole; it was about the same as saying good-morning; it was a cheerful way of talking that they had in Mexico; she knew thus much from her social experience. But while she cared little for his adulations, she did not because of them consider him a scoundrel, nor necessarily a hypocrite.

Coronado found and improved opportunities to talk in asides with Clara. Thurstane, the modest, proud, manly youngster, who had no meannesses or trickeries by nature, and had learned none in his honorable profession, would not allow himself to break into these dialogues if they looked at all like confidences. The more he suspected that Coronado was courting Clara, the more resolutely and grimly he said to himself, "Stand back!" The girl should be perfectly free to choose between them; she should be influenced by no compulsions and no stratagems of his; was he not "an officer and a gentleman"?

"By Jove! I am miserable for life," he thought when he suspected, as he sometimes did, that they two were in love. "I'll get myself killed in my next fight. I can't bear it. But I won't interfere. I'll do my duty as an honorable man. Of course she understands me."

But just at this point Clara failed to understand him. It is asserted by some philosophers that women have less conscience about "cutting each other out," breaking up engagements, etc., than men have in such matters. Love-making and its results form such an all-important part of their existence, that they must occasionally allow success therein to overbear such vague, passionless ideas as principles, sentiments of honor, etc. It is, we fear, highly probable that if Clara had been in love with Ralph, and had seen her chance of empire threatened by a rival, she would have come out of that calm innocence which now seemed to enfold her whole nature, and would have done such things as girls may do to avert catastrophes of the affections. She now thought to herself, If he cares for me, how can he keep away from me when he sees Coronado making eyes at me? She was a little vexed with him for behaving so, and was consequently all the sweeter to his rival. This when Ralph would have risked his commission for a smile, and would have died to save her from a sorrow!

Presently this slightly coquettish, yet very good and lovely little being—this seraph from one of Fra Angelica's pictures, endowed with a frailty or two of humanity—found herself the heroine of a trying scene. Coronado hastened it; he judged her ready to fall into his net; he managed the time and place for the capture. The train had been ascending for some hours, and had at last reached a broad plateau, a nearly even floor of sandstone, covered with a carpet of thin earth, the whole noble level bare to the eye at once, without a tree or a thicket to give it detail. It was a scene of tranquillity and monotony; no rains ever disturbed or remoulded the tabulated surface of soil; there, as distinct as if made yesterday, were the tracks of a train which had passed a year before.

"Shall we take a gallop?" said Coronado. "No danger of ambushes here."

Clara's eyes sparkled with youth's love of excitement, and the two horses sprang off at speed toward the centre of the plateau. After a glorious flight of five minutes, enjoyed for the most part in silence, as such swift delights usually are, they dropped into a walk two miles ahead of the wagons.

"That was magnificent," Clara of course said, her face flushed with pleasure and exercise.

"You are wonderfully handsome," observed Coronado, with an air of thinking aloud, which disguised the coarse directness of the flattery. In fact, he was so dazzled by her brilliant color, the sunlight in her disordered curls, and the joyous sparkling of her hazel eyes, that he spoke with an ingratiating honesty.

Clara, who was in one of her unconscious and innocent moods, simply replied, "I suppose people are always handsome enough when they are happy."

"Then I ought to be lovely," said Coronado. "I am happier than I ever was before."

"Coronado, you look very well," observed Clara, turning her eyes on him with a grave expression which rather puzzled him. "This out-of-door life has done you good."

"Then I don't look very well indoors?" he smiled.

"You know what I mean, Coronado. Your health has improved, and your face shows it."

Fearing that she was not in an emotional condition to be bewildered and fascinated by a declaration of love, he queried whether he had not better put off his enterprise until a more susceptible moment. Certainly, if he were without a rival; but there was Thurstane, ready any and every day to propose; it would not do to let him have the first word, and cause the first heart-beat. Coronado believed that to make sure of winning the race he must take the lead at the start. Yes, he would offer himself now; he would begin by talking her into a receptive state of mind; that done, he would say with all his eloquence, "I love you."

We must not suppose that the declaration would be a pure fib, or anything like it. The man had no conscience, and he was almost incomparably selfish, but he was capable of loving, and he did love. That is to say, he was inflamed by this girl's beauty and longed to possess it. It is a low species of affection, but it is capable of great violence in a man whose physical nature is ardent, and Coronado's blood could take a heat like lava. Already, although he had not yet developed his full power of longing, he wanted Clara as he had never wanted any woman before. We can best describe his kind of sentiment by that hungry, carnal word wanted.

After riding in silent thought for a few rods, he said, "I have lost my good looks now, I suppose."

"What do you mean, Coronado?"

"They depend on my happiness, and that is gone."

"Coronado, you are playing riddles."

"This table-land reminds me of my own life. Do you see that it has no verdure? I have been just as barren of all true happiness. There has been no fruit or blossom of true affection for me to gather. You know that I lost my excellent father and my sainted mother when I was a child. I was too young to miss them; but for all that the bereavement was the same; there was the less love for me. It seems as if there had been none."

"Garcia has been good to you—of late," suggested Clara, rather puzzled to find consolation for a man whose misery was so new to her.

Remembering what a scoundrel Garcia was, and what a villainous business Garcia had sent him upon, Coronado felt like smiling. He knew that the old man had no sentiments beyond egotism, and a family pride which mainly, if not entirely, sprang from it. Such a heart as Garcia's, what a place to nestle in! Such a creature as Coronado seeking comfort in such a breast as his uncle's was very much like a rattlesnake warming himself in a hole of a rock.

"Ah, yes!" sighed Coronado. "Admirable old gentleman! I should not have forgotten him. However, he is a solace which comes rather late. It is only two years since he perceived that he had done me injustice, and received me into favor. And his affection is somewhat cold. Garcia is an old man laden with affairs. Moreover, men in general have little sympathy with men. When we are saddened, we do not look to our own sex for cheer. We look to yours."

Almost every woman responds promptly to a claim for pity.

"I am sorry for you, Coronado," said Clara, in her artless way. "I am, truly."

"You do not know, you cannot know, how you console me."

Satisfied with the results of his experiment in boring for sympathy, he tried another, a dangerous one, it would seem, but very potent when it succeeds.

"This lack of affection has had sad results. I have searched everywhere for it, only to meet with disappointment. In my desperation I have searched where I should not. I have demanded true love of people who had no true love to give. And for this error and wrong I have been terribly punished. The mere failure of hope and trust has been hard enough to bear. But that was not the half. Shame, self-contempt, remorse have been an infinitely heavier burden. If any man was ever cured of trusting for happiness to a wicked world, it is Coronado."

In spite of his words and his elaborately penitent expression, Clara only partially understood him. Some kind of evil life he was obviously confessing, but what kind she only guessed in the vaguest fashion. However, she comprehended enough to interest her warmly: here was a penitent sinner who had forsaken ways of wickedness; here was a struggling soul which needed encouragement and tenderness. A woman loves to believe that she can be potent over hearts, and especially that she can be potent for good. Clara fixed upon Coronado's face a gaze of compassion and benevolence which was almost superhuman. It should have shamed him into honesty; but he was capable of trying to deceive the saints and the Virgin; he merely decided that she was in a fit frame to accept him.

"At last I have a faint hope of a sure and pure happiness," he said. "I have found one who I know can strengthen me and comfort me, if she will. I am seeking to be worthy of her. I am worthy of her so far as adoration can make me. I am ready to surrender my whole life—all that I am and that I can be—to her."

Clara had begun to guess his meaning; the quick blood was already flooding her cheek; the light in her eyes was tremulous with agitation.

"Clara, you must know what I mean," continued Coronado, suddenly reaching his hand toward her, as if to take her captive. "You are the only person I ever loved. I love you with all my soul. Can your heart ever respond to mine? Can you ever bring yourself to be my wife?"



CHAPTER VIII.

When Coronado proposed to Clara, she was for a moment stricken dumb with astonishment and with something like terror.

Her first idea was that she must take him; that the mere fact of a man asking for her gave him a species of right over her; that there was no such thing possible as answering, No. She sat looking at Coronado with a helpless, timorous air, very much as a child looks at his father, when the father, switching his rattan, says, "Come with me."

On recovering herself a little, her first words—uttered slowly, in a tone of surprise and of involuntary reproach—were, "Oh, Coronado! I did not expect this."

"Can't you answer me?" he asked in a voice which was honestly tremulous with emotion. "Can't you say yes?"

"Oh, Coronado!" repeated Clara, a good deal touched by his agitation.

"Can't you?" he pleaded. Repetitions, in such cases, are so natural and so potent.

"Let me think, Coronado," she implored. "I can't answer you now. You have taken me so by surprise!"

"Every moment that you take to think is torture to me," he pleaded, as he continued to press her.

Perhaps she was on the point of giving way before his insistence. Consider the advantages that he had over her in this struggle of wills for the mastery. He was older by ten years; he possessed both the adroitness of self-command and the energy of passion; he had a long experience in love matters, while she had none. He was the proclaimed heir of a man reputed wealthy, and could therefore, as she believed, support her handsomely. Since the death of her father she considered Garcia the head of her family in New Mexico; and Coronado had had the face to tell her that he made his offer with the approval of Garcia. Then she was under supposed obligations to him, and he was to be her protector across the desert.

She was as it were reeling in her saddle, when a truly Spanish idea saved her.

"Munoz!" she exclaimed. "Coronado, you forget my grandfather. He should know of this."

Although the man was unaccustomed to start, he drew back as if a ghost had confronted him; and even when he recovered from his transitory emotion, he did not at first know how to answer her. It would not do to say, "Munoz is dead," and much less to add, "You are his heir."

"We are Americans," he at last argued. "Spanish customs are dead and buried. Can't you speak for yourself on a matter which concerns you and me alone?"

"Coronado, I think it would not be right," she replied, holding firmly to her position. "It is probable that my grandfather would be better pleased to have this matter referred to him. I ought to consider him, and you must let me do so."

"I submit," he bowed, seeing that there was no help for it, and deciding to make a grace of necessity. "It pains me, but I submit. Let me hope that you will not let this pass from your mind. Some day, when it is proper, I shall speak again."

He was not wholly dissatisfied, for he trusted that henceforward her head would be full of him, and he had not much hoped to gain more in a first effort.

"I shall always be proud and gratified at the compliment you have paid me," was her reply to his last request.

"You deserve many such compliments," he said, gravely courteous and quite sincere.

Then they cantered back in silence to meet the advancing train.

Yes, Coronado was partly satisfied. He believed that he had gained a firmer footing among the girl's thoughts and emotions than had been gained by Thurstane. In a degree he was right. No sensitive, and pure, and good girl can receive her first offer without being much moved by it. The man who has placed himself at her feet will affect her strongly. She may begin to dread him, or begin to like him more than before; but she cannot remain utterly indifferent to him. The probability is that, unless subsequent events make him disagreeable to her, she will long accord him a measure of esteem and gratitude.

For two or three days, while Clara was thinking much of Coronado, he gave her less than usual of his society. Believing that her mind was occupied with him, that she was wondering whether he were angry, unhappy, etc., he remained a good deal apart, wrapped himself in sadness, and trusted that time would do much for him. Had there been no rival, the plan would have been a good one; but Ralph Thurstane being present, it was less successful.

Ralph had already become more of a favorite than any one knew, even the young lady herself; and now that he found chances for long talks and short gallops with her, he got on better than ever. He was just the kind of youngster a girl of eighteen would naturally like to have ride by her side. He was handsome; at any rate, he was the handsomest man she had seen in the desert, and the desert was just then her sphere of society. You could see in his figure how strong he was, and in his face how brave he was. He was a good fellow, too; "tendir and trew" as the Douglas of the ballad; sincere, frank, thoroughly truthful and honorable. Every way he seemed to be that being that a woman most wants, a potential and devoted protector. Whenever Clara looked in his face her eyes said, without her knowledge, "I trust you."

Now, as we have already stated, Thurstane's eyes were uncommonly fine and expressive. Of the very darkest blue that ever was seen in anybody's head, and shaded, moreover, by remarkably long chestnut lashes, they had the advantages of both blue eyes and black ones, being as gentle as the one and as fervent as the other. Accordingly, a sort of optical conversation commenced between the two young people. Every time that Clara's glance said, "I trust you," Thurstane's responded, "I will die for you." It was a perilous sort of dialogue, and liable to involve the two souls which looked out from these sparkling, transparent windows. Before long the Lieutenant's modest heart took courage, and his stammering tongue began to be loosed somewhat, so that he uttered things which frightened both him and Clara. Not that the remarks were audacious in themselves, but he was conscious of so much unexpressed meaning behind them, and she was so ready to guess that there might be such a meaning!

It seems ridiculous that a fellow who could hold his head straight up before a storm of cannon shot, should be positively bashful. Yet so it was. The boy had been through West Point, to be sure; but he had studied there, and not flirted; the Academy had not in any way demoralized him. On the whole, in spite of swearing under gross provocation, and an inclination toward strictness in discipline, he answered pretty well for a Bayard.

His bashfulness was such, at least in the presence of Clara, that he trembled to the tips of his fingers in merely making this remark: "Miss Van Diemen, this journey is the pleasantest thing in my whole life."

Clara blushed until she dazzled him and seemed to burn herself. Nevertheless she was favored with her usual childlike artlessness of speech, and answered, "I am glad you find it agreeable."

Nothing more from Ralph for a minute; he was recovering his breath and self-possession.

"You cannot think how much safer I feel because you and your men are with us," said Clara.

Thurstane unconsciously gripped the handle of his sabre, with a feeling that he could and would massacre all the Indians of the desert, if it were necessary to preserve her from harm.

"Yes, you may rely upon my men, too," he declared. "They have a sort of adoration for you."

"Have they?" asked Clara, with a frank smile of pleasure. "I wonder at it. I hardly notice them. I ought to, they seem so patient and trusty."

"Ah, a lady!" said Thurstane. "A good soldier will die any time for a lady."

Then he wondered how she could have failed to guess that she must be worshipped by these rough men for her beauty.

"I have overheard them talking about you," he went on, gratified at being able to praise her to her face, though in the speech of others. "Little Sweeny says, in his Irish brogue, 'I can march twic't as fur for the seein' av her!'"

"Oh! did he?" laughed Clara. "I must carry Sweeny's musket for him some time."

"Don't, if you please," said Thurstane, the disciplinarian rising in him. "You would spoil him for the service."

"Can't I send him a dish from our table?"

"That would just suit his case. He hasn't got broken to hard-tack yet."

"Miss Van Diemen," was his next remark, "do you know what you are to do, if we are attacked?"

"I am to get into a wagon."

"Into which wagon?"

"Into my aunt's."

"Why into that one?"

"So as to have all the ladies together."

"When you have got into the wagon, what next?"

"Lie down on the floor to protect myself from the arrows."

"Very good," laughed Thurstane. "You say your tactics well."

This catechism had been put and recited every day since he had joined the train. The putting of it was one of the Lieutenant's duties and pleasures; and, notwithstanding its prophecy of peril, Clara enjoyed it almost as much as he.

Well, we have heard these two talk, and much in their usual fashion. Not great souls as yet: they may indeed become such some day; but at present they are only mature in moral power and in capacity for mighty emotions. Information, mental development, and conversational ability hereafter.

In one way or another two or three of these tete-a-tetes were brought about every day. Thurstane wanted them all the time; would have been glad to make life one long dialogue with Miss Van Diemen; found an aching void in every moment spent away from her. Clara, too, in spite of maidenly struggles with herself, began to be of this way of feeling. Wonderful place the Great American Desert for falling in love!

Coronado soon guessed, and with good reason, that the seed which he had sown in the girl's mind was being replaced by other germs, and that he had blundered in trusting that she would think of him while she was talking with Thurstane. The fear of losing her increased his passion for her, and made him hate his rival with correlative fervor.

"Why don't you find a chance at that fellow?" he muttered to his bravo, Texas Smith.

"How the h—l kin I do it?" growled the bushwhacker, feeling that his intelligence and courage were unjustly called in question. "He's allays around the train, an' his sojers allays handy. I hain't had nary chance."

"Take him off on a hunt."

"He ain't a gwine. I reckon he knows himself. I'm afeard to praise huntin' much to him; he might get on my trail. Tell you these army chaps is resky. I never wanted to meddle with them kind o' close. You know I said so. I said so, fair an' square, I did."

"You might manage it somehow, if you had the pluck."

"Had the pluck!" repeated Texas Smith. His sallow, haggard face turned dusky with rage, and his singularly black eyes flamed as if with hell-fire. A Malay, crazed with opium and ready to run amok, could not present a more savage spectacle than this man did as he swayed in his saddle, grinding his teeth, clutching his rifle, and glaring at Coronado. What chiefly infuriated him was that the insult should come from one whom he considered a "greaser," a man of inferior race. He, Texas Smith, an American, a white man, was treated as if he were an "Injun" or a "nigger." Coronado was thoroughly alarmed, and smoothed his ruffled feathers at once.

"I beg your pardon," he said, promptly. "My dear Mr. Smith, I was entirely wrong. Of course I know that you have courage. Everybody knows it. Besides, I am under the greatest obligations to you. You saved my life. By heavens, I am horribly ashamed of my injustice."

A minute or so of this fluent apologizing calmed the bushwhacker's rage and soothed his injured feelings.

"But you oughter be keerful how you talk that way to a white man," he said. "No white man, if he's a gentleman, can stan' being told he hain't got no pluck."

"Certainly," assented Coronado. "Well, I have apologized. What more can I do?"

"Square, you're all right now," said the forgiving Texan, stretching out his bony, dirty hand and grasping Coronado's. "But don't say it agin. White men can't stan' sech talk. Well, about this feller—I'll see, I'll see. Square, I'll try to do what's right."

As Coronado rode away from this interview, he ground his teeth with rage and mortification, muttering, "A white man! a white man! So I am a black man. Yes, I am a greaser. Curse this whole race of English-speaking people!"

After a while he began to think to the purpose. He too must work; he must not trust altogether to Texas Smith; the scoundrel might flinch, or might fail. Something must be done to separate Clara and Thurstane. What should it be? Here we are almost ashamed of Coronado. The trick that he hit upon was the stalest, the most threadbare, the most commonplace and vulgar that one can imagine. It was altogether unworthy of such a clever and experienced conspirator. His idea was this: to get lost with Clara for one night; in the morning to rejoin the train. Thurstane would be disgusted, and would unquestionably give up the girl entirely when Coronado should say to him, "It was a very unlucky accident, but I have done what a gentleman should, and we are engaged."

This coarse, dastardly, and rather stupid stratagem he put into execution as quickly as possible. There were some dangers to be guarded against, as for instance Apaches, and the chance of getting lost in reality.

"Have an eye upon me to-day," he suggested to Texas. "If I leave the train with any one, follow me and keep a lookout for Indians. Only stay out of sight."

Now for an opportunity to lead Clara astray. The region was favorable; they were in an arid land of ragged sandstone spurs and buttes; it would be necessary to march until near sunset, in order to find water and pasturage. Consequently there was both time and scenery for his project. Late in the afternoon the train crossed a narrow mesa or plateau, and approached a sublime terrace of rock which was the face of a second table-land. This terrace was cleft by several of those wonderful grooves which are known as canons, and which were wrought by that mighty water-force, the sculpturer of the American desert. In one place two of these openings were neighbors: the larger was the route and the smaller led nowhere.

"Let the train pass on," suggested Coronado to Clara. "If you will ride with me up this little canon, you will find some of the most exquisite scenery imaginable. It rejoins the large one further on. There is no danger."

Clara would have preferred not to go, or would have preferred to go with Thurstane.

"My dear child, what do you mean?" urged Aunt Maria, looking out of her wagon. "Mr. Coronado, I'll ride there with you myself."

The result of the dialogue which ensued was that, after the train had entered the gorge of the larger canon, Coronado and Clara turned back and wandered up the smaller one, followed at a distance by Texas Smith. In twenty minutes they were separated from the wagons by a barrier of sandstone several hundred feet high, and culminating in a sharp ridge or frill of rocky points, not unlike the spiny back of a John Dory. The scenery, although nothing new to Clara, was such as would be considered in any other land amazing. Vast walls on either side, consisting mainly of yellow sandstone, were variegated with white, bluish, and green shales, with layers of gypsum of the party-colored marl series, with long lines of white limestone so soft as to be nearly earth, and with red and green foliated limestone mixed with blood-red shales. The two wanderers seemed to be amid the landscapes of a Christmas drama as they rode between these painted precipices toward a crimson, sunset.

It was a perfect solitude. There was not a breath of life besides their own in this gorgeous valley of desolation. The ragged, crumbling battlements, and the loftier points of harder rock, would not have furnished subsistence for a goat or a mouse. Color was everywhere and life nowhere: it was such a region as one might look for in the moon; it did not seem to belong to an inhabited planet.

Before they had ridden half an hour the sun went down suddenly behind serrated steeps, and almost immediately night hastened in with his obscurities. Texas Smith, riding hundreds of yards in the rear and concealing himself behind the turning points of the canon, was obliged to diminish his distance in order to keep them under his guard. Clara had repeatedly expressed her doubts as to the road, and Coronado had as often asserted that they would soon see the train. At last the ravine became a gully, winding up a breast of shadowy mountain cumbered with loose rocks, and impassable to horses.

"We are lost," confessed Coronado, and then proceeded to console her. The train could not be far off; their friends would undoubtedly seek them; at all events, would not go on without them. They must bivouac there as well as might be, and in the morning rejoin the caravan.

He had been forethoughted enough to bring two blankets on his saddle, and he now spread them out for her, insisting that she should try to sleep. Clara cried frankly and heartily, and begged him to lead her back through the canon. No; it could not be traversed by night, he asserted; they would certainly break their necks among the bowlders. At last the girl suffered herself to be wrapped in the blankets, and made an endeavor to forget her wretchedness and vexation in slumber.

Meantime, a few hundred yards down the ravine, a tragedy was on the verge of action. Thurstane, missing Coronado and Clara, and learning what direction they had taken, started with two of his soldiers to find them, and was now picking his way on foot along the canon. Behind a detached rock at the base of one of the sandstone walls Texas Smith lay in ambush, aiming his rifle first at one and then at another of this stumbling trio, and cursing the starlight because it was so dim that he could not positively distinguish which was the officer.



CHAPTER IX.

For the second time within a week, Texas Smith found himself upon the brink of opportunity, without being able (as he had phrased it to Coronado) to do what was right.

He levelled at Thurstane, and then it did not seem to be Thurstane; he had a dead sure sight at Kelly, and then perceived that that was an error; he drew a bead on Shubert, and still he hesitated. He could distinguish the Lieutenant's voice, but he could not fix upon the figure which uttered it.

It was exasperating. Never had an assassin been better ambuscaded. He was kneeling behind a little ridge of sandstone; about a foot below its edge was an orifice made by the rains and winds of bygone centuries; through this, as through an embrasure, he had thrust his rifle. Not a chance of being hit by a return shot, while after the enemy's fire had been drawn he could fly down the ravine, probably without discovery and certainly without recognition. His horse was tethered below, behind another rock; and he felt positive that these men had not come upon it. He could mount, drive their beasts before him into the plain, and then return to camp. No need of explaining his absence; he was the head hunter of the expedition; it was his business to wander.

All this was so easy to do, if he could only take the first step. But he dared not fire lest he should merely kill a soldier, and so make an uproar and rouse suspicions without the slightest profit. It was not probable that Coronado would pay him for shooting the wrong man, and setting on foot a dangerous investigation. So the desperado continued to peer through the dim night, cursing his stars and everybody's stars for not shining better, and seeing his opportunity slip rapidly away. After Thurstane and the others had passed, after the chance of murder had stalked by him like a ghost and vanished, he left his ambush, glided down the ravine to his horse, waked him up with a vindictive kick, leaped into the saddle, and hastened to camp. To inquiries about the lost couple he replied in his sullen, brief way that he had not seen them; and when urged to go to their rescue, he of course set off in the wrong direction and travelled but a short distance.

Meantime Ralph had found the captives of the canon. Clara, wrapped in her blankets, was lying at the foot of a rock, and crying while she pretended to sleep. Coronado, unable to make her talk, irritated by the faint sobs which he overheard, but stubbornly resolved on carrying out his stupid plot, had retired in a state of ill-humor unusual with him to another rock, and was consoling himself by smoking cigarito after cigarito. The two horses, tied together neck and crupper, were fasting near by. As Coronado had forgotten to bring food with him, Clara was also fasting.

Think of Apaches, and imagine the terror with which she caught the sounds of approach, the heavy, stumbling steps through the darkness. Then imagine the joy with which she recognized Thurstane's call and groped to meet him. In the dizziness of her delight, and amid the hiding veils of the obscurity, it did not seem wrong nor unnatural to fall against his arm and be supported by it for a moment. Ralph received this touch, this shock, as if it had been a ball; and his nature bore the impress of it as long as if it had made a scar. In his whole previous life he had not felt such a thrill of emotion; it was almost too powerful to be adequately described as a pleasure.

Next came Coronado, as happy as a disappointed burglar whose cue it is to congratulate the rescuing policeman. "My dear Lieutenant! You are heaven's own messenger. You have saved us from a horrible night. But it is prodigious; it is incredible. You must have come here by enchantment. How in God's name could you find your way up this fearful canon?"

"The canon is perfectly passable on foot," replied the young officer, stiffly and angrily. "By Jove, sir! I don't see why you didn't make a start to get out. This is a pretty place to lodge Miss Van Diemen."

Coronado took off his hat and made a bow of submission and regret, which was lost in the darkness.

"I must say," Thurstane went on grumbling, "that, for a man who claims to know this country, your management has been very singular."

Clara, fearful of a quarrel, slightly pressed his arm and checked this volcano with the weight of a feather.

"We are not all like you, my dear Lieutenant," said Coronado, in a tone which might have been either apologetical or ironical. "You must make allowance for ordinary human nature."

"I beg pardon," returned Thurstane, who was thinking now chiefly of that pressure on his arm. "The truth is, I was alarmed for your safety. I can't help feeling responsibility on this expedition, although it is your train. My military education runs me into it, I suppose. Well, excuse my excitement. Miss Van Diemen, may I help you back through the gully?"

In leaning on him, being guided by him, being saved by him, trusting in him, the girl found a pleasure which was irresistible, although it seemed audacious and almost sinful. Before the canon was half traversed she felt as if she could go on with him through the great dark valley of life, confiding in his strength and wisdom to lead her aright and make her happy. It was a temporary wave of emotion, but she remembered it long after it had passed.

Around the fires, after a cup of hot coffee, amid the odors of a plentiful supper, recounting the evening's adventure to Mrs. Stanley, Coronado was at his best. How he rolled out the English language! Our mother tongue hardly knew itself, it ran so fluently and sounded so magniloquently and lied so naturally. He praised everybody but himself; he praised Clara, Thurstane, and the two soldiers and the horses; he even said a flattering word or two for Divine Providence. Clara especially, and the whole of her heroic, more than human sex, demanded his enthusiastic admiration. How she had borne the terrors of the night and the desert! "Ah, Mrs. Stanley! only you women are capable of such efforts."

Aunt Maria's Olympian head nodded, and her cheerful face, glowing with tea and the camp fires, confessed "Certainly!"

"What nonsense, Coronado!" said Clara. "I was horribly frightened, and you know it."

Aunt Maria frowned with surprise and denial. "Absurd, child! You were not frightened at all. Of course you were not. Why, even if you had been slightly timorous, you had your cousin to protect you."

"Ah, Mrs. Stanley, I am a poor knight-errant," said Coronado. "We Mexicans are no longer formidable. One man of your Anglo-Saxon blood is supposed to be a better defence than a dozen of us. We have been subdued; we must submit to depreciation. I must confess, in fact, that I had my fears. I was greatly relieved on my cousin's account when I heard the voice of our military chieftain here."

Then came more flattery for Ralph, with proper rations for the two privates. Those faithful soldiers—he must show his gratitude to them; he had forgotten them in the basest manner. "Here, Pedronillo, take these cigaritos to privates Kelly and Shubert, with my compliments. Begging your permission, Lieutenant. Thank you."

"Pooty tonguey man, that Seenor," observed Captain Phineas Glover to Mrs. Stanley, when the Mexican went off to his blankets.

"Yes; a very agreeable and eloquent gentleman," replied the lady, wishing to correct the skipper's statement while seeming to assent to it.

"Jess so," admitted Glover. "Ruther airy. Big talkin' man. Don't raise no sech our way."

Captain Glover was not fully aware that he himself had the fame of possessing an imagination which was almost too much for the facts of this world.

"S'pose it's in the breed," he continued. "Or likely the climate has suthin' to do with it: kinder thaws out the words 'n' sets the idees a-bilin'. Niggers is pooty much the same. Most niggers kin talk like a line runnin' out, 'n' tell lies 's fast 's our Fair Haven gals open oysters—a quart a minute."

"Captain Glover, what do you mean?" frowned Aunt Maria. "Mr. Coronado is a friend of mine."

"Oh, I was speakin' of niggers," returned the skipper promptly. "Forgot we begun about the Seenor. Sho! niggers was what I was talkin' of. B' th' way, that puts me in mind 'f one I had for cook once. Jiminy! how that man would cook! He'd cook a slice of halibut so you wouldn't know it from beefsteak."

"Dear me! how did he do it?" asked Aunt Maria, who had a fancy for kitchen mysteries.

"Never could find out," said Glover, stepping adroitly out of his difficulty. "Don't s'pose that nigger would a let on how he did it for ten dollars."

"I should think the receipt would be worth ten dollars," observed Aunt Maria thoughtfully.

"Not 'xactly here," returned the captain, with one of his dried smiles, which had the air of having been used a great many times before. "Halibut too skurce. Wal, I was goin' to tell ye 'bout this nigger. He come to be the cook he was because he was a big eater. We was wrecked once, 'n' had to live three days on old shoes 'n' that sort 'f truck. Wal, this nigger was so darned ravenous he ate up a pair o' long boots in the time it took me to git down one 'f the straps."

"Ate up a pair of boots!" exclaimed Aunt Maria, amazed and almost incredulous.

"Yes, by thunder!" insisted the captain, "grease, nails, 'n' all. An' then went at the patent leather forepiece 'f his cap."

"What privations!" said Aunt Maria, staring fit to burst her spectacles.

"Oh, that's nothin'," chuckled Glover. "I'll tell ye suthin' some time that 'll astonish ye. But jess now I'm sleepy, 'n' I guess I'll turn in."

"Mr. Cluvver, it is your durn on card do-night," interposed Meyer, the German sergeant, as the captain was about to roll himself in his blankets.

"So 'tis," returned Glover in well feigned astonishment. "Don't forgit a feller, do ye, Sergeant? How 'n the world do ye keep the 'count so straight? Oh, got a little book there, hey, with all our names down. Wal, that's shipshape. You'd make a pooty good mate, Sergeant. When does my watch begin?"

"Right away. You're always on the virst relief. You'll fall in down there at the gorner of the vagon bark."

"Wal—yes—s'pose I will," sighed the skipper, as he rolled up his blankets and prepared for two hours' sentry duty.

Let us look into the arrangements for the protection of the caravan. With Coronado's consent Thurstane had divided the eighteen Indians and Mexicans, four soldiers, Texas Smith, and Glover, twenty-four men in all, into three equal squads, each composed of a sergeant, corporal, and six privates. Meyer was sergeant of one squad, the Irish veteran Kelly had another, and Texas Smith the third. Every night a detachment went on duty in three reliefs, each relief consisting of two men, who stood sentry for two hours, at the end of which time they were relieved by two others.

The six wagons were always parked in an oblong square, one at each end and two on each side; but in order to make the central space large enough for camping purposes, they were placed several feet apart; the gaps being closed with lariats, tied from wheel to wheel, to pen in the animals and keep out charges of Apache cavalry. On either flank of this enclosure, and twenty yards or so distant from it, paced a sentry. Every two hours, as we have said, they were relieved, and in the alternate hours the posts were visited by the sergeant or corporal of the guard, who took turns in attending to this service. The squad that came off duty in the morning was allowed during the day to take naps in the wagons, and was not put upon the harder camp labor, such as gathering firewood, going for water, etc.

The two ladies and the Indian women slept at night in the wagons, not only because the canvas tops protected them from wind and dew, but also because the wooden sides would shield them from arrows. The men who were not on guard lay under the vehicles so as to form a cordon around the mules. Thurstane and Coronado, the two chiefs of this armed migration, had their alternate nights of command, each when off duty sleeping in a special wagon known as "headquarters," but holding himself ready to rise at once in case of an alarm.

The cooking fires were built away from the park, and outside the beats of the sentries. The object was twofold: first, to keep sparks from lighting on the wagon covers; second, to hide the sentries from prowling archers. At night you can see everything between yourself and a fire, but nothing beyond it. As long as the wood continued to blaze, the most adroit Indian skulker could not approach the camp without exposing himself, while the guards and the garrison were veiled from his sight by a wall of darkness behind a dazzle of light.

Such were the bivouac arrangements, intelligent, systematic, and military. Not only had our Lieutenant devised them, but he saw to it that they were kept in working order. He was zealously and faithfully seconded by his men, and especially by his two veterans. There is no human machine more accurate and trustworthy than an old soldier, who has had year on year of the discipline and drill of a regular service, and who has learned to carry out instructions to the letter.

The arrangements for the march were equally thorough and judicious. Texas Smith, as the Nimrod of the party, claimed the right of going where he pleased; but while he hunted, he of course served also as a scout to nose out danger. The six Mexicans, who were nominally cattle-drivers, but really Coronado's minor bravos, were never suffered to ride off in a body, and were expected to keep on both sides of the train, some in advance and some in rear. The drivers and muleteers remained steadily with their wagons and animals. The four soldiers were also at hand, trudging close in front or in rear, accoutrements always on and muskets always loaded.

In this fashion the expedition had already journeyed over two hundred and twenty miles. Following Colonel Washington's trail, it had crossed the ranges of mountains immediately west of Abiquia, and, striking the Rio de Chaco, had tracked its course for some distance with the hope of reaching the San Juan. Stopped by a canon, a precipitous gully hundreds of feet deep, through which the Chaco ran like a chased devil, the wagons had turned westward, and then had been forced by impassable ridges and lack of water into a southwest direction, at last gaining and crossing Pass Washington.

It was now on the western side of the Sierra de Chusca, in the rude, barren country over which Fort Defiance stands sentry. Ever since the second day after leaving San Isidore it had been on the great western slope of the continent, where every drop of water tends toward the Pacific. The pilgrims would have had cause to rejoice could they have travelled as easily as the drops of water, and been as certain of their goal. But the rivers had made roads for themselves, and man had not yet had time to do likewise.

The great central plateau of North America is a Mer de Glace in stone. It is a continent of rock, gullied by furious rivers; plateau on plateau of sandstone, with sluiceways through which lakes have escaped; the whole surface gigantically grotesque with the carvings of innumerable waters. What is remarkable in the scenery is, that its sublimity is an inversion of the sublimity of almost all other grand scenery. It is not so much the heights that are prodigious as the abysses. At certain points in the course of the Colorado of the West you can drop a plumb line six thousand feet before it will reach the bosom of the current; and you can only gain the water level by turning backward for scores of miles and winding laboriously down some subsidiary canon, itself a chasm of awful grandeur.

Our travellers were now amid wild labyrinths of ranges, and buttes, and canons, which were not so much a portion of the great plateau as they were the debris that constituted its flanks. Although thousands of feet above the level of the sea, they still had thousands of feet to ascend before they could dominate the desert. Wild as the land was, it was thus far passable, while toward the north lay the untraversable. What course should be taken? Coronado, who had crimes to commit and to conceal, did not yet feel that he was far enough from the haunts of man. As soon as possible he must again venture a push northward.

But not immediately. The mules were fagged with hard work, weak with want of sufficient pasture, and had suffered much from thirst. He resolved to continue westward to the pueblas of the Moquis, that interesting race of agricultural and partially civilized Indians, perhaps the representatives of the architects of the Casas Grandes if not also descended from the mound-builders of the Mississippi valley. Having rested and refitted there, he might start anew for the San Juan.

Thus far they had seen no Indians except the vagrants who had robbed Phineas Glover. But they might now expect to meet them; they were in a region which was the raiding ground of four great tribes: the Utes on the north, the Navajos on the west, the Apaches on the south, and the Comanches on the east. The peaceful and industrious Moquis, with their gay and warm blankets, their fields of corn and beans, and their flocks of sheep, are the quarry which attracts this ferocious cavalry of the desert, these Tartars and Bedouin of America.

Thurstane took more pains than ever with the guard duty. Coronado, unmilitary though he was, and heartily as he abominated the Lieutenant, saw the wisdom of submitting to the latter's discipline, and made all his people submit. A practical-minded man, he preferred to owe the safety of his carcass to his rival rather than have it impaled on Apache lances. Occasionally, however, he made a suggestion.

"It is very well, this night-watching," he once observed, "but what we have most to fear is the open daylight. These mounted Indians seldom attack in the darkness."

Thurstane knew all this, but he did not say so; for he was a wise, considerate commander already, and he had learned not to chill an informant. He looked at Coronado inquiringly, as if to say, What do you propose?

"Every canon ought to be explored before we enter it," continued the Mexican.

"It is a good hint," said Ralph. "Suppose I keep two of your cattle-drivers constantly in advance. You had better instruct them yourself. Tell them to fire the moment they discover an ambush. I don't suppose they will hit anybody, but we want the warning."

With two horsemen three or four hundred yards to the front, two more an equal distance in the rear, and, when the ground permitted, one on either flank, the train continued its journey. Every wagon-driver and muleteer had a weapon of some sort always at hand. The four soldiers marched a few rods in advance, for the ground behind had already been explored, while that ahead might contain enemies. The precautions were extraordinary; but Thurstane constantly trembled for Clara. He would have thought a regiment hardly sufficient to guard such a treasure.

"How timorous these men are," sniffed Aunt Maria, who, having seen no hostile Indians, did not believe there were any. "And it seems to me that soldiers are more easily scared than anybody else," she added, casting a depreciating glance at Thurstane, who was reconnoitring the landscape through his field glass.

Clara believed in men, and especially in soldiers, and more particularly in lieutenants. Accordingly she replied, "I suppose they know the dangers and we don't."

"Pshaw!" said Aunt Maria, an argument which carried great weight with her. "They don't know half what they claim to. It is a clever man who knows one-tenth of his own business." (She was right there.) "They don't know so much, I verily and solemnly believe, as the women whom they pretend to despise."

This peaceful and cheering conversation was interrupted by a shot ringing out of a canon which opened into a range of rock some three hundred yards ahead of the caravan. Immediately on the shot came a yell as of a hundred demons, a furious trampling of the feet of many horses, and a cloud of the Tartars of the American desert.

In advance of the rush flew the two Mexican vedettes, screaming, "Apaches! Apaches!"



CHAPTER X.

When the Apache tornado burst out of the canon upon the train, Thurstane's first thought was, "Clara!"

"Get off!" he shouted to her, seizing and holding her startled horse. "Into the wagon, quick! Now lie down, both of you."

He thundered all this out as sternly as if he were commanding troops. Because he was a man, Clara obeyed him; and notwithstanding he was a man, Mrs. Stanley obeyed him. Both were so bewildered with surprise and terror as to be in a kind of animal condition of spirit, knowing just enough to submit at once to the impulse of an imperious voice. The riderless horse, equally frightened and equally subordinate, was hurried to the rear of the leading wagon and handed over to a muleteer.

By the time this work was done the foremost riders of the assailants were within two hundred yards of the head of the train, letting drive their arrows at the flying Mexican vedettes and uttering yells fit to raise the dead, while their comrades behind, whooping also, stormed along under a trembling and flickering of lances. The little, lean, wiry horses were going at full speed, regardless of smooth faces of rock and beds of loose stones. The blackguards were over a hundred in number, all lancers and archers of the first quality.

The vedettes never pulled up until they were in rear of the hindermost wagon, while their countrymen on the flanks and rear made for the same poor shelter. The drivers were crouching almost under their seats, and the muleteers were hiding behind their animals. Thus it was evident that the entire brunt of the opening struggle would fall upon Thurstane and his people; that, if there was to be any resistance at all, these five men must commence it, and, for a while at least, "go it alone."

The little squad of regulars, at this moment a few yards in front of the foremost wagon, was drawn up in line and standing steady, precisely as if it were a company or a regiment. Sergeant Meyer was on the right, veteran Kelly on the left, the two recruits in the centre, the pieces at a shoulder, the bayonets fixed. As Thurstane rode up to this diminutive line of battle, Meyer was shouting forth his sharp and decisive orders. They were just the right orders; excited as the young officer was, he comprehended that there was nothing to change; moreover, he had already learned how men are disconcerted in battle by a multiplicity of directions. So he sat quietly on his horse, revolver in hand, his blue-black eyes staring angrily at the coming storm.

"Kelly, reserfe your fire!" yelled Meyer. "Recruits, ready—bresent—aim—aim low—fire!"

Simultaneously with the report a horse in the leading group of charging savages pitched headlong on his nose and rolled over, sending his rider straight forward into a rubble of loose shales, both lying as they fell, without movement. Half a dozen other animals either dropped on their haunches or sheered violently to the right and left, going off in wild plunges and caracolings. By this one casualty the head of the attacking column was opened and its seemingly resistless impetus checked and dissipated, almost before Meyer could shout, "Recruits, load at will, load!"

A moment previous this fiery cavalry had looked irresistible. It seemed to have in it momentum, audacity, and dash enough to break a square of infantry or carry a battery of artillery. The horses fairly flew; the riders had the air of centaurs, so firm and graceful was their seat; the long lances were brandished as easily as if by the hands of footmen; the bows were managed and the arrows sent with dazzling dexterity. It was a show of brilliant equestrianism, surpassing the feats of circus riders. But a single effective shot into the centre of the column had cleft it as a rock divides a torrent. It was like the breaking of a water-spout.

The attack, however, had only commenced. The Indians who had swept off to right and left went scouring along the now motionless train, at a distance of sixty or eighty yards, rapidly enveloping it with their wild caperings, keeping in constant motion so as to evade gunshots, threatening with their lances or discharging arrows, and yelling incessantly. Their main object so far was undoubtedly to frighten the mules into a stampede and thus separate the wagons. They were not assaulting; they were watching for chances.

"Keep your men together, Sergeant," said Thurstane. "I must get those Mexicans to work."

He trotted deliberately to the other end of the train, ordering each driver as he passed to move up abreast of the leading wagon, directing the first to the right, the second to the left, and so on. The result of this movement would of course be to bring the train into a compact mass and render it more defensible. The Indians no sooner perceived the advance than they divined its object and made an effort to prevent it. Thurstane had scarcely reached the centre of the line of vehicles when a score or so of yelling horsemen made a caracoling, prancing charge upon him, accompanying it with a flight of arrows. Our young hero presented his revolver, but they apparently knew the short range of the weapon, and came plunging, curveting onward. Matters were growing serious, for an arrow already stuck in his saddle, and another had passed through his hat. Suddenly there was a bang, bang of firearms, and two of the savages went down.

Meyer had observed the danger of his officer, and had ordered Kelly to fire, blazing away too himself. There was a headlong, hasty scramble to carry off the fallen warriors, and then the assailants swept back to a point beyond accurate musket shot. Thurstane reached the rear of the train unhurt, and found the six Mexican cattle-drivers there in a group, pointing their rifles at such Indians as made a show of charging, but otherwise doing nothing which resembled fighting. They were obviously panic-stricken, one or two of them being of an ashy-yellow, their nearest possible approach to pallor. There, too, was Coronado, looking not exactly scared, but irresolute and helpless.

"What does this mean?" Thurstane stormed in Spanish. "Why don't you shoot the devils?"

"We are reserving our fire," stammered Coronado, half alarmed, half ashamed.

Thurstane swore briefly, energetically, and to the point. "Damned pretty fighting!" he went on. "If we had reserved our fire, we should all have been lanced by this time. Let drive!"

The cattle-drivers carried short rifles, of the then United States regulation pattern, which old Garcia had somehow contrived to pick up during the war perhaps buying them of drunken soldiers. Supported by Thurstane's pugnacious presence and hurried up by his vehement orders, they began to fire. They were shaky; didn't aim very well; hardly aimed at all, in fact; blazed away at extraordinary elevations; behaved as men do who have become demoralized. However, as the pieces had a range of several hundred yards, the small bullets hissed venomously over the heads of the Indians, and one of them, by pure accident, brought down a horse. There was an immediate scattering, a multitudinous glinting of hoofs through the light dust of the plain, and then a rally in prancing groups, at a safe distance.

"Hurrah!" shouted Thurstane, cheering the Mexicans. "That's very well. You see how easy it is. Now don't let them sneak up again; and at the same time don't waste powder."

Then turning to one who was near him, and who had just reloaded, he said in a calm, strong, encouraging tone—that voice of the thoroughly good officer which comes to the help of the shaken soldier like a reinforcement—"Now, my lad, steadily. Pick out your man; take your time and aim sure. Do you see him?"

"Si, senor," replied the herdsman. His coolness restored by this steady utterance and these plain, common-sense directions, he selected a warrior in helmet-shaped cap, blue shirt, and long boots, brought his rifle slowly to a level, took sight, and fired. The Indian bent forward, caught the mane of his plunging pony, hung there for a second or two, and then rolled to the ground, amid a yell of surprise and dismay from his comrades. There was a hasty rush to secure the body, and then another sweep backward of the loose array.

"Good!" called Thurstane, nodding and smiling at the successful marksman. "That is the way to do it. You are a match for half a dozen of them as long as you will keep cool."

The besieged travellers could now look about quietly and see how matters stood with them. The six wagons were by this time drawn up in two ranks of three each, so as to form a compact mass. As the one which contained the ladies had been the leader and the others had formed on it to right and left, it was in the centre of the first rank, and consequently pretty well protected by its neighbors. The drivers and muleteers had recovered their self-possession, and were all sitting or standing at their posts, with their miscellaneous arms ready for action. Not a human being had been hit as yet, and only three of the mules wounded, none of them seriously. The Apaches were all around the train, but none of them nearer than two hundred yards, and doing nothing but canter about and shout to each other.

"Where is Texas Smith?" demanded Thurstane, missing that mighty hunter, and wondering if he were a coward and had taken refuge in a wagon.

"He went off shutin' an hour ago," explained Phineas Glover. "Reckon he's astern somewhere."

Glover, by the way, had been useful. In the beginning of the affray he had brought his mule alongside of the headmost wagon, and there he had done really valuable service by blazing away alarmingly, though quite innocuously, at the gallopading enemy.

"It's a bad lookout for Texas," observed the Lieutenant "I shouldn't want to bet high on his getting back to us."

Coronado looked gloomy, fearing lest his trusted assassin was lost, and not knowing where he could pick up such another.

"And how are the ladies?" asked Thurstane, turning to Glover.

"Safe 's a bug in a rug," was the reply. "Seen to that little job myself. Not a bugger in the hull crew been nigh 'em."

Thurstane cantered around to the front of the wagon which contained the two women, and called, "How are you?"

At the sound of his voice there was a rustle inside, and Clara showed her face over the shoulder of the driver.

"So you were not hurt?" laughed the young officer. "Ah! that's bully."

With a smile which was almost a boast, she answered, "And I was not very frightened."

At this, Aunt Maria struggled from between two rolls of bedding into a sitting posture and ejaculated, "Of course not!"

"Did they hit you?" asked Clara, looking eagerly at Thurstane.

"How brave you are!" he replied, admiring her so much that he did not notice her question.

"But I do hope it is over," added the girl, poking her head out of the wagon. "Ah! what is that?"

With this little cry of dismay she pointed at a group of savages who had gathered between the train and the mouth of the canon ahead of it.

"They are the enemy," said Thurstane. "We may have another little tussle with them. Now lie down and keep close."

"Acquit yourselves like—men!" exhorted Aunt Maria, dropping back into her stronghold among the bedding.

Sergeant Meyer now approached Thurstane, touched his cap, and said, "Leftenant, here is brifate Sweeny who has not fired his beece once. I cannot make him fire."

"How is that, Sweeny?" demanded the officer, putting on the proper grimness. "Why haven't you fired when you were ordered?"

Sweeny was a little wizened shaving of an Irishman. He was not only quite short, but very slender and very lean. He had a curious teetering gait, and he took ridiculously short steps in marching, as if he were a monkey who had not learned to feel at ease on his hind legs. His small, wilted, wrinkled face, and his expression of mingled simplicity and shrewdness, were also monkey-like. At Thurstane's reprimand he trotted close up to him with exactly the air of a circus Jocko who expects a whipping, but who hopes to escape it by grinning.

"Why haven't you fired?" repeated his commander.

"Liftinint, I dasn't," answered Sweeny, in the rapid, jerking, almost inarticulate jabber which was his usual speech.

Now it is not an uncommon thing for recruits to dread to discharge their arms in battle. They have a vague idea that, if they bang away, they will attract the notice of some antagonist who will immediately single them out for retaliation.

"Are you afraid anybody will hit you?" asked Thurstane.

"No, I ain't, Liftinint," jabbered Sweeny. "I ain't afeard av them niggers a bit. They may shoot their bow arrays at me all day if they want to. I'm afeard of me gun, Liftinint. I fired it wonst, an' it kicked me to blazes."

"Come, come! That won't do. Level it now. Pick out your man. Aim. Fire."

Thus constrained, Sweeny brought his piece down to an inclination of forty-five degrees, shut his eyes, pulled trigger, and sent a ball clean over the most distant Apaches. The recoil staggered him, but he recovered himself without going over, and instantly roared out a horse-laugh.

"Ho! ho! ho!" he shouted. "That time I reckon I fetched won av 'em."

"Sweeny," said Thurstane, "you must have hit either the sun or the moon, I don't know which."

Sweeny looked discomfited; the next breath he bethought himself of a saving joke: "Liftinint, it 'ud sarve erry won av 'em right;" then another neigh of laughter.

"I ain't afeard av the ball," he hastened to asseverate; "it's the kick av it that murthers me. Liftinint, why don't they put the britch to the other end av the gun? They do in the owld counthry."

"Load your beece," ordered Sergeant Meyer, "and go to your bost again, to the left of Shupert."

The fact of Sweeny's opening fire did not cause a resumption of the close fighting. Quiet still continued, and the leaders of the expedition took advantage of it to discuss their situation, while the Indians gathered into little groups and seemed also to be holding council.

"There are over a hundred warriors," said Thurstane.

"Apaches," added one of the Mexican herdsmen.

"What band?"

"Manga Colorada or Delgadito."

"I supposed they were in Bernalillo."

"That was three weeks ago," put in Coronado.

He was in profound thought. These fellows, who had agreed to harry Bernalillo, and who had for a time carried out their bargain, why had they come to intercept him in the Moqui country, a hundred and twenty miles away? Did they want to extort more money, or were they ignorant that this was his train? And, supposing he should make himself known to them, would they spare him personally and such others as he might wish to save, while massacring the rest of the party? It would be a bold step; he could not at once decide upon it; he was pondering it.

We must do full justice to Coronado's coolness and readiness. This atrocious idea had occurred to him the instant he heard the charging yell of the Apaches; and it had done far more than any weakness of nerves to paralyze his fighting ability. He had thought, "Let them kill the Yankees; then I will proclaim myself and save her; then she will be mine." And because of these thoughts he had stood irresolute, aiming without firing, and bidding his Mexicans do the same. The result was that six good shots and superb horsemen, who were capable of making a gallant fight under worthy leadership, had become demoralized, and, but for the advent of Thurstane, might have been massacred like sheep.

Now that three or four Apaches had fallen, Coronado had less hope of making his arrangement. He considered the matter carefully and judiciously, but at last he decided that he could not trust the vindictive devils, and he turned his mind strenuously toward resistance. Although not pugnacious, he had plenty of the desperate courage of necessity, and his dusky black eyes were very resolute as he said to Thurstane, "Lieutenant, we trust to you."

The young veteran had already made up his mind as to what must be done.

"We will move on," he said. "We can't camp here, in an open plain, without grass or water. We must get into the canon so as to have our flanks protected. I want the wagons to advance in double file so as to shorten the train. Two of my men in front and two in rear; three of your herdsmen on one flank and three on the other; Captain Glover alongside the ladies, and you and I everywhere; that's the programme. If we are all steady, we can do it, sure."

"They are collecting ahead to stop us," observed Coronado.

"Good!" said Thurstane. "All I want is to have them get in a heap. It is this attacking on all sides which is dangerous. Suppose you give your drivers and muleteers a sharp lecture. Tell them they must fight if the Indians charge, and not skulk inside and under the wagons. Tell them we are going to shoot the first man who skulks. Pitch into them heavy. It's a devilish shame that a dozen tolerably well-armed men should be so helpless. It's enough to justify the old woman's contempt for our sex."

Coronado rode from wagon to wagon, delivering his reproofs, threats, and instructions in the plainest kind of Spanish. At the signal to march, the drivers must file off two abreast, commencing on the right, and move at the fastest trot of the mules toward the canon. If any scoundrel skulked, quitted his post, or failed to fight, he would be pistolled instanter by him, Coronado sangre de Dios, etc.!

While he was addressing Aunt Maria's coachman, that level-headed lady called out, "Mr. Coronado, your very voice is cheering."

"Mrs. Stanley, you are an example of heroism to our sex," replied the Mexican, with an ironical grin.

"What a brave, noble, intelligent man?" thought Aunt Maria. "If they were only all like him!"

This business took up five minutes. Coronado had just finished his round when a loud yell was raised by the Apaches, and twenty or thirty of them started at full speed down the trail by which the caravan had come. Looking for the cause of this stampede, the emigrants beheld, nearly half a mile away, a single horseman rushing to encounter a score. It was Texas Smith, making an apparently hopeless rush to burst through the environment of Parthians and reach the train.

"Shall we make a sally to save him?" demanded Coronado, glancing at Thurstane.

The officer hesitated; to divide his small army would be perilous; the Apaches would attack on all sides and with advantage.

But the sight of one man so overmatched was too much for him, and with a great throb of chivalrous blood in his heart, he shouted, "Charge!"



CHAPTER XI.

An hour before the attack Texas Smith had ridden off to stalk a deer; but the animal being in good racing condition in consequence of the thin fare of this sterile region, the hunting bout had miscarried; and our desperado was returning unladen toward the train when he heard the distant charging yell of the Apaches.

Scattered over the plateau which he was traversing, there were a few thickets of mesquite, with here and there a fantastic butte of sandstone. By dodging from one of these covers to another, he arrived undiscovered at a point whence he could see the caravan and the curveting melee which surrounded it. He was nearly half a mile from his comrades and over a quarter of a mile from his nearest enemies.

What should he do? If he made a rush, he would probably be overpowered and either killed instantly or carried off for torture. If he waited until night for a chance to sneak into camp, the wandering redskins would be pretty apt to surprise him in the darkness, and there would be small chance indeed of escaping with his hair. It was a nasty situation; but Texas, accustomed to perils, was as brave as he was wicked; and he looked his darkling fate in the face with admirable coolness and intelligence. His decision was to wait a favorable moment, and when it came, charge for life.

When he perceived that the mass of the Indians had gathered on the trail between the wagons and the canon, he concluded that his chance had arrived; and with teeth grimly set, rifle balanced across his saddle-bow, revolver slung to his wrist, he started in silence and at full speed on his almost hopeless rush. If you will cease to consider the man as a modern bushwhacker, and invest him temporarily with the character, ennobled by time, of a borderer of the Scottish marches, you will be able to feel some sympathy for him in his audacious enterprise.

He was mounted on an American horse, a half-blood gray, large-boned and powerful, who could probably have traversed the half-mile in a minute had there been no impediment, and who was able to floor with a single shock two or three of the little animals of the Apaches. He was a fine spectacle as he thundered alone across the plain, upright and easy in his seat, balancing his heavy rifle as if it were a rattan, his dark and cruel face settled for fight and his fierce black eyes blazing.

Only a minute's ride, but that minute life or death. As he had expected, the Apaches discovered him almost as soon as he left the cover of his butte, and all the outlying members of the horde swarmed toward him with a yell, brandishing their spears and getting ready their bows as they rode. It would clearly be impossible for him to cut his way through thirty warriors unless he received assistance from the train. Would it come? His evil conscience told him, without the least reason, that Thurstane would not help. But from Coronado, whose life he had saved and whose evil work he had undertaken to do—from this man, "greaser" as he was, he did expect a sally. If it did not come, and if he should escape by some rare chance, he, Texas Smith, would murder the Mexican the first time he found him alone, so help him God!

While he thought and cursed he flew. But his goal was still five hundred yards away, and the nearest redskins were within two hundred yards, when he saw a rescuing charge shoot out from the wagons. Coronado led it. In this foxy nature the wolf was not wanting, and under strong impulse he could be somewhat of a Pizarro. He had no starts of humanity nor of real chivalry, but he had family pride and personal vanity, and he was capable of the fighting fury. When Thurstane had given the word to advance, Coronado had put himself forward gallantly.

"Stay here," he said to the officer; "guard the train with your infantry. I am a caballero, and I will do a caballero's work," he added, rising proudly in his stirrups. "Come on, you villains!" was his order to the six Mexicans.

All abreast, spread out like a skirmish line, the seven horsemen clattered over the plain, making for the point where Texas Smith was about to plunge among the whirling and caracoling Apaches.

Now came the crisis of the day. The moment the sixty or seventy Apaches near the mouth of the canon saw Coronado set out on his charge, they raised a yell of joy over the error of the emigrants in dividing their forces, and plunged straight at the wagons. In half a minute two wild, irregular, and yet desperate combats were raging.

Texas Smith had begun his battle while Coronado was still a quarter of a mile away. Aiming his rifle at an Apache who was riding directly upon him, instead of dodging and wheeling in the usual fashion of these cautious fighters, he sent the audacious fellow out of his saddle with a bullet-hole through the lungs. But this was no salvation; the dreaded long-range firearm was now empty; the savages circled nearer and began to use their arrows. Texas let his rifle hang from the pommel and presented his revolver. But the bowshots were more than its match. It could not be trusted to do execution at forty yards, and at that distance the Indian shafts are deadly. Already several had hissed close by him, one had gashed the forehead of his horse, and another had pierced his clothing.

All that Texas wanted, however, was time. If he could pass a half minute without a disabling wound, he would have help. He retreated a little, or rather he edged away toward the right, wheeling and curveting after the manner of the Apaches, in order to present an unsteady mark for their archery. To keep them at a distance he fired one barrel of his revolver, though without effect. Meantime he dodged incessantly, now throwing himself forward and backward in the saddle, now hanging over the side of his horse and clinging to his neck. It was hard and perilous work, but he was gaining seconds, and every second was priceless. Notwithstanding his extreme peril, he calculated his chances with perfect coolness and with a sagacity which was admirable.

But this intelligent savage had to do with savages as clever as himself. The Apaches saw Coronado coming up on their rear, and they knew that they must make short work of the hunter, or must let him escape. While a score or so faced about to meet the Mexicans, a dozen charged with screeches and brandished lances upon the Texan. Now came a hand-to-hand struggle which looked as if it must end in the death of Smith and perhaps of several of his assailants. But cavalry fights are notoriously bloodless in comparison to their apparent fury; the violent and perpetual movement of the combatants deranges aim and renders most of the blows futile; shots are fired at a yard distance without hitting, and strokes are delivered which only wound the air.

One spear stuck in Smith's saddle; another pierced his jacket-sleeve and tore its way out; only one of the sharp, quickly-delivered points drew blood. He felt a slight pain in his side, and he found afterward that a lance-head had raked one of his ribs, tearing up the skin and scraping the bone for four or five inches. Meantime he shot a warrior through the head, sent another off with a hole in the shoulder, and fired one barrel without effect. He had but a single charge left (saving this for himself in the last extremity), when he burst through the prancing throng of screeching, thrusting ragamuffins, and reached the side of Coronado.

Here another hurly-burly of rearing and plunging combat awaited him. Coronado, charging as an old Castilian hidalgo might have charged upon the Moors, had plunged directly into the midst of the Apaches who awaited him, giving them little time to use their arrows, and at first receiving no damage. The six rifles of his Mexicans sent two Apaches out of their saddles, and then came a capering, plunging joust of lances, both parties using the same weapon. Coronado alone had sabre and revolver; and he handled them both with beautiful coolness and dexterity; he rode, too, as well as the best of all these other centaurs. His superb horse whirled and reared under the guidance of a touch of the knees, while the rider plied firearm with one hand and sharply-ground blade with the other. Thurstane, an infantryman, and only a fair equestrian, would not have been half so effective in this combat of caballeros.

Coronado's first bullet knocked a villainous-looking tatterdemalion clean into the happy hunting grounds. Then came a lance thrust; he parried it with his sabre and plunged within range of the point; there was a sharp, snake-like hiss of the light, curved blade; down went Apache number two. At this rate, providing there were no interruptions, he could finish the whole twenty. He went at his job with a handy adroitness which was almost scientific, it was so much like surgery, like dissection. His mind was bent, with a sort of preternatural calmness and cleverness, upon the business of parrying lance thrusts, aiming his revolver, and delivering sabre cuts. It was a species of fighting intellection, at once prudent and destructive. It was not the headlong, reckless, pugnacious rage of the old Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian berserker. It was the practical, ready, rational furor of the Latin race.