University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

Yes, it was a life and death race between the emigrants and the Apaches for
the San Juan. Positions of defence were all along the road, but not one of them
could be held for a day, all being destitute of grass and water.

“There is no need of telling the ladies at once,” said Thurstane to Coronado,
as they rode side by side in rear of the caravan. “Let them be quiet as long as
they can be. Their trouble will come soon enough.”

“How many were there, do you think?” was the reply of a man who was
much occupied with his own chances. “Were there a hundred?”

“It's hard to estimate a mere black line like that. Yes, there must be a hundred,
besides stragglers. Their beasts have suffered, of course, as well as ours.
They have come fast, and there must be a lot in the rear. Probably both bands
are along.”

“The devils!” muttered Coronado. “I hope to God they will all perish of
thirst and hunger. The stubborn, stupid devils! Why should they follow us
here?” he demanded, looking furiously around upon the accursed landscape.

“Indian revenge. We killed too many of them.”

“Yes,” said Coronado, remembering anew the son of the chief. “Damn
them! I wish we could have killed them all.”

“That is just what we must try to do,” returned Thurstane deliberately.

“The question is,” he resumed after a moment of business-like calculation
of chances—“the question is mainly this, whether we can go twenty-five miles
quicker than they can go thirty-five. We must be the first to reach the river.”

“We can spare a few beasts,” said Coronado. “We must leave the weakest
behind.”

“We must not give up provisions.”

“We can eat mules.”

“Not till the last moment. We shall need them to take us back.”

Coronado inwardly cursed himself for venturing into this inferno, the haunting
place of devils in human shape. Then his mind wandered to Saratoga, New
York, Newport, and the other earthly heavens that were known to him. He
hummed an air; it was the brindisi of Lucrezia Borgia; it reminded him of
pleasures which now seemed lost forever; he stopped in the middle of it. Between
the associations which it excited—the images of gayety and splendor, real
or feigned—a commingling of kid gloves, bouquets, velvet cloaks, and noble
names—between these glories which so attracted his hungry soul and the present
environment of hideous deserts and savage pursuers, what a contrast there
was! There, far away, was the success for which he longed; here, close at
hand, was the peril which must purchase it. At that moment he was willing to
deny his bargain with Garcia and the devil. His boldest desire was, “Oh that
I were in Santa Fé!”

By Coronado's side rode a man who had not a thought for himself. A person
who has not passed years in the army can hardly imagine the sense of responsibility
which is ground into the character of an officer. He is a despot,
but a despot who is constantly accountable for the welfare of his subjects, and

who never passes a day without many grave thoughts of the despots above him.
Superior officers are in a manner his deities, and the Army Regulations have
for him the weight of Scripture. He never forgets by what solemn rules of
duty and honor he will be judged if he falls short of his obligations. This professional
conscience becomes a destiny to him, and guides his life to an extent
inconceivable by most civilians. He acquires a habit of watching and caring for
others; he cannot help assuming a charge which falls in his way. When he is
not governed by the rule of obedience, he is governed by the rule of responsibility.
The two make up his duty, and to do his duty is his existence.

At this moment our young West Pointer, only twenty-three or four years
old, was gravely and grimly anxious for his four soldiers, for all these people
whom circumstance had placed under his protection, and even for his army
mules, provisions, and ammunition. His only other sentiment was a passionate
desire to prevent harm or even fear from approaching Clara Van Diemen.
These two sentiments might be said to make up for the present his entire character.
As we have already observed, he had not a thought for himself.

Presently it occurred to the youngster that he ought to cheer on his fellow-travellers.

Trotting up with a smile to Mrs. Stanley and Clara, he asked, “How do you
bear it?”

“Oh, I am almost dead,” groaned Aunt Maria. “I shall have to be tied on
before long.”

The poor woman, no longer youthful, it must be remembered, was indeed
badly jaded. Her face was haggard; her general get-up was in something like
scarecrow disorder; she didn't even care how she looked. So fagged was she
that she had once or twice dozed in the saddle and come near falling.

“It was outrageous to bring us here,” she went on pettishly. “Ladies
shouldn't be dragged into such hardships.”

Thurstane wanted to say that he was not responsible for the journey; but he
would not, because it did not seem manly to shift all the blame upon Coronado.

“I am very, very sorry,” was his reply. “It is a frightful journey.”

“Oh, frightful, frightful!” sighed Aunt Maria, twisting her aching back.

“But it will soon be over,” added the officer. “Only twenty miles more to
the river.”

“The river! It seems to me that I could live if I could see a river. Oh,
this desert! These perpetual rocks! Not a green thing to cool one's eyes.
Not a drop of water. I seem to be drying up, like a worm in the sunshine.”

“Is there no water in the flasks?” asked Thurstane.

“Yes,” said Clara. “But my aunt is feverish with fatigue.”

“What I want is the sight of it—and rest,” almost whimpered the elder lady.

“Will our horses last?” asked Clara. “Mine seems to suffer a great deal.”

“They must last,” replied Thurstane, grinding his teeth quite privately.
“Oh, yes, they will last,” he immediately added. “Even if they don't, we have
mules enough.”

“But how they moan! It makes me cringe to hear them.”

“Twenty miles more,” said Thurstane. “Only six hours at the longest.
Only half a day.”

“It takes less than half a day for a woman to die,” muttered the nearly desperate
Aunt Maria.

“Yes, when she sets about it,” returned the officer. “But we haven't set
about it, Mrs. Stanley. And we are not going to.”

The weary lady had no response ready for words of cheer; she leaned heavily
over the pommel of her saddle and rode on in silence.

“Ain't the same man she was,” slyly observed Phineas Glover with a twist
of his queer physiognomy.

Thurstane, though not fond of Mrs. Stanley, would not now laugh at her expense,
and took no notice of the sarcasm. Glover, fearful lest he had offended,
doubled the gravity of his expression and tacked over to a fresh subject.

“Shouldn't know whether to feel proud 'f myself or not, 'f I'd made this
country, Capm. Depends on what 'twas meant for. If 'twas meant to live in,
it's the poorest outfit I ever did see. If 'twas meant to scare folks, it's jest up
to the mark. 'Nuff to frighten a crow into fits. Capm, it fairly seems more
than airthly; puts me in mind 'f things in the Pilgrim's Progress—only worse.
Sh'd say it was like five thousin' Valleys 'f the Shadow 'f Death tangled together.
Tell ye, believe Christian 'd 'a' backed out 'f he'd had to travel through
here. Think Mr. Coronado 's all right in his top hamper, Capm? Do, hey?
Wal, then I'm all wrong; guess I'm 's crazy 's a bedbug. Wouldn't 'a'ketched
me steerin' this course of my own free will 'n' foreknowledge. Jest look at the
land now. Don't it look like the bottomless pit blowed up 'n' gone to smash?
Tell ye, 'f the Old Boy himself sh'd ride up alongside, shouldn't be a mite
s'prised to see him. Sh'd reckon he had a much bigger right to be s'prised to
ketch me here.”

After some further riding, shaking his sandy head, staring about him and
whistling, he broke out again.

“Tell ye, Capm, this beats my imagination. Used to think I c'd yarn it
pooty consid'able. But never can tell this. Never can do no manner 'f jestice
to it. Look a there now. There's a nateral bridge, or 'n unnateral one.
There's a hole blowed through a forty foot rock 's clean 's though 'twas done
with Satan's own field-piece, sech 's Milton tells about. An' there's a steeple
higher 'n our big one in Fair Haven. An' there's a church, 'n' a haystack. If
the devil hain't done his biggest celebratin' 'n' carpenterin' 'n' farmin' round
here, d'no 's I know where he has done it. Beats me, Capm; cleans me out.
Can't do no jestice to it. Can't talk about it. Seems to me 's though I was a
fool.”

Yes, even Phineas Glover's small and sinewy soul (a psyche of the size, muscular
force, and agility of a flea) had been seized, oppressed, and in a manner
smashed by the hideous sublimity of this wilderness of sandstone, basalt, and
granite.

Two hours passed, during which, from the nature of the ground, the travellers
could neither see nor be seen by their pursuers. Then came a breathless
ascent up another of the monstrous sandstone terraces. Thurstane ordered
every man to dismount, so as to spare the beasts as much as possible. He
walked by the side of Clara, patting, coaxing, and cheering her suffering horse,
and occasionally giving a heave of his solid shoulder against the trembling
haunches.

“Let me walk,” the girl presently said. “I can't bear to see the poor beast
so worried.”

“It would be better, if you can do it,” he replied, remembering that she might
soon have to call upon the animal for speed.

She dismounted, clasped her hands over his arm, and clambered thus. From
time to time, when some rocky step was to be surmounted, he lifted her bodily
up it.

“How can you be so strong?” she said, looking at him wonderingly and
gratefully.

“Miss Van Diemen, you give me strength,” he could not help responding.

At last they were at the summit of the rugged slope. The animals were
trembling and covered with sweat; some of them uttered piteous whinnyings,
or rather bleatings, like distressed sheep; five or six lay down with hollow
moans and rumblings. It was absolutely necessary to take a short rest.

Looking ahead, Thurstane saw that they had reached the top of the table-land
which lies south of the San Juan, and that nothing was before them for the
rest of the day but a rolling plateau seamed with meandering fissures of undiscoverable
depth. Traversable as the country was, however, there was one reason
for extreme anxiety. If they should lose the trail, if they should get on the
wrong side of one of those profound and endless chasms, they might reach the
river at a point where descent to it would be impossible, and might die of thirst
within sight of water. For undoubtedly the San Juan flowed at the bottom of
one of those amazing cañons which gully this Mer de Glace in stone.

An error of direction once committed, the enemy would not give them time
to retrieve it, and they would be slaughtered like mad dogs with the foam on
their mouths.

Thurstane remembered that it would be his terrible duty in the last extremity
to send a bullet through the heart of the woman he worshipped, rather than let
her fall into the hands of brutes who would only grant her a death of torture and
dishonor. Even his steady soul failed for a moment, and tears of desperation
gathered in his eyes. For the first time in years he looked up to heaven and
prayed fervently.

From the unknown destiny ahead he turned to look for the fate which pursued.
Walking with Coronado to the brink of the colossal terrace, and sheltering
himself from the view of the rest of the party, he scanned the trail with his
glass. The dark line had now become a series of dark specks, more than a
hundred and fifty in number, creeping along the arid floor of the lower plateau,
and reminding him of venomous insects.

“They are not five miles from us,” shuddered the Mexican. “Cursed
beasts! Devils of hell!”

“They have this hill to climb,” said Thurstane, “and, if I am not mistaken,
they will have to halt here, as we have done. Their ponies must be pretty well
fagged by this time.”

“They will get a last canter out of them,” murmured Coronado. His soul
was giving way under his hardships, and it would have been a solace to him to
weep aloud. As it was, he relieved himself with a storm of blasphemies. Oaths
often serve to a man as tears do to a woman.

“We must trot now,” he said presently.

“Not yet. Not till they are within half a mile of us. We must spare our
wind up to the last minute.”

They were interrupted by a cry of surprise and alarm. Several of the muleteers
had strayed to the edge of the declivity, and had discovered with their unaided
eyesight the little cloud of death in the distance. Texas Smith approached,
looked from under his shading hand, muttered a single curse, walked
back to his horse, inspected his girths, and recapped his rifle. In a minute it
was known throughout the train that Apaches were in the rear. Without a word
of direction, and in a gloomy silence which showed the general despair, the
march was resumed. There was a disposition to force a trot, which was promptly

and sternly checked by Thurstane. His voice was loud and firm; he had instinctively
assumed responsibility and command; no one disputed him or
thought of it.

Three mules which could not rise were left where they lay, feebly struggling to
regain their feet and follow their comrades, but falling back with hollow groanings
and a kind of human despair in their faces. Mile after mile the retreat continued,
always at a walk, but without halting. It was long before the Apaches
were seen again, for the ascent of the plateau lost them a considerable space,
and after that they were hidden for a time by its undulations. But about four
in the afternoon, while the emigrants were still at least five miles from the river,
a group of savage horsemen rose on a knoll not more than three miles behind,
and uttered a yell of triumph. There was a brief panic, and another attempt to
push the animals, which Thurstane checked with levelled pistol.

The train had already entered a gully. As this gully advanced it rapidly
broadened and deepened into a cañon. It was the track of an extinct river
which had once flowed into the San Juan on its way to the distant Pacific. Its
windings hid the desired goal; the fugitives must plunge into it blindfold;
whatever fate it brought them, they must accept it. They were like men who
should enter the cavern of unknown goblins to escape from demons who were
following visibly on their footsteps.

From time to time they heard ferocious yells in their rear, and beheld their
fiendish pursuers, now also in the cañon. It was like Christian tracking the
Valley of the Shadow of Death, and listening to the screams and curses of devils.
At every reappearance of the Apaches they had diminished the distance between
themselves and their expected prey, and at last they were evidently not
more than a mile behind. But there in sight was the river; there, enclosed in
one of its bends, was an alluvial plain; rising from the extreme verge of the
plain, and overhanging the stream, was a bluff; and on this bluff was what seemed
to be a fortress.

Thurstane sent all the horsemen to the rear of the train, took post himself as
the rearmost man, measured once more with his eye the space between his
charge and the enemy, cast an anxious glance at the reeling beast which bore
Clara, and in a firm ringing voice commanded a trot.

The order and the movement which followed it were answered by the Indians
with a yell. The monstrous and precipitous walls of the cañon clamored back
a fiendish mockery of echoes which seemed to call for the prowlers of the air to
arrive quickly and devour their carrion.