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Her first idea was that she must take him; that the mere fact of a man asking
for her gave him a species of right over her; that there was no such thing
possible as answering, No. She sat looking at Coronado with a helpless, timorous

air, very much as a child looks at his father, when the father, switching
his rattan, says, “Come with me.”

On recovering herself a little, her first words—uttered slowly, in a tone of
surprise and of involuntary reproach—were, “Oh, Coronado! I did not expect
this.”

“Can't you answer me?” he asked in a voice which was honestly tremulous
with emotion. “Can't you say yes?”

“Oh, Coronado!” repeated Clara, a good deal touched by his agitation.

“Can't you?” he pleaded. Repetitions, in such cases, are so natural and so
potent.

“Let me think, Coronado,” she implored. “I can't answer you now. You
have taken me so by surprise!”

“Every moment that you take to think is torture to me,” he pleaded, as he
continued to press her.

Perhaps she was on the point of giving way before his insistence. Consider
the advantages that he had over her in this struggle of wills for the mastery.
He was older by ten years; he possessed both the adroitness of self-command
and the energy of passion; he had a long experience in love matters, while she
had none. He was the proclaimed heir of a man reputed wealthy, and could
therefore, as she believed, support her handsomely. Since the death of her
father she considered Garcia the head of her family in New Mexico; and Coronado
had had the face to tell her that he made his offer with the approval of
Garcia. Then she was under supposed obligations to him, and he was to be her
protector across the desert.

She was as it were reeling in her saddle, when a truly Spanish idea saved
her.

“Muñoz!” she exclaimed. “Coronado, you forget my grandfather. He
should know of this.”

Although the man was unaccustoned to start, he drew back as if a ghost had
confronted him; and even when he recovered from his transitory emotion, he
did not at first know how to answer her. It would not do to say, “Muñoz is
dead,” and much less to add, “You are his heir.”

“We are Americans,” he at last argued. “Spanish customs are dead and
buried. Can't you speak for yourself on a matter which concerns you and me
alone?”

“Coronado, I think it would not be right,” she replied, holding firmly to her
position. “It is probable that my grandfather would be better pleased to have
this matter referred to him. I ought to consider him, and you must let me do
so.”

“I submit,” he bowed, seeing that there was no help for it, and deciding to
make a grace of necessity. “It pains me, but I submit. Let me hope that you
will not let this pass from your mind. Some day, when it is proper, I shall speak
again.”

He was not wholly dissatisfied, for he trusted that henceforward her head
would be full of him, and he had not much hoped to gain more in a first effort.

“I shall always be proud and gratified at the compliment you have paid me,”
was her reply to his last request.

“You deserve many such compliments,” he said, gravely courteous and quite
sincere.

Then they cantered back in silence to meet the advancing train.

Yes, Coronado was partly satisfied. He believed that he had gained a firmer

footing among the girl's thoughts and emotions than had been gained by Thurstane.
In a degree he was right. No sensitive, and pure, and good girl can receive
her first offer without being much moved by it. The man who has placed
himself at her feet will affect her strongly. She may begin to dread him, or begin
to like him more than before; but she cannot remain utterly indifferent to
him. The probability is that, unless subsequent events make him disagreeable
to her, she will long accord him a measure of esteem and gratitude.

For two or three days, while Clara was thinking much of Coronado, he gave
her less than usual of his society. Believing that her mind was occupied with
him, that she was wondering whether he were angry, unhappy, etc., he remained
a good deal apart, wrapped himself in sadness, and trusted that time would do
much for him. Had there been no rival, the plan would have been a good one;
but Ralph Thurstane being present, it was less successful.

Ralph had already become more of a favorite than any one knew, even the
young lady herself; and now that he found chances for long talks and short gallops
with her, he got on better than ever. He was just the kind of youngster a
girl of eighteen would naturally like to have ride by her side. He was handsome;
at any rate, he was the handsomest man she had seen in the desert, and
the desert was just then her sphere of society. You could see in his figure how
strong he was, and in his face how brave he was. He was a good fellow, too;
“tendir and trew” as the Douglas of the ballad; sincere, frank, thoroughly truthful
and honorable. Every way he seemed to be that being that a woman most
wants, a potential and devoted protector. Whenever Clara looked in his face
her eyes said, without her knowledge, “I trust you.”

Now, as we have already stated, Thurstane's eyes were uncommonly fine and
expressive. Of the very darkest blue that ever was seen in anybody's head, and
shaded, moreover, by remarkably long chestnut lashes, they had the advantages
of both blue eyes and black ones, being as gentle as the one and as fervent as
the other. Accordingly, a sort of optical conversation commenced between the
two young people. Every time that Clara's glance said, “I trust you,” Thurstane's
responded, “I will die for you.” It was a perilous sort of dialogue, and
liable to involve the two souls which looked out from these sparkling, transparent
windows. Before long the Lieutenant's modest heart took courage, and his
stammering tongue began to be loosed somewhat, so that he uttered things which
frightened both him and Clara. Not that the remarks were audacious in themselves,
but he was conscious of so much unexpressed meaning behind them, and
she was so ready to guess that there might be such a meaning!

It seems ridiculous that a fellow who could hold his head straight up before
a storm of cannon shot, should be positively bashful. Yet so it was. The boy
had been through West Point, to be sure; but he had studied there, and not
flirted; the Academy had not in any way demoralized him. On the whole, in
spite of swearing under gross provocation, and an inclination toward strictness
in discipline, he answered pretty well for a Bayard.

His bashfulness was such, at least in the presence of Clara, that he trembled
to the tips of his fingers in merely making this remark: “Miss Van Diemen,
this journey is the pleasantest thing in my whole life.”

Clara blushed until she dazzled him and seemed to burn herself. Nevertheless
she was favored with her usual childlike artlessness of speech, and answered,
“I am glad you find it agreeable.”

Nothing more from Ralph for a minute; he was recovering his breath and
self-possession.

“You cannot think how much safer I feel because you and your men are with
us,” said Clara.

Thurstane unconsciously gripped the handle of his sabre, with a feeling that
he could and would massacre all the Indians of the desert, if it were necessary
to preserve her from harm.

“Yes, you may rely upon my men, too,” he declared. “They have a sort of
adoration for you.”

“Have they?” asked Clara, with a frank smile of pleasure. “I wonder at
it. I hardly notice them. I ought to, they seem so patient and trusty.”

“Ah, a lady!” said Thurstane. “A good soldier will die any time for a lady.”

Then he wondered how she could have failed to guess that she must be worshipped
by these rough men for her beauty.

“I have overheard them talking about you,” he went on, gratified at being
able to praise her to her face, though in the speech of others. “Little Sweeny
says, in his Irish brogue, `I can march twic't as fur for the seein' av her!”'

“Oh! did he?” laughed Clara. “I must carry Sweeny's musket for him
some time.”

“Don't, if you please,” said Thurstane, the disciplinarian rising in him.
“You would spoil him for the service.”

“Can't I send him a dish from our table?”

“That would just suit his case. He hasn't got broken to hard-tack yet.”

“Miss Van Diemen,” was his next remark, “do you know what you are to
do, if we are attacked?”

“I am to get into a wagon.”

“Into which wagon?”

“Into my aunt's.”

“Why into that one?”

“So as to have all the ladies together.”

“When you have got into the wagon, what next?”

“Lie down on the floor to protect myself from the arrows.”

“Very good,” laughed Thurstane. “You say your tactics well.”

This catechism had been put and recited every day since he had joined the
train. The putting of it was one of the Lieutenant's duties and pleasures; and,
notwithstanding its prophecy of peril, Clara enjoyed it almost as much as he.

Well, we have heard these two talk, and much in their usual fashion. Not
great souls as yet: they may indeed become such some day; but at present
they are only mature in moral power and in capacity for mighty emotions. Information,
mental development, and conversational ability hereafter.

In one way or another two or three of these tête-à-têtes were brought about
every day. Thurstane wanted them all the time; would have been glad to make
life one long dialogue with Miss Van Diemen; found an aching void in every
moment spent away from her. Clara, too, in spite of maidenly struggles with
herself, began to be of this way of feeling. Wonderful place the Great American
Desert for falling in love!

Coronado soon guessed, and with good reason, that the seed which he had
sown in the girl's mind was being replaced by other germs, and that he had
blundered in trusting that she would think of him while she was talking with
Thurstane. The fear of losing her increased his passion for her, and made him
hate his rival with correlative fervor.

“Why don't you find a chance at that fellow?” he muttered to his bravo,
Texas Smith.

“How the h—! kin I do it?” growled the bushwhacker, feeling that his intelligence
and courage were unjustly called in question. “He's allays around
the train, an' his sojers allays handy. I hain't had nary chance.”

“Take him off on a hunt.”

“He ain't a gwine. I reckon he knows himself. I'm afeard to praise huntin'
much to him; he might get on my trail. Tell you these army chaps is resky.
I never wanted to meddle with them kind o' close. You know I said so. I
said so, fair an' square, I did.”

“You might manage it somehow, if you had the pluck.”

“Had the pluck!” repeated Texas Smith. His sallow, haggard face turned
dusky with rage, and his singularly black eyes flamed as if with hell-fire. A
Malay, crazed with opium and ready to run amok, could not present a more savage
spectacle than this man did as he swayed in his saddle, grinding his teeth,
clutching his rifle, and glaring at Coronado. What chiefly infuriated him was
that the insult should come from one whom he considered a “greaser,” a man
of inferior race. He, Texas Smith, an American, a white man, was treated as
if he were an “Injun” or a “nigger.” Coronado was thoroughly alarmed, and
smoothed his ruffled feathers at once.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, promptly. “My dear Mr. Smith, I was entirely
wrong. Of course I know that you have courage. Everybody knows it.
Besides, I am under the greatest obligations to you. You saved my life. By
heavens, I am horribly ashamed of my injustice.”

A minute or so of this fluent apologizing calmed the bushwhacker's rage and
soothed his injured feelings.

“But you oughter be keerful how you talk that way to a white man,” he said.
“No white man, if he's a gentleman, can stan' being told he hain't got no pluck.”

“Certainly,” assented Coronado. “Well, I have apologized. What more
can I do?”

“Square, you're all right now,” said the forgiving Texan, stretching out his
bony, dirty hand and grasping Coronado's. “But don't say it agin. White men
can't stan' sech talk. Well, about this feller—I'll see, I'll see. Square, I'll try
to do what's right.”

As Coronado rode away from this interview, he ground his teeth with rage
and mortification, muttering, “A white man! a white man! So I am a black
man. Yes, I am a greaser. Curse this whole race of English-speaking people!”

After a while he began to think to the purpose. He too must work; he must
not trust altogether to Texas Smith; the scoundrel might flinch, or might fail.
Something must be done to separate Clara and Thurstane. What should it be?
Here we are almost ashamed of Coronado. The trick that he hit upon was the
stalest, the most threadbare, the most commonplace and vulgar that one can imagine.
It was altogether unworthy of such a clever and experienced conspirator.
His idea was this: to get lost with Clara for one night; in the morning to
rejoin the train. Thurstane would be disgusted, and would unquestionably give
up the girl entirely when Coronado should say to him, “It was a very unlucky
accident, but I have done what a gentleman should, and we are engaged.”

This coarse, dastardly, and rather stupid stratagem he put into execution as
quickly as possible. There were some dangers to be guarded against, as for instance
Apaches, and the chance of getting lost in reality.

“Have an eye upon me to-day,” he suggested to Texas. “If I leave the
train with any one, follow me and keep a lookout for Indians. Only stay out of
sight.”

Now for an opportunity to lead Clara astray. The region was favorable;
they were in an arid land of ragged sandstone spurs and buttes; it would be
necessary to march until near sunset, in order to find water and pasturage. Consequently
there was both time and scenery for his project. Late in the afternoon
the train crossed a narrow mesa or plateau, and approached a sublime terrace
of rock which was the face of a second table-land. This terrace was cleft by
several of those wonderful grooves which are known as cañons, and which were
wrought by that mighty water-force, the sculpturer of the American desert. In
one place two of these openings were neighbors: the larger was the route and
the smaller led nowhere.

“Let the train pass on,” suggested Coronado to Clara. “If you will ride
with me up this little cañon, you will find some of the most exquisite scenery
imaginable. It rejoins the large one further on. There is no danger.”

Clara would have preferred not to go, or would have preferred to go with
Thurstane.

“My dear child, what do you mean?” urged Aunt Maria, looking out of her
wagon. “Mr. Coronado, I'll ride there with you myself.”

The result of the dialogue which ensued was that, after the train had entered
the gorge of the larger cañon, Coronado and Clara turned back and wandered
up the smaller one, followed at a distance by Texas Smith. In twenty minutes
they were separated from the wagons by a barrier of sandstone several hundred
feet high, and culminating in a sharp ridge or frill of rocky points, not unlike the
spiny back of a John Dory. The scenery, although nothing new to Clara, was
such as would be considered in any other land amazing. Vast walls on either
side, consisting mainly of yellow sandstone, were variegated with white, bluish,
and green shales, with layers of gypsum of the party-colored marl series, with
long lines of white limestone so soft as to be nearly earth, and with red and
green foliated limestone mixed with blood-red shales. The two wanderers
seemed to be amid the landscapes of a Christmas drama as they rode between
these painted precipices toward a crimson sunset.

It was a perfect solitude. There was not a breath of life besides their own
in this gorgeous valley of desolation. The ragged, crumbling battlements, and
the loftier points of harder rock, would not have furnished subsistence for a goat
or a mouse. Color was everywhere and life nowhere: it was such a region as
one might look for in the moon; it did not seem to belong to an inhabited planet.

Before they had ridden half an hour the sun went down suddenly behind serrated
steeps, and almost immediately night hastened in with his obscurities.
Texas Smith, riding hundreds of yards in the rear and concealing himself behind
the turning points of the cañon, was obliged to diminish his distance in
order to keep them under his guard. Clara had repeatedly expressed her doubts
as to the road, and Coronado had as often asserted that they would soon see the
train. At last the ravine became a gully, winding up a breast of shadowy mountain
cumbered with loose rocks, and impassable to horses.

“We are lost,” confessed Coronado, and then proceeded to console her. The
train could not be far off; their friends would undoubtedly seek them; at all
events, would not go on without them. They must bivouac there as well as
might be, and in the morning rejoin the caravan.

He had been forethoughted enough to bring two blankets on his saddle, and
he now spread them out for her, insisting that she should try to sleep. Clara
cried frankly and heartily, and begged him to lead her back through the cañon.
No; it could not be traversed by night, he asserted; they would certainly break

their necks among the bowlders. At last the girl suffered herself to be wrapped
in the blankets, and made an endeavor to forget her wretchedness and vexation
in slumber.

Meantime, a few hundred yards down the ravine, a tragedy was on the verge
of action. Thurstane, missing Coronado and Clara, and learning what direction
they had taken, started with two of his soldiers to find them, and was now picking
his way on foot along the cañon. Behind a detached rock at the base of one
of the sandstone walls Texas Smith lay in ambush, aiming his rifle first at one
and then at another of this stumbling trio, and cursing the starlight because it
was so dim that he could not positively distinguish which was the officer.