Overland :: :: University of Virginia Library

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.