Texas Smith was too old a borderer to attempt to draw his weapons while
such a man as Kelly was sighting him at ten feet distance.
"Play yer hand, sergeant," he said; "you've got the keerds."
"You know, Schmidt, that our leftenant has been garried down the river,"
continued Meyer.
The bushwhacker responded with a grunt which expressed neither pleasure
nor sorrow, but merely assent.
"You know," went on the sergeant, "that such things cannot habben to
officers without investigations."
"He war a squar man, an' a white man," said Texas. "I didn't have nothin'
to do with cuttin' him loose, if he war cut loose."
"You didn't saw the lariat yourself, Schmidt, I know that. But do you know
who did saw it?"
"I dunno the first thing about it."
"Bray to pe struck tead if you do."
"I dunno how to pray."
"Then holt up your hants and gurse yourself to hell if you do."
Lifting his hands over his head, the ignorant savage blasphemed copiously.
"Do you think you can guess how it was pusted?" persisted the soldier.
"Look a hyer!" remonstrated Smith, "ain't you pannin' me out a leetle too
fine? It mought 'a' been this way, an' it mought 'a' been that. But I've
no business to point if I can't find. When a man's got to the bottom of
his pile, you can't fo'ce him to borrow. 'Sposin' I set you barkin' up the
wrong tree; what good's that gwine to do?"
"Vell, Schmidt, I don't zay but what you zay right. You mustn't zay
anyting you don't know someting apout."
After another silence, during which Texas continued to hold his hands
above his head, Meyer added, "Kelly, you may come to an order. Schmidt,
you may put down your hants. Will you haf a jew of topacco?"
The three men now approached each other, took alternate bites of the
sergeant's last plug of pigtail, and masticated amicably.
"You army fellers run me pootty close," said Texas, after a while, in a
tone of complaint and humiliation. "I don't want to fight brass buttons.
They're too many for me. The Capm he lassoed me, an' choked me some; an'
now you're on it."
"When things habben to officers, they must pe looked into," replied Meyer.
"I dunno how in thunder the lariat got busted," repeated Texas. "An' if I
should go for to guess, I mought guess wrong."
"All right, Schmidt; I pelieve you. If there is no more drubble, you will
not pe called up again."
"Ask him what he thinks of the leftenant's chances," suggested Kelly to
his superior.
"Reckon he'll hev to run the river a spell," returned the borderer.
"Reckon he'll hev to run it a hell of a ways befo' he'll be able to git
across the dam country."
"Ask him what the chances be of running the river safely," added Kelly.
"Dam slim," answered Texas; and there the talk ended. There was some
meditative chewing, after which the three returned to the bivouac, and
either lay down to sleep or took their tours at guard duty.
At dawn the party recommenced its flight toward the Moqui country. There
were sixty hours more of hard riding, insufficient sleep, short rations,
thirst, and anxiety. Once the suffering animals stampeded after water, and
ran for several miles over plateaux of rock, dashing off burdens and
riders, and only halting when they were plunged knee-deep in the
water-hole which they had scented. One of the wounded rancheros expired on
the mule to which he was strapped, and was carried dead for several hours,
his ashy-brown face swinging to and fro, until Coronado had him thrown
into a crevice.
Amid these hardships and horrors Clara showed no sign of flagging or
flinching. She was very thin; bad food, excessive fatigue, and anxiety had
reduced her; her face was pinched, narrowed, and somewhat lined; her
expression was painfully set and eager. But she never asked for repose,
and never complained. Her mind was solely fixed upon finding Thurstane,
and her feverish bright eyes continually searched the horizon for him. She
seemed to have lost her power of sympathizing with any other creature. To
Mrs. Stanley's groanings and murmurings she vouchsafed rare and brief
condolences. The dead muleteer and the tortured, bellowing animals
attracted little of her notice. She was not hard-hearted; she was simply
almost insane. In this state of abnormal exaltation she continued until
the party reached the quiet and safety of the Moqui pueblos.
Then there was a change; exhausted nature required either apathy or death;
and for two days she lay in a sort of stupor, sleeping a great deal, and
crying often when awake. The only person capable of rousing her was
Sergeant Meyer, who made expeditions to the other pueblos for news of
Thurstane, and brought her news of his hopes and his failures.
After a three days' rest Coronado decided to resume his journey by moving
southward toward the Bernalillo trail. Freed from Thurstane, he no longer
contemplated losing Clara in the desert, but meant to marry her, and
trusted that he could do it. Two of his wagons he presented to the Moquis,
who were, of course, delighted with the acquisition, although they had no
more use for wheeled vehicles than for gunboats. With only four wagons,
his animals were more than sufficient, and the train made tolerably rapid
progress, in spite of the roughness of the country.
The land was still a wonder. The water wizards of old had done their
grotesque utmost here. What with sculpturing and frescoing, they had made
that most fantastic wilderness the Painted Desert. It looked like a
mirage. The travellers had an impression that here was some atmospheric
illusion. It seemed as if it could not last five minutes if the sun should
shine upon it. There were crowding hills so variegated and gay as to put
one in mind of masses of soap-bubbles. But the coloring was laid on
fifteen hundred feet deep. It consisted of sandstone marls, red, blue,
green, orange, purple, white, brown, lilac, and yellow, interstratified
with magnesian limestone in bands of purple, bluish-white, and mottled,
with here and there shining flecks or great glares of gypsum.
Among the more delicate wonders of the scene were the petrified trunks
which had once been pines and cedars, but which were now flint or jasper.
The washings of geologic aeons have exposed to view immense quantities of
these enchanted forests. Fragments of silicified trees are not only strewn
over the lowlands, but are piled by the hundred cords at the bases of
slopes, seeming like so much drift-wood from wonder-lands far up the
stream of time. Generally they are in short bits, broken square across the
grain, as if sawed. Some are jasper, and look like masses of red
sealing-wax; others are agate, or opalescent chalcedony, beautifully lined
and variegated; many retain the graining, layers, knots, and other details
of their woody structure.
In places where the marls had been washed away gently, the emigrants found
trunks complete, from root to summit, fifty feet in length and three in
diameter. All the branches, however, were gone; the tree had been
uprooted, transported, whirled and worn by deluges; then to commemorate
the victory of the water sprites, it had been changed into stone. The
sight of these remnants of antediluvian woodlands made history seem the
reminiscence of a child. They were already petrifactions when the human
race was born.
The Painted Desert has other marvels. Throughout vast stretches you pass
between tinted _mesas_, or tables, which face each other across flat
valleys like painted palaces across the streets of Genova la Superba. They
are giant splendors, hundreds of feet in height, built of blood-red
sandstone capped with variegated marls. The torrents, which scooped out
the intersecting levels, amused their monstrous leisure with carving the
points and abutments of the _mesa_ into fantastic forms, so that the
traveller sees towers, minarets, and spires loftier than the pinnacles of
cathedrals.
The emigrants were often deceived by these freaks of nature. Beheld from a
distance, it seemed impossible that they should not be ruins, the
monuments of some Cyclopean race. Aunt Maria, in particular, discovered
casas grandes and casas de Montezuma very frequently.
"There is another casa," she would say, staring through her spectacles
(broken) at a butte three hundred feet high. "What a people it must have
been which raised such edifices!"
And she would stick to it, too, until she was close up to the solid rock,
and then would renew the transforming miracle five or ten miles further
on.
During this long and marvellous journey Coronado renewed his courtship. He
was cautious, however; he made a confidant of his friend Aunt Maria;
begged her favorable intercession.
"Clara," said Mrs. Stanley, as the two women jolted along in one of the
lumbering wagons, "there is one thing in your life which perhaps you don't
suspect."
The girl, who wanted to hear about Thurstane all the time, and expected to
hear about him, asked eagerly, "What is it?"
"You have made Mr. Coronado fall in love with you," said Aunt Maria,
thinking it wise to be clear and straightforward, as men are reputed to
be.
The young lady, instantly revolting from the subject, made no reply.
"I think, Clara, that if you take a husband--and most women do--he would
be just the person for you."
Clara, once the gentlest of the gentle, was perfectly angelic no longer.
She gave her relative a stare which was partly intense misery, but which
had much the look of pure anger, as indeed it was in a measure.
The expressions of violent emotion are alarming to most people. Aunt
Maria, beholding this tortured soul glaring at her out of its prison
windows, recoiled in surprise and awe. There was not another word spoken
at the time concerning the obnoxious match-making. A single stare of
Marius had put to flight the executioner.
In one way and another Clara continued to baffle her suitor and her
advocate. The days dragged on; the expedition steadily traversed the
desert; the Santa Anna region was crossed, and the Bernalillo trail
reached; one hundred, two hundred, three hundred miles and more were left
behind; and still Coronado, though without a rival, was not accepted.
Then came an adventure which partly helped and partly hindered his plans.
The train was overtaken by a detachment of the Fifth United States
Cavalry, commanded by Major John Robinson, pushing for California. Of
course Sergeant Meyer reported himself and Kelly to the Major, and of
course the Major ordered them to join his party as far as Fort Yuma. This
deprived Clara of her trusted protectors; but on the other hand, she
threatened to take advantage of the escort of Robinson for the rest of her
journey; and the mere mention of this at once brought Coronado on his
soul's marrow-bones. He swore by the heaven above, by all the saints and
angels, by the throne of the Virgin Mary, by every sacred object he could
think of, that not another word of love should pass his lips during the
journey, that he would live the life of a dead man, etc. Overcome by his
pleadings, and by the remonstrances of Aunt Maria, who did not want to
have her favorite driven to commit suicide, Clara agreed to continue with
the train.
After this scene followed days of hot travelling over hard, gravelly
plains, thinly coated with grass and dotted with cacti, mezquit trees, the
leafless palo verde, and the greasewood bush. Here and there towered that
giant cactus, the saguarra, a fluted shaft, thirty, forty, and even sixty
feet high, with a coronet of richly-colored flowers, the whole fabric as
splendid as a Corinthian column. Prickly pears, each one large enough to
make a thicket, abounded. Through the scorching sunshine ran scorpions and
lizards, pursued by enormous rattlesnakes. During the days the heat ranged
from 100 to 115 deg. in the shade, while the nights were swept by winds as
parching as the breath of an oven. The distant mountains glared at the eye
like metals brought to a white heat. Not seldom they passed horses, mules,
cattle, and sheep, which had perished in this terrible transit and been
turned to mummies by the dry air and baking sun. Some of these carcasses,
having been set on their legs by passing travellers, stood upright,
staring with blind eyeballs, grinning through dried lips, mockeries of
life, statues of death.
In spite of these hardships and horrors, Clara kept up her courage and was
almost cheerful; for in the first place Coronado had ceased his terrifying
attentions, and in the second place they were nearing Cactus Pass, where
she hoped to meet Thurstane. When love has not a foot of certainty to
stand upon, it can take wing and soar through the incredible. The idea
that they two, divided hundreds of miles back, should come together at a
given point by pure accident, was obviously absurd. Yet Clara could trust
to the chance and live for it.
The scenery changed to mountains. There were barren, sublime, awful peaks
to the right and left. To the girl's eyes they were beautiful, for she
trusted that Thurstane beheld them. She was always on horseback now,
scanning every feature of the landscape, searching of course for him. She
did not pass a cactus, or a thicket of mezquit, or a bowlder without
anxious examination. She imagined herself finding him helpless with
hunger, or passing him unseen and leaving him to die. She was so pale and
thin with constant anxiety that you might have thought her half starved,
or recovering from some acute malady.
About five one afternoon, as the train was approaching its halting-place
at a spring on the western side of the pass, Clara's feverish mind fixed
on a group of rocks half a mile from the trail as the spot where she would
find Thurstane. In obedience to similar impressions she had already made
many expeditions of this nature. Constant failure, and a consciousness
that all this searching was folly, could not shake her wild hopes. She set
off at a canter alone; but after going some four hundred yards she heard a
gallop behind her, and, looking over her shoulder, she saw Coronado. She
did not want to be away from the train with him; but she must at all
hazards reach that group of rocks; something within impelled her. Better
mounted than she, he was soon by her side, and after a while struck out in
advance, saying, "I will look out for an ambush."
When Coronado reached the rocks he was fifty yards ahead of Clara. He made
the circuit of them at a slow canter; in so doing he discovered the
starving and fainted Thurstane lying in the high grass beneath a low shelf
of stone; he saw him, he recognized him, and in an instant he trembled
from head to foot. But such was his power of self-control that he did not
check his horse, nor cast a second look to see whether the man was alive
or dead. He turned the last stone in the group, met Clara with a forced
smile, and said gently, "There is nothing."
She reined up, drew a long sigh, thought that here was another foolish
hope crushed, and turned her horse's head toward the train.