University of Virginia Library

7. 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 yars 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 Muñoz 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 ambusnes
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?”