The chase after the spare mules carried Texas Smith several miles from the
scene of the ambush, so that when he at last caught the frightened beasts,
he decided not to go back and cut Thurstane's throat, but to set off at
once westward and put himself by morning well on the road to California.
Meanwhile, the two muleteers continued their flight at full gallop, and
eventually plunged into camp with a breathless story to the effect that
Apaches had attacked them, captured the spare mules, and killed the
lieutenant. Coronado, no more able to sleep than Satan, was the first to
hear their tale.
"Apaches!" he said, surprised and incredulous. Then, guessing at what had
happened, he immediately added, "Those devils again! We must push on, the
moment we can see."
Apaches! It was a capital idea. He had an excuse now for hurrying away
from a spot which he had stained with murder. If any one demanded that
Thurstane's body should be sought for, or that those incumbrances Glover
and Sweeny should be rescued, he could respond, Apaches! Apaches! He gave
orders to commence preparations for moving at the first dawn.
He expected and feared that Clara would oppose the advance in some trying
way. But one of the fugitives relieved him by blurting out the death of
Thurstane, and sending her into spasms of alternate hysterics and fainting
which lasted for hours. Lying in a wagon, her head in the lap of Mrs.
Stanley, a sick, very sick, dangerously sick girl, she was jolted along as
easily as a corpse.
Coronado rode almost constantly beside her wagon, inquiring about her
every few minutes, his face changing with contradictory emotions, wishing
she would die and hoping she would live, loving and hating her in the same
breath. Whenever she came to herself and recognized him, she put out her
hands and implored, "Oh, Coronado, take me back there!"
"Apaches!" growled Coronado, and spurred away repeating his lie to
himself, "Apaches! Apaches!"
Then he checked his horse and rode anew to her side, hoping that he might
be able to reason with her.
"Oh, take me back!" was all the response he could obtain. "Take me back
and let me die there."
"Would you have us all die?" he shouted--"like Pepita!"
"Don't scold her," begged Aunt Maria, who was sobbing like a child. "She
doesn't know what she is asking."
But Clara knew too much; at the word _Pepita_ she guessed the torture
scene; and then it came into her mind that Thurstane might be even now at
the stake. She immediately broke into screams, which ended in convulsions
and a long fit of insensibility.
"It is killing her," wailed Aunt Maria. "Oh, my child! my child!"
Coronado spurred at full speed for a mile, muttering to the desert, "Let
it kill her! let it!"
At last he halted for the train to overtake him, glanced anxiously at
Clara's wagon, saw that Mrs. Stanley was still bending over her, guessed
that she was still alive, drew a sigh of relief, and rode on alone.
"Oh, this love-making!" sighed Aunt Maria scores of times, for she had at
last learned of the engagement. "When will my sex get over the weakness?
It kills them, and they like it."
That night Clara could not sleep, and kept Coronado awake with her
moanings. All the next day she lay in a semi-unconsciousness which was
partly lethargy and partly fever. It was well; at all events he could bear
it so--bear it better than when she was crying and praying for death. The
next night she fell into such a long silence of slumber that he came
repeatedly to her wagon to hearken if she still breathed. Youth and a
strong constitution were waging a doubtful battle to rescue her from the
despair which threatened to rob her of either life or reason.
So the journey continued. Henceforward the trail followed Bill Williams's
river to the Colorado, tracked that stream northward to the Mohave valley,
and, crossing there, took the line of the Mohave river toward California.
It was a prodigious pilgrimage still, and far from being a safe one. The
Mohaves, one of the tallest and bravest races known, from six feet to six
and a half in height, fighting hand to hand with short clubs, were not
perfectly sure to be friendly. Coronado felt that, if ever he got his wife
and his fortune, he should have earned them. He was resolute, however;
there was no flinching yet in this versatile, yet obstinate nature; he was
as wicked and as enduring as a Pizarro.
We will not make the journey; we must suppose it. Weeks after the desert
had for a second time engulfed Thurstane, a coasting schooner from Santa
Barbara entered the Bay of San Francisco, having on board Clara, Mrs.
Stanley, and Coronado.
The latter is on deck now, smoking his eternal cigarito without knowing
it, and looking at the superb scenery without seeing it. A landscape
mirrored in the eye of a horse has about as much effect on the brain
within as a landscape mirrored in the eye of Coronado. He is a Latin; he
has a fine ear for music, and he would delight in museums of painting and
sculpture; but he has none of the passion of the sad, grave, imaginative
Anglican race for nature. Mountains, deserts, seas, and storms are to him
obstacles and hardships. He has no more taste for them than had Ulysses.
He has agonized with sea-sickness during the voyage, and this is the first
day that he has found tolerable. Once more he is able to eat and stand up;
able to think, devise, resolve, and execute; able, in short, to be
Coronado. Look at the little, sunburnt, sinewy, earnest, enduring man;
study his diplomatic countenance, serious and yet courteous, full of
gravity and yet ready for gayety; notice his ready smile and gracious wave
of the hand as he salutes the skipper. He has been through horrors; he has
fought a tremendous fight of passion, crime, and peril; yet he scarcely
shows a sign of it. There is some such lasting stuff in him as goes to
make the Bolivars, Francias, and Lopez, the restless and indefatigable
agitators of the Spanish-American communities. You cannot help
sympathizing with him somewhat, because of his energy and bottom. You are
tempted to say that he deserves to win.
He has made some progress in his conspiracy to entrap love and a fortune.
It must be understood that the two muleteers persisted in their story
concerning Apaches, and that consequently Clara has come to think of
Thurstane as dead. Meantime Coronado, after the first two days of wild
excitement, has conducted himself with rare intelligence, never alarming
her with talk of love, always courteous, kind, and useful. Little by
little he has worn away her suspicions that he planned murder, and her
only remaining anger against him is because he did not attempt to search
for Thurstane; but even for that she is obliged to see some excuse in the
terrible word "Apaches."
"I have had no thought but for _her_ safety," Coronado often said to Mrs.
Stanley, who as often repeated the words to Clara. "I have made mistakes,"
he would go on. "The San Juan journey was one. I will not even plead
Garcia's instructions to excuse it. But our circumstances have been
terrible. Who could always take the right step amid such trials? All I ask
is charity. If humility deserves mercy, I deserve it."
Coronado even schooled himself into expressing sympathy with Clara for the
loss of Thurstane. He spoke of him as her affianced, eulogized his
character, admitted that he had not formerly done him justice, hinting
that this blindness had sprung from jealousy, and so alluded to his own
affection. These things he said at first to Aunt Maria, and she, his
steady partisan, repeated them to Clara, until at last the girl could bear
to hear them from Coronado. Sympathy! the bleeding heart must have it; it
will accept this balm from almost any hand, and it will pay for it in
gratitude and trust.
Thus in two months from the disappearance of Thurstane his rival had begun
to hope that he was supplanting him. Of course he had given up all thought
of carrying out the horrible plan with which he had started from Santa Fé.
Indeed, he began to have a horror of Garcia, as a man who had set him on a
wrong track and nearly brought him into folly and ruin. One might say that
Satan was in a state of mind to rebuke sin.
Let us now glance at Clara. She is seated beside Aunt Maria on the
quarter-deck of the schooner. Her troubles have changed her; only eighteen
years old, she has the air of twenty-four; her once rounded face is thin,
and her childlike sweetness has become tender gravity. When she entered on
this journey she resembled the girl faces of Greuze; now she is sometimes
a _mater amabilis_, and sometimes a _mater dolorosa_; for her grief has
been to her as a maternity. The great change, so far from diminishing her
beauty, has made her seem more fascinating and nobler. Her countenance has
had a new birth, and exhibits a more perfect soul.
We have hitherto had little more than a superficial view of the characters
of our people. Events, incidents, adventures, and even landscapes have
been the leading personages of the story, and have been to its human
individualities what the Olympian gods are to Greek and Trojan heroes in
the Iliad. Just as Jove or Neptune rules or thwarts Agamemnon and
Achilles, so the monstrous circumstances of the desert have overborne,
dwarfed, and blurred these travellers. It is only now, when they have
escaped from the _dii majores_, and have become for a brief period
tranquil free agents, that we can see them as they are. Even yet they are
not altogether untrammelled. Man is never quite himself; he is always
under some external influence, past or present; he is always being
governed, if not being created.
Clara, born anew of trouble, is admirable. There is a sweet, sedate, and
almost solemn womanliness about her, which even overawes Mrs. Stanley,
conscious of aunthood and strongmindedness, and insisting upon it that her
niece is "a mere child." It is a great victory to gain over a lady who has
that sort of self-confidence that if she had been a sunflower and obliged
to turn toward the sun for life, she would yet have believed that it was
she who made him shine. When Clara decides a matter Mrs. Stanley, while
still mentally saying "Young thing," feels nevertheless that her own
decision has been uttered. And in every successive resistance she is
overcome the easier, for habit is a conqueror.
They have just had a discussion. Aunt Maria wants Clara to stand on her
dignity in a hotel until old Muñoz goes down on his marrow-bones, makes
her a handsome allowance, and agrees to leave her at least half his
fortune. Clara's reply is substantially, "He is my grandfather and the
proper head of my family. I think I ought to go straight to him and say,
Grandfather, here I am."
Beaten by this gentle conscientiousness, Aunt Maria endeavored to appeal
the matter to Coronado.
"I am so glad to see you enjoying your cigarito once more," she called to
him with as sweet a smile as if she didn't hate tobacco.
He left his smoking retreat amidships, took off his hat with a sort of
airy gravity, and approached them.
"Mr. Coronado, where do you propose to take us when we reach land?" asked
Aunt Maria.
"We will, if you please, go direct to my excellent relative's," was the
reply.
Aunt Maria held her head straight up, as if stiff-neckedly refusing to go
there, but made no opposition.
Coronado had meditated everything and decided everything. It would not do
to go to a hotel, because that might lead to a suspicion that he knew all
the while about the death of Muñoz. His plan was to drive at once to the
old man's place, demand him as if he expected to see him, express proper
surprise and grief over the funereal response, put the estate as soon as
possible into Clara's hands, become her man of affairs and trusted friend,
and so climb to be her husband. He was anxious; during all his perils in
the desert he had never been more so; but he bore the situation
heroically, as he could bear; his face revealed nothing but its outside--a
smile.
"My dear cousin," he presently said, "when I once fairly set you down in
your home, you will owe me, in spite of all my blunders, a word of
thanks."
"Coronado, I shall owe you more than I ever can repay," she replied
frankly, without remembering that he wanted to marry her. The next instant
she remembered it, and her face showed the first blush that had tinted it
for two months. He saw the significant color, and turned away to conceal a
joy which might have been perilous had she observed it.
Immediately on landing he proceeded to carry out his programme. He took a
hack, drove the ladies direct to the house of Muñoz, and there went
decorously through the form of learning that the old man was dead. Then,
consoling the sorrowful and anxious Clara, he hurried to the best hotel in
the city and made arrangements for what he meant should be an impressive
scene, the announcement of her fortune. He secured fine rooms for the
ladies, and ordered them a handsome lunch, with wine, etc., all without
regard to expense. The girl must be perfectly comfortable and under a
sense of all sorts of obligations to him when she received his _coup de
théâtre_.
He was not so preoccupied but that he quarelled with his coachman about
the hack hire and dismissed him with some disagreeable epithets in
Spanish. Next he took a saddle-horse, as being the cheapest conveyance
attainable, and cantered off to find the executors of Muñoz, enjoying
heartily such stares of admiration as he got for his splendid riding. In
an hour he returned, found the ladies in their freshest dresses, and
complimented them suitably. At this very moment his anguish of anxiety and
suspense was terrible. When Clara should learn that she was a millionaire,
what would she do? Would she throw off the air of friendliness which she
had lately worn, and scout him as one whom she had long known as a
scoundrel? Would all his plots, his labors, his perils, and his love prove
in one moment to have been in vain? As he stood there smiling and
flattering, he was on the cross.
"But I am talking trifles," he said at last, fairly catching his breath.
"Can you guess why I do it? I am prolonging a moment of intense pleasure."
Such was his control over himself that he looked really benign and noble
as he drew from his pocket a copy of the will and held it out toward
Clara.
"My dear cousin," he murmured, his dark eyes searching her face with
intense anxiety, "you cannot imagine my joy in announcing to you that you
are the sole heir of the good Pedro Muñoz."