University of Virginia Library

20. CHAPTER XX.

When Thurstane came out of the Casa Grande he would have given some
years of his life to know that there was water in the enclosure.

Yet so well disciplined was the soul of this veteran of twenty-three, and so
thoroughly had he acquired the wise soldierly habit of wearing a mask of cheer
over trouble, that he met Clara and Mrs. Stanley with a smile and a bit of small
talk.

“Ladies, can you keep house?” he said. “There are sixteen rooms ready
for you. The people who moved out haven't left any trumpery. Nothing
wanted but a little sweeping and dusting and a stair carpet.”

“We will keep house,” replied Clara with a laugh, the girlish gayety of which
delighted him.

Assuming a woman's rightful empire over household matters, she began to
direct concerning storage, lodgment, cooking, etc. Sharp as the climbing was,
she went through all the stories and inspected every room, selecting the chamber
in the tower for herself and Mrs. Stanley.

“I never can get up in this world,” declared Aunt Maria, staring in dismay
at the rude ladder. “So this is what Mr. Thurstane meant by talking about a
stair carpet! It was just like him to joke on such a matter. I tell you I never
can go up.”

“Av coorse ye can get up,” broke in little Sweeny impatiently. “All ye've
got to do is to put wan fut above another an' howld on wid yer ten fingers.”

“I should like to see you do it,” returned Aunt Maria, looking indignantly
at the interfering Paddy.

Sweeny immediately shinned up the stepped beam, uttered a neigh of triumphant
laughter from the top, and then skylarked down again.

“Well, you are a man,” observed the strong-minded lady, somewhat discomfited.

“Av coorse I'm a man,” yelped Sweeny. “Who said I wasn't? He's a lying
informer. Ha ha, hoo hoo, ho ho!”

Thus incited, pulled at moreover from above and boosted from below, Aunt
Maria mounted ladder after ladder until she stood on the roof of the Casa
Grande.

“If I ever go down again, I shall have to drop,” she gasped. “I never expected
when I came on this journey to be a sailor and climb maintops.”

“Lieutenant Thurstane is waving his hand to us,” said Clara, with a smile
like sunlight.

“Let him wave,” returned Mrs. Stanley, weary, disconsolate, and out of patience
with everything. “I must say it's a poor place to be waving hands.”

Meantime Thurstane had beckoned a couple of muleteers to follow him, and
set off to beat the enclosure for a spring, or for a spot where it would be possible
to sink a well with good result. Although the search seemed absurd on such
an isolated hill, he had some hopes; for in the first place, the old inhabitants
must have had a large supply of water, and they could not have brought it up a
steep slope of two hundred feet without great difficulty; in the second place, the
butte was of limestone, and in a limestone region water makes for itself strange
reservoirs and outlets.

His trust was well-grounded. In a sharply indented hollow, twenty feet below
the general surface of the enclosure, and not more than thirty yards from
the Casa Grande, he found a copious spring. About it were traces of stone
work, forming a sort of ruinous semicircle, as though a well had been dug, the
neighboring earth scooped out, and the sides of the opening fenced up with masonry.
By the way, he was not the first to discover the treasure, for the acute
senses of the mules had been beforehand with him, and a number of them were
already there drinking.

Calling Meyer, he said, “Sergeant, get a fatigue party to work here. I want
a transverse trench cut below the spring for the animals, and a guard at the
spring itself to keep it clear for the people.”

Next he hurried away to the spot where he had posted Kelly to watch the
Apaches.

Climbing the wall, he looked about for the Apaches, and discovered them
about half a mile distant, bivouacked on the bank of the rivulet.

“They have been reinforced, sir,” said Kelly. “Stragglers are coming up
every few minutes.”

“So I perceive. Have you seen anything of the girl Pepita?”

“There's a figure there, sir, against that sapling, that hasn't moved for half
an hour. I've an idea it's the girl, sir, tied to the sapling.”

Thurstane adjusted his glass, took a long steady look, and said sombrely,
“It's the girl. Keep an eye on her. If they start to do anything with her, let
me know. Signal with your cap.”

As he hurried back to the Casa Grande he tried to devise some method of
saving this unfortunate. A rescue was impossible, for the savages were numerous,
watchful, and merciless, and in case they were likely to lose her they would
brain her. But she might be ransomed: blankets, clothing, and perhaps a
beast or two could be spared for that purpose; the gold pieces that he had in
his waist-belt should all go of course. The great fear was lest the brutes should
find all bribes poor compared with the joys of a torture dance. Querying how
he could hide this horrible affair from Clara, and shuddering at the thought that
but for favoring chances she might have shared the fate of Pepita, he ran on
toward the Casa, waving his hand cheerfully to the two women on the roof

Meantime Clara had been attending to her housekeeping and Mrs. Stanley
had been attending to her feelings. The elder lady (we dare not yet call her an
old lady) was in the lowest spirits. She tried to brace herself; she crossed her
hands behind her back, man-fashion; she marched up and down the roof man-fashion.
All useless; the transformation didn't work; or, if she was a man,
she was a scared one.

She could not help feeling like one of the spirits in prison as she glanced at
the awful solitude around her. Notwithstanding the river, there still was the
desert. The little plain was but an oasis. Two miles to the east the San Juan
burst out of a defile of sandstone, and a mile to the west it disappeared in a
similar chasm. The walls of these gorges rose abruptly two thousand feet
above the hurrying waters. All around were the monstrous, arid, herbless, savage,
cruel ramparts of the plateau. No outlook anywhere; the longest reach
of the eye was not five miles; then came towering precipices. The travellers
were like ants gathered on an inch of earth at the bottom of a fissure in a quarry.
The horizon was elevated and limited, resting everywhere on harsh lines of
rock which were at once near the spectator and far above him. The overhanging
plateaux strove to shut him out from the sight of heaven.

What variety there was in the grim monotony appeared in shapes that
were horrible to the weary and sorrowful. On the other side of the San Juan
towered an assemblage of pinnacles which looked like statues; but these statues
were a thousand feet above the stream, and the smallest of them was at least
four hundred feet high. To a lost wanderer, and especially to a dispirited
woman, such magnitude was not sublime, but terrifying. It seemed as if these
shapes were gods who had no mercy, or demons who were full of malevolence.
Still higher, on a jutting crag which overhung the black river, was a castle a
hundred fold huger than man ever built, with ramparts that were dizzy precipices
and towers such as no daring could scale. It faced the horrible group of stony
deities as if it were their pandemonium.

The whole landscape was a hideous Walhalla, a fit abode for the savage
giant gods of the old Scandinavians. Thor and Woden would have been at
home in it. The Cyclops and Titans would have been too little for it. The
Olympian deities could not be conceived of as able or willing to exist in such a
hideous chaos. No creature of the Greek imagination would have been a suitable
inhabitant for it except Prometheus alone. Here his eternal agony and
boundless despair might not have been out of place.

There was no comfort in the river. It came out of unknown and inhospitable
mystery, and went into a mystery equally unknown and inhospitable. To what
fate it might lead was as uncertain as whence it arrived. A sombre flood, reddish
brown in certain lights, studded with rocks which raised ghosts of unmoving
foam, flowing with a speed which perpetually boiled and eddied, promising
nothing to the voyager but thousand-fold shipwreck, a breathless messenger
from the mountains to the ocean, it wheeled incessantly from stony portal to
stony portal, a brief gleam of power and cruelty. The impression which it produced
was in unison with the sublime malignity and horror of the landscape.

Depressed by fatigue, the desperate situation of the party, and the menace of
the frightful scene around her, Mrs. Stanley could not and would not speak to
Thurstane when he mounted the roof, and turned away to hide the tears in her
eyes.

“You see I am housekeeping,” said Clara with a smile. “Look how clean
the room in the tower has been swept. I had some brooms made of tufted grass.

There are our beds in the corners. These hard-finished walls are really handsome.”

She stopped, hesitated a moment, looked at him anxiously, and then added,
“Have you seen Pepita?”

“Yes,” he replied, deciding to be frank. “I think I have discovered her
tied to a tree.”

“Oh! to be tortured!” exclaimed Clara, wringing her hands and beginning
to cry.

“We will ransom her,” he hurried on. “I am going down to hold a par
ley with the Apaches.”

“You!” exclaimed the girl, catching his arm. “Oh no! Oh, why did we
come here!”

Fearing lest he should be persuaded to evade what he considered his duty,
he pressed her hand fervently and hurried away. Yes, he repeated, it was his
duty; to parley with the Apaches was a most dangerous enterprise; he did not
feel at liberty to order any other to undertake it.

Finding Coronado, he said to him, “I am going down to ransom Pepita.
You know the Indians better than I do. How many people shall I take?”

A gleam of satisfaction shot across the dark face of the Mexican as he replied,
“Go alone.”

“Certainly,” he insisted, in response to the officer's stare of surprise. “If
you take a party, they'll doubt you. If you go alone, they'll parley. But, my
dear Lieutenant, you are magnificent. This is the finest moment of your life.
Ah! only you Americans are capable of such impulses. We Spaniards haven't
the nerve.”

“I don't know their scoundrelly language.”

“Manga Colorada speaks Spanish. I dare say you'll easily come to an understanding
with him. As for ransom, anything that we have, of course, excepting
food, arms, and ammunition. I can furnish a hundred dollars or so. Go, my
dear Lieutenant; go on your noble mission. God be with you.”

“You will see that I am covered, if I have to run for it.”

“I'll see to everything. I'll line the wall with sharpshooters.”

“Post your men. Good-by.”

“Good-by, my dear Lieutenant.”

Coronado did post his men, and among them was Texas Smith. Into the
ear of this brute, whom he placed quite apart from the other watchers, he whispered
a few significant words.

“I told ye, to begin with, I didn't want to shute at brass buttons,” growled
Texas. “The army's a big thing. I never wanted to draw a bead on that man,
and I don't want to now more 'n ever. Them army fellers hunt together. You
hit one, an' you've got the rest after ye; an' four to one 's a mighty slim chance.”

“Five hundred dollars down,” was Coronado's only reply.

After a moment of sullen reflection the desperado said, “Five hundred dollars!
Wal, stranger, I'll take yer bet.”

Coronado turned away trembling and walked to another part of the wall.
His emotions were disordered and disagreeable; his heart throbbed, his head was a
little light, and he felt that he was pale; he could not well bear any more excitement,
and he did not want to see the deed done. Rifle in hand, he was pretending
to keep watch through a fissure, when he observed Clara following the
line of the wall with the obvious purpose of finding a spot whence she could see
the plain. It seemed to him that he ought to stop her, and then it seemed to

him that he had better not. With such a horrible drumming in his ears how
could he think clearly and decide wisely?

Clara disappeared; he did not notice where she went; did not think of looking.
Once he thrust his head through his crevice to watch the course of Thurstane,
but drew it back again on discovering that the brave lad had not yet
reached the Apaches, and after that looked no more. His whole strength seemed
to be absorbed in merely listening and waiting. We must remember that, although
Coronado had almost no conscience, he had nerves.

Let us see what happened on the plain through the anxious eyes of Clara.