University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

For the second time within a week, Texas Smith found himself upon the
brink of opportunity, without being able (as he had phrased it to Coronado) to
do what was right.

He levelled at Thurstane, and then it did not seem to be Thurstane; he had
a dead sure sight at Kelly, and then perceived that that was an error; he drew a
bead on Shubert, and still he hesitated. He could distinguish the Lieutenant's
voice, but he could not fix upon the figure which uttered it.

It was exasperating. Never had an assassin been better ambuscaded. He
was kneeling behind a little ridge of sandstone; about a foot below its edge was
an orifice made by the rains and winds of bygone centuries; through this, as
through an embrasure, he had thrust his rifle. Not a chance of being hit by a
return shot, while after the enemy's fire had been drawn he could fly down the
ravine, probably without discovery and certainly without recognition. His horse
was tethered below, behind another rock; and he felt positive that these men
had not come upon it. He could mount, drive their beasts before him into the
plain, and then return to camp. No need of explaining his absence; he was
the head hunter of the expedition; it was his business to wander.

All this was so easy to do, if he could only take the first step. But he dared
not fire lest he should merely kill a soldier, and so make an uproar and rouse
suspicions without the slightest profit. It was not probable that Coronado
would pay him for shooting the wrong man, and setting on foot a dangerous investigation.
So the desperado continued to peer through the dim night, cursing
his stars and everybody's stars for not shining better, and seeing his opportunity
slip rapidly away. After Thurstane and the others had passed, after the chance
of murder had stalked by him like a ghost and vanished, he left his ambush,
glided down the ravine to his horse, waked him up with a vindictive kick, leaped
into the saddle, and hastened to camp. To inquiries about the lost couple he replied
in his sullen, brief way that he had not seen them; and when urged to go
to their rescue, he of course set off in the wrong direction and travelled but a
short distance.

Meantime Ralph had found the captives of the cañon. Clara, wrapped in
her blankets, was lying at the foot of a rock, and crying while she pretended to
sleep. Coronado, unable to make her talk, irritated by the faint sobs which he
overheard, but stubbornly resolved on carrying out his stupid plot, had retired
in a state of ill-humor unusual with him to another rock, and was consoling
himself by smoking cigarito after cigarito. The two horses, tied together neck

and crupper, were fasting near by. As Coronado had forgotten to bring food
with him, Clara was also fasting.

Think of Apaches, and imagine the terror with which she caught the sounds
of approach, the heavy, stumbling steps through the darkness. Then imagine
the joy with which she recognized Thurstane's call and groped to meet him. In
the dizziness of her delight, and amid the hiding veils of the obscurity, it did not
seem wrong nor unnatural to fall against his arm and be supported by it for a
moment. Ralph received this touch, this shock, as if it had been a ball; and
his nature bore the impress of it as long as if it had made a scar. In his whole
previous life he had not felt such a thrill of emotion; it was almost too powerful
to be adequately described as a pleasure.

Next came Coronado, as happy as a disappointed burglar whose cue it is to
congratulate the rescuing policeman. “My dear Lieutenant! You are heaven's
own messenger. You have saved us from a horrible night. But it is prodigious;
it is incredible. You must have come here by enchantment. How in God's
name could you find your way up this fearful cañon?”

“The cañon is perfectly passable on foot,” replied the young officer, stiffly
and angrily. “By Jove, sir! I don't see why you didn't make a start to get out.
This is a pretty place to lodge Miss Van Diemen.”

Coronado took off his hat and made a bow of submission and regret, which
was lost in the darkness.

“I must say,” Thurstane went on grumbling, “that, for a man who claims to
know this country, your management has been very singular.”

Clara, fearful of a quarrel, slightly pressed his arm and checked this volcano
with the weight of a feather.

“We are not all like you, my dear Lieutenant,” said Coronado, in a tone which
might have been either apologetical or ironical. “You must make allowance for
ordinary human nature.”

“I beg pardon,” returned Thurstane, who was thinking now chiefly of that
pressure on his arm. “The truth is, I was alarmed for your safety. I can't help
feeling responsibility on this expedition, although it is your train. My military
education runs me into it, I suppose. Well, excuse my excitement. Miss Van
Diemen, may I help you back through the gully?”

In leaning on him, being guided by him, being saved by him, trusting in him,
the girl found a pleasure which was irresistible, although it seemed audacious
and almost sinful. Before the cañon was half traversed she felt as if she could
go on with him through the great dark valley of life, confiding in his strength
and wisdom to lead her aright and make her happy. It was a temporary wave
of emotion, but she remembered it long after it had passed.

Around the fires, after a cup of hot coffee, amid the odors of a plentiful
supper, recounting the evening's adventure to Mrs. Stanley, Coronado was at his
best. How he rolled out the English language! Our mother tongue hardly
knew itself, it ran so fluently and sounded so magniloquently and lied so naturally.
He praised everybody but himself; he praised Clara, Thurstane, and the
two soldiers and the horses; he even said a flattering word or two for Divine
Providence. Clara especially, and the whole of her heroic, more than human
sex, demanded his enthusiastic admiration. How she had borne the terrors of
the night and the desert! “Ah, Mrs. Stanley! only you women are capable of
such efforts.”

Aunt Maria's Olympian head nodded, and her cheerful face, glowing with tea
and the camp fires, confessed “Certainly!”

“What nonsense, Coronado!” said Clara. “I was horribly frightened, and
you know it.”

Aunt Maria frowned with surprise and denial. “Absurd, child! You were
not frightened at all. Of course you were not. Why, even if you had been
slightly timorous, you had your cousin to protect you.”

“Ah, Mrs. Stanley, I am a poor knight-errant,” said Coronado. “We Mexicans
are no longer formidable. One man of your Anglo-Saxon blood is supposed
to be a better defence than a dozen of us. We have been subdued; we
must submit to depreciation. I must confess, in fact, that I had my fears. I was
greatly relieved on my cousin's account when I heard the voice of our military
chieftain here.”

Then came more flattery for Ralph, with proper rations for the two privates.
Those faithful soldiers—he must show his gratitude to them; he had forgotten
them in the basest manner. “Here, Pedronillo, take these cigaritos to privates
Kelly and Shubert, with my compliments. Begging your permission, Lieutenant.
Thank you.”

“Pooty tonguey man, that Seenor,” observed Captain Phineas Glover to Mrs.
Stanley, when the Mexican went off to his blankets.

“Yes; a very agreeable and eloquent gentleman,” replied the lady, wishing
to correct the skipper's statement while seeming to assent to it.

“Jess so,” admitted Glover. “Ruther airy. Big talkin' man. Don't raise
no sech our way.”

Captain Glover was not fully aware that he himself had the fame of possessing
an imagination which was almost too much for the facts of this world.

“S'pose it's in the breed,” he continued. “Or likely the climate has suthin'
to do with it: kinder thaws out the words 'n' sets the idees a-bilin'. Niggers is
pooty much the same. Most niggers kin talk like a line runnin' out, 'n' tell lies
's fast 's our Fair Haven gals open oysters—a quart a minute.”

“Captain Glover, what do you mean?' frowned Aunt Maria. “Mr. Coronado
is a friend of mine.”

“Oh, I was speakin' of niggers,” returned the skipper promptly. “Forgot
we begun about the Seenor. Sho! niggers was what I was talkin' of. B' th'
way, that puts me in mind 'f one I had for cook once. Jiminy! how that man
would cook! He'd cook a slice of halibut so you wouldn't know it from beefsteak.”

“Dear me! how did he do it?' asked Aunt Maria, who had a fancy for
kitchen mysteries.

“Never could find out,” said Glover, stepping adroitly out of his difficulty.
“Don't s'pose that nigger would a let on how he did it for ten dollars.”

“I should think the receipt would be worth ten dollars,” observed Aunt
Maria thoughtfully.

“Not 'xactly here,” returned the captain, with one of his dried smiles, which
had the air of having been used a great many times before. “Halibut too
skurce. Wal, I was goin' to tell ye 'bout this nigger. He come to be the cook
he was because he was a big eater. We was wrecked once, 'n' had to live three
days on old shoes 'n' that sort 'f truck. Wal, this nigger was so darned ravenous
he ate up a pair o' long boots in the time it took me to git down one 'f the
straps.”

“Ate up a pair of boots!” exclaimed Aunt Maria, amazed and almost incredulous.

“Yes, by thunder!” insisted the captain, “grease, nails, 'n' all. An' then
went at the patent leather forepiece 'f his cap.”

“What privations!” said Aunt Maria, staring fit to burst her spectacles.

“Oh, that's nothin',” chuckled Glover. “I'll tell ye suthin' some time that
'll astonish ye. But jess now I'm sleepy, 'n' I guess I'll turn in.”

“Mr. Cluvver, it is your durn on card do-night,” interposed Meyer, the German
sergeant, as the captain was about to roll himself in his blankets.

“So 'tis, returned Glover in well feigned astonishment. “Don't forgit a feller,
do ye, Sergeant? How 'n the world do ye keep the 'count so straight? Oh,
got a little book there, hey, with all our names down. Wal, that's shipshape.
You'd make a pooty good mate, Sergeant. When does my watch begin?”

“Right away. You're always on the virst relief. You'll fall in down there
at the gorner of the vagon bark.”

“Wal—yes—s'pose I will,” sighed the skipper, as he rolled up his blankets
and prepared for two hours' sentry duty.

Let us look into the arrangements for the protection of the caravan. With
Coronado's consent Thurstane had divided the eighteen Indians and Mexicans,
four soldiers, Texas Smith, and Glover, twenty-four men in all, into three equal
squads, each composed of a sergeant, corporal, and six privates. Meyer was
sergeant of one squad, the Irish veteran Kelly had another, and Texas Smith
the third. Every night a detachment went on duty in three reliefs, each relief
consisting of two men, who stood sentry for two hours, at the end of which time
they were relieved by two others.

The six wagons were always parked in an oblong square, one at each end
and two on each side; but in order to make the central space large enough for
camping purposes, they were placed several feet apart; the gaps being closed
with lariats, tied from wheel to wheel, to pen in the animals and keep out charges
of Apache cavalry. On either flank of this enclosure, and twenty yards or so
distant from it, paced a sentry. Every two hours, as we have said, they were relieved,
and in the alternate hours the posts were visited by the sergeant or corporal
of the guard, who took turns in attending to this service. The squad that
came off duty in the morning was allowed during the day to take naps in the
wagons, and was not put upon the harder camp labor, such as gathering fire-wood,
going for water, etc.

The two ladies and the Indian women slept at night in the wagons, not only
because the canvas tops protected them from wind and dew, but also because
the wooden sides would shield them from arrows. The men who were not on
guard lay under the vehicles so as to form a cordon around the mules. Thurstane
and Coronado, the two chiefs of this armed migration, had their alternate
nights of command, each when off duty sleeping in a special wagon known as
“headquarters,” but holding himself ready to rise at once in case of an alarm.

The cooking fires were built away from the park, and outside the beats of the
sentries. The object was twofold: first, to keep sparks from lighting on the
wagon covers; second, to hide the sentries from prowling archers. At night
you can see everything between yourself and a fire, but nothing beyond it. As
long as the wood continued to blaze, the most adroit Indian skulker could not
approach the camp without exposing himself, while the guards and the garrison
were veiled from his sight by a wall of darkness behind a dazzle of light.

Such were the bivouac arrangements, intelligent, systematic, and military.
Not only had our Lieutenant devised them, but he saw to it that they were kept
in working order. He was zealously and faithfully seconded by his men, and especially
by his two veterans. There is no human machine more accurate and
trustworthy than an old soldier, who has had year on year of the discipline and

drill of a regular service, and who has learned to carry out instructions to the
letter.

The arrangements for the march were equally thorough and judicious. Texas
Smith, as the Nimrod of the party, claimed the right of going where he
pleased; but while he hunted, he of course served also as a scout to nose out
danger. The six Mexicans, who were nominally cattle-drivers, but really Coronado's
minor bravos, were never suffered to ride off in a body, and were expected
to keep on both sides of the train, some in advance and some in rear.
The drivers and muleteers remained steadily with their wagons and animals
The four soldiers were also at hand, trudging close in front or in rear, accoutrements
always on and muskets always loaded.

In this fashion the expedition had already journeyed over two hundred and
twenty miles. Following Colonel Washington's trail, it had crossed the ranges
of mountains immediately west of Abiquia, and, striking the Rio de Chaco, had
tracked its course for some distance with the hope of reaching the San Juan.
Stopped by a cañon, a precipitous gully hundreds of feet deep, through which
the Chaco ran like a chased devil, the wagons had turned westward, and then
had been forced by impassable ridges and lack of water into a southwest direction,
at last gaining and crossing Pass Washington.

It was now on the western side of the Sierra de Chusca, in the rude, barren
country over which Fort Defiance stands sentry. Ever since the second day after
leaving San Isidoro it had been on the great western slope of the continent,
where every drop of water tends toward the Pacific. The pilgrims would have
had cause to rejoice could they have travelled as easily as the drops of water, and
been as certain of their goal. But the rivers had made roads for themselves, and
man had not yet had time to do likewise.

The great central plateau of North America is a Mer de Glace in stone. It
is a continent of rock, gullied by furious rivers; plateau on plateau of sandstone,
with sluiceways through which lakes have escaped; the whole surface gigantically
grotesque with the carvings of innumerable waters. What is remarkable
in the scenery is, that its sublimity is an inversion of the sublimity of almost all
other grand scenery. It is not so much the heights that are prodigious as the
abysses. At certain points in the course of the Colorado of the West you can
drop a plumb line six thousand feet before it will reach the bosom of the current;
and you can only gain the water level by turning backward for scores of
miles and winding laboriously down some subsidiary cañon, itself a chasm of
awful grandeur.

Our travellers were now amid wild labyrinths of ranges, and buttes, and ca
ñons, which were not so much a portion of the great plateau as they were the
débris that constituted its flanks. Although thousands of feet above the level of
the sea, they still had thousands of feet to ascend before they could dominate
the desert. Wild as the land was, it was thus far passable, while toward the
north lay the untraversable. What course should be taken? Coronado, who
had crimes to commit and to conceal, did not yet feel that he was far enough
from the haunts of man. As soon as possible he must again venture a push
northward.

But not immediately. The mules were fagged with hard work, weak with
want of sufficient pasture, and had suffered much from thirst. He resolved to
continue westward to the pueblas of the Moquis, that interesting face of agricultural
and partially civilized Indians, perhaps the representatives of the architects
of the Casas Grandes if not also descended from the mound-builders of the

Mississippi valley. Having rested and refitted there, he might start anew for
the San Juan.

Thus far they had seen no Indians except the vagrants who had robbed Phineas
Glover. But they might now expect to meet them; they were in a region
which was the raiding ground of four great tribes: the Utes on the north, the
Navajos on the west, the Apaches on the south, and the Comanches on the east.
The peaceful and industrious Moquis, with their gay and warm blankets, their
fields of corn and beans, and their flocks of sheep, are the quarry which attracts
this ferocious cavalry of the desert, these Tartars and Bedouin of America.

Thurstane took more pains than ever with the guard duty. Coronado, unmilitary
though he was, and heartily as he abominated the Lieutenant, saw the
wisdom of submitting to the latter's discipline, and made all his people submit.
A practical-minded man, he preferred to owe the safety of his carcass to his rival
rather than have it impaled on Apache lances. Occasionally, however, he made
a suggestion.

“It is very well, this night-watching,” he once observed, “but what we have
most to fear is the open daylight. These mounted Indians seldom attack in the
darkness.”

Thurstane knew all this, but he did not say so; for he was a wise, considerate
commander already, and he had learned not to chill an informant. He
looked at Coronado inquiringly, as if to say, What do you propose?

“Every cañon ought to be explored before we enter it,” continued the Mexican.

“It is a good hint,” said Ralph. “Suppose I keep two of your cattle-drivers
constantly in advance. You had better instruct them yourself. Tell them to
fire the moment they discover an ambush. I don't suppose they will hit anybody,
but we want the warning.”

With two horsemen three or four hundred yards to the front, two more an
equal distance in the rear, and, when the ground permitted, one on either flank,
the train continued its journey. Every wagon-driver and muleteer had a weapon
of some sort always at hand. The four soldiers marched a few rods in advance,
for the ground behind had already been explored, while that ahead might contain
enemies. The precautions were extraordinary; but Thurstane constantly
trembled for Clara. He would have thought a regiment hardly sufficient to
guard such a treasure.

“How timorous these men are,” sniffed Aunt Maria, who, having seen no
hostile Indians, did not believe there were any. “And it seems to me that soldiers
are more easily scared than anybody else,” she added, casting a depreciating
glance at Thurstane, who was reconnoitring the landscape through his field
glass.

Clara believed in men, and especially in soldiers, and more particularly in
lieutenants. Accordingly she replied, “I suppose they know the dangers and we
don't.”

“Pshaw!” said Aunt Maria, an argument which carried great weight with
her. “They don't know half what they claim to. It is a clever man who knows
one-tenth of his own business.” (She was right there.) “They don't know so
much, I verily and solemnly believe, as the women whom they pretend to despise.”

This peaceful and cheering conversation was interrupted by a shot ringing
out of a cañon which opened into a range of rock some three hundred yards
ahead of the caravan. Immediately on the shot came a yell as of a hundred demons,

a furious trampling of the feet of many horses, and a cloud of the Tartars
of the American desert.

In advance of the rush flew the two Mexican vedettes, screaming “Apaches!
Apaches!