Lieutenant Thurstane passed the mouth of the ravine in the dusk of
twilight, without guessing that it contained Clara Van Diemen and her
perils.
He had with him Sergeant Weber of his own company, just returned from
recruiting service at St. Louis, and three recruits for the company,
Kelly, Shubert, and Sweeny.
Weber, a sunburnt German, with sandy eyelashes, blue eyes, and a scar on
his cheek, had been a soldier from his eighteenth to his thirtieth year,
and wore the serious, patient, much-enduring air peculiar to veterans.
Kelly, an Irishman, also about thirty, slender in form and somewhat
haggard in face, with the same quiet, contained, seasoned look to him, the
same reminiscence of unavoidable sufferings silently borne, was also an
old infantry man, having served in both the British and American armies.
Shubert was an American lad, who had got tired of clerking it in an
apothecary's shop, and had enlisted from a desire for adventure, as you
might guess from his larkish countenance. Sweeny was a diminutive Paddy,
hardly regulation height for the army, as light and lively as a monkey,
and with much the air of one.
Thurstane had obtained orders from the post commandant to lead his party
by the northern route, on condition that he would investigate and report
as to its practicability for military and other transit. He had also been
allowed to draw by requisition fifty days' rations, a box of ammunition,
and four mules. Starting thirty-six hours after Coronado, he made in two
days and a half the distance which the train had accomplished in four. Now
he had overtaken his quarry, and in the obscurity had passed it.
But Sergeant Weber was an old hand on the Plains, and notwithstanding the
darkness and the generally stony nature of the ground, he presently
discovered that the fresh trail of the wagons was missing. Thurstane tried
to retrace his steps, but starless night had already fallen thick around
him, and before long he had to come to a halt. He was opposite the mouth
of the ravine; he was within five hundred yards of Clara, and raging
because he could not find her. Suddenly Coronado's cooking fires flickered
through the gloom; in five minutes the two parties were together.
It was a joyous meeting to Thurstane and a disgusting one to Coronado.
Nevertheless the latter rushed at the officer, grasped him by both hands,
and shouted, "All hail, Lieutenant! So, there you are at last! My dear
fellow, what a pleasure!"
"Yes, indeed, by Jove!" returned the young fellow, unusually boisterous in
his joy, and shaking hands with everybody, not rejecting even muleteers.
And then what throbbing, what adoration, what supernal delight, in the
moment when he faced Clara.
In the morning the journey recommenced. As neither Thurstane nor Coronado
had now any cause for hurry, the pace was moderate. The soldiers marched
on foot, in order to leave the government mules no other load than the
rations and ammunition, and so enable them to recover from their sharp
push of over eighty miles. The party now consisted of twenty-five men, for
the most part pretty well armed. Of the other sex there were, besides Mrs.
Stanley and Clara, a half-breed girl named Pepita, who served as lady's
maid, and two Indian women from Garcia's hacienda, whose specialties were
cooking and washing. In all thirty persons, a nomadic village.
At the first halt Sergeant Weber approached Thurstane with a timorous air,
saluted, and asked, "Leftenant, can we leafe our knabsacks in the vagons?
The gentleman has gifen us bermission."
"The men ought to learn to carry their knapsacks," said Thurstane. "They
will have to do it in serious service."
"It is drue, Leftenant," replied Weber, saluting again and moving off
without a sign of disappointment.
"Let that man come back here," called Aunt Maria, who had overheard the
dialogue. "Certainly they can put their loads in the wagons. I told Mr.
Coronado to tell them so."
Weber looked at her without moving a muscle, and without showing either
wonder or amusement. Thurstane could not help grinning good-naturedly as
he said, "I receive your orders, Mrs. Stanley. Weber, you can put the
knapsacks in the wagons."
Weber saluted anew, gave Mrs. Stanley a glance of gratitude, and went
about his pleasant business. An old soldier is not in general so strict a
disciplinarian as a young one.
"What a brute that Lieutenant is!" thought Aunt Maria. "Make those poor
fellows carry those monstrous packs? Nonsense and tyranny! How different
from Mr. Coronado! _He_ fairly jumped at my idea."
Thurstane stepped over to Coronado and said, "You are very kind to relieve
my men at the expense of your animals. I am much obliged to you."
"It is nothing," replied the Mexican, waving his hand graciously. "I am
delighted to be of service, and to show myself a good citizen."
In fact, he had been quite willing to favor the soldiers; why not, so long
as he could not get rid of them? If the Apaches would lance them all,
including Thurstane, he would rejoice; but while that could not be, he
might as well show himself civil and gain popularity. It was not
Coronado's style to bark when there was no chance of biting.
He was in serious thought the while. How should he rid himself of this
rival, this obstacle in the way of his well-laid plans, this interloper
into his caravan? Must he call upon Texas Smith to assassinate the fellow?
It was a disagreeably brutal solution of the difficulty, and moreover it
might lead to loud suspicion and scandal, and finally it might be
downright dangerous. There was such a thing as trial for murder and for
conspiracy to effect murder. As to causing a United States officer to
vanish quietly, as might perhaps be done with an ordinary American
emigrant, that was too good a thing to be hoped. He must wait; he must
have patience; he must trust to the future; perhaps some precipice would
favor him; perhaps the wild Indians. He offered his cigaritos to
Thurstane, and they smoked tranquilly in company.
"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 _débris_ 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.