University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.

In the time-eaten wall Clara had found a fissure through which she could
watch the parley between Thurstane and the Apaches. She climbed into it from
a mound of disintegrated adobes, and stood there, pale, tremulous, and breathless,
her whole soul in her eyes.

Thurstane, walking his horse and making signs of amity with his cap, had
by this time reached the low bank of the rivulet, and halted within four hundred
yards of the savages. There had been a stir immediately on his appearance:
first one warrior and then another had mounted his pony; a score of them were
now prancing hither and thither. They had left their lances stuck in the earth,
but they still carried their bows and quivers.

When Clara first caught sight of Thurstane he was beckoning for one of the
Indians to approach. They responded by pointing to the summit of the hill, as
if signifying that they feared to expose themselves to rifle shot from the ruins.
He resumed his march, forded the shallow stream, and pushed on two hundred
yards.

“O Madre de Dios!” groaned Clara, falling into the language of her childhood.
“He is going clear up to them.”

She was on the point of shrieking to him, but she saw that he was too far off
to hear her, and she remained silent, just staring and trembling.

Thurstane was now about two hundred yards from the Apaches. Except
the twenty who had first mounted, they were sitting on the ground or standing
by their ponies, every face set towards the solitary white man and every figure
as motionless as a statue. Those on horseback, moving slowly in circles, were
spreading out gradually on either side of the main body, but not advancing.
Presently a warrior in full Mexican costume, easily recognizable as Manga Colorada
himself, rode straight towards Thurstane for a hundred yards, threw his
bow and quiver ten feet from him, dismounted and lifted both hands. The officer
likewise lifted his hands, to show that he too was without arms, moved forward
to within thirty feet of the Indian, and thence advanced on foot, leading his
horse by the bridle.

Clara perceived that the two men were conversing, and she began to hope
that all might go well, although her heart still beat suffocatingly. The next
moment she was almost paralyzed with horror. She saw Manga Colorada
spring at Thurstane; she saw his dark arms around him, the two interlaced and
reeling; she heard the triumphant yell of the Indian, and the response of his
fellows; she saw the officer's startled horse break loose and prance away. In
the same instant the mounted Apaches, sending forth their war whoop and unslinging
their bows, charged at full speed toward the combatants.

Thurstane had but five seconds in which to save his life. Had he been a

man of slight or even moderate physical and moral force, there would not have
been the slightest chance for him. But he was six feet high, broad in the
shoulders, limbed like a gladiator, solidified by hardships and marches, accustomed
to danger, never losing his head in it, and blessed with lots of pugnacity.
He was pinioned; but with one gigantic effort he loosened the Indian's lean
sinewy arms, and in the next breath he laid him out with a blow worthy of
Heenan.

Thurstane was free; now for his horse. The animal was frightened and capering
wildly; but he caught him and flung himself into the saddle without
minding stirrups; then he was riding for life. Before he had got fairly under
headway the foremost Apaches were within fifty paces of him, yelling like
demons and letting fly their arrows. But every weapon is uncertain on horseback,
and especially every missile weapon, the bow as well as the rifle. Thus, although
a score of shafts hissed by the fugitive, he still kept his seat; and as his
powerful beast soon began to draw ahead of the Indian ponies, escape seemed
probable.

He had, however, to run the gauntlet of another and even a greater peril.
In a crevice of the ruined wall which crested the hill crouched a pitiless assassin
and an almost unerring shot, waiting the right moment to send a bullet
through his head. Texas Smith did not like the job; but he had said “You
bet,” and had thus pledged his honor to do the murder; and moreover, he
sadly wanted the five hundred dollars. If he could have managed it, he would
have preferred to get the officer and some “Injun” in a line, so as to bring them
down together. But that was hopeless; the fugitive was increasing his lead;
now was the time to fire—now or never.

When Clara beheld Manga Colorada seize Thurstane, she had turned instinctively
and leaped into the enclosure, with a feeling that, if she did not see
the tragedy, it would not be. In the next breath she was wild to know what
was passing, and to be as near to the officer and his perils as possible. A little
further along the wall was a fissure which was lower and broader than the one
she had just quitted. She had noticed it a minute before, but had not gone to
it because a man was there. Towards this man she now rushed, calling out,
“Oh, do save him!”

Her voice and the sound of her footsteps were alike drowned by a rattle of
musketry from other parts of the ruin. She reached the man and stood behind
him; it was Texas Smith, a being from whom she had hitherto shrunk with instinctive
aversion; but now he seemed to her a friend in extremity. He was
aiming; she glanced over his shoulder along the levelled rifle; in one breath she
saw Thurstane and saw that the weapon was pointed at him. With a shriek she
sprang forward against the kneeling assassin, and flung him clean through the
crevice upon the earth outside the wall, the rifle exploding as he fell and sending
its ball at random.

Texas Smith was stupefied and even profoundly disturbed. After rolling
over twice, he picked himself up, picked up his gun also, and while hastily reloading
it clambered back into his lair, more than ever confounded at seeing no
one. Clara, her exploit accomplished, had instantly turned and fled along the
course of the wall, not at all with the idea of escaping from the bushwhacker,
but merely to meet Thurstane. She passed a dozen men, but not one of them
saw her, they were all so busy in popping away at the Apaches. Just as she
reached the large gap in the rampart, her hero cantered through it, erect, unhurt,
rosy, handsome, magnificent. The impassioned gesture of joy with which she
welcomed him was a something, a revelation perhaps, which the youngster saw

and understood afterwards better than he did then. For the present he merely
waved her towards the Casa, and then turned to take a hand in the fighting.

But the fighting was over. Indeed the Apaches had stopped their pursuit as
soon as they found that the fugitive was beyond arrow shot, and were now prancing
slowly back to their bivouac. After one angry look at them from the wall,
Thurstane leaped down and ran after Clara.

“Oh!” she gasped, out of breath and almost faint. “Oh, how it has frightened
me!”

“And it was all of no use,” he answered, passing her arm into his and supporting
her.

“No. Poor Pepita! Poor little Pepita! But oh, what an escape you had!”

“We can only hope that they will adopt her into the tribe,” he said in answer
to the first phrase, while he timidly pressed her arm to thank her for the
second.

Coronado now came up, ignorant of Texas Smith's misadventure, and puzzled
at the escape of Thurstane, but as fluent and complimentary as usual.

“My dear Lieutenant! Language is below my feelings. I want to kneel
down and worship you. You ought to have a statue—yes, and an altar. If your
humanity has not been successful, it has been all the same glorious.”

“Nonsense,” answered Thurstane. “Every one of us has done well in his
turn! It was my tour of duty to-day. Don't praise me. I haven't accomplished
anything.”

“Ah, the scoundrels!” declaimed Coronado. “How could they violate a
truce! It is unknown, unheard of. The miserable traitors! I wish you could
have killed Manga Colorada.”

From this dialogue he hurried away to find and catechise Texas Smith. The
desperado told his story: “Jest got a bead on him—had him sure pop—never
see a squarer mark—when somebody mounted me—pitched me clean out of my
hole.”

“Who?” demanded Coronado, a rim of white showing clear around his black
pupils.

“Dunno. Didn't see nobody. 'Fore I could reload and git in it was gone.”

“What the devil did you stop to reload for?”

“Stranger, I allays reload.”

Coronado flinched under the word stranger and the stare which accompanied
it.

“It was a woman's yell,” continued Texas.

Coronado felt suddenly so weak that he sat down on a mouldering heap of
adobes. He thought of Clara; was it Clara? Jealous and terrified, he for an
instant, only for an instant, wished she were dead.

“See here,” he said, when he had restrung his nerves a little. “We must
separate. If there is any trouble, call on me. I'll stand by you.”

“I reckon you'd better,” muttered Smith, looking at Coronado as if he were
already drawing a bead on him.

Without further talk they parted. The Texan went off to rub down his
horse, mend his accoutrements, squat around the cooking fires, and gamble with
the drivers. Perhaps he was just a bit more fastidious than usual about having
his weapons in perfect order and constantly handy; and perhaps too he looked
over his shoulder a little oftener than common while at his work or his games;
but on the whole he was a masterpiece of strong, serene, ferocious self-possession.
Coronado also, as unquiet at heart as the devil, was outwardly as calm as
Greek art. They were certainly a couple of almost sublime scoundrels.

It was now nightfall; the day closed with extraordinary abruptness; the sun
went down as though he had been struck dead; it was like the fall of an ox under
the axe of the butcher. One minute he was shining with an intolerable, feverish
fervor, and the next he had vanished behind the lofty ramparts of the
plateau.

It was Sergeant Meyer's tour as officer of the day, and he had prepared for
the night with the thoroughness of an old soldier. The animals were picketed
in the innermost rooms of the Casa Grande, while the spare baggage was neatly
piled along the walls of the central apartment. Thurstane's squad was quartered
in one of the two outer rooms, and Coronado's squad in the other, each
man having his musket loaded and lying beside him, with the butt at his feet
and the muzzle pointing toward the wall. One sentry was posted on the roof
of the building, and one on the ground twenty yards or so from its salient angle,
while further away were two fires which partially lighted up the great enclosure.
The sergeant and such of his men as were not on post slept or watched in the
open air at the corner of the Casa.

The night passed without attack or alarm. Apache scouts undoubtedly
prowled around the enclosure, and through its more distant shadows, noting avenues
and chances for forlorn hopes. But they were not ready as yet to do any
nocturnal spearing, and if ever Indians wanted a night's rest they wanted it.
The garrison was equally quiet. Texas Smith, too familiar with ugly situations
to lie awake when no good was to be got by it, chose his corner, curled up in his
blanket and slept the sleep of the just. Overwhelming fatigue soon sent Coronado
off in like manner. Clara, too; she was querying how much she should
tell Thurstane; all of a sudden she was dreaming.

When broad daylight opened her eyes she was still lethargic and did not
know where she was. A stretch; a long wondering stare about her; then she
sprang up, ran to the edge of the roof, and looked over. There was Thurstane,
alive, taking off his hat to her and waving her back from the brink. It was a
second and more splendid sun-rising; and for a moment she was full of happiness.

At dawn Meyer had turned out his squad, patrolled the enclosure, made sure
that no Indians were in or around it, and posted a single sentry on the southeastern
angle of the ruins, which commanded the whole of the little plain. He
discovered that the Apaches, fearful like all cavalry of a night attack, had withdrawn
to a spot more than a mile distant, and had taken the precaution of securing
their retreat by garrisoning the mouth of the cañon. Having made his dispositions
and his reconnoissance, the sergeant reported to Thurstane.

“Turn out the animals and let them pasture,” said the officer, waking up
promptly to the situation, as a soldier learns to do. “How long will the grass
in the enclosure last them?”

“Not three days, Leftenant.”

“To-morrow we will begin to pasture them on the slope. How about fishing?”

“I cannot zay, Leftenant.”

“Take a look at the Buchanan boat and see if it can be put together. We
may find a chance to use it.”

“Yes, Leftenant.”

The Buchanan boat, invented by a United States officer whose name it bears,
is a sack of canvas with a frame of light sticks; when put together it is about
twelve feet long by five broad and three deep, and is capable of sustaining a
weight of two tons. Thurstane, thinking that he might have rivers to cross in

his explorations, had brought one of these coracles. At present it was a bundle,
weighing one hundred and fifty pounds, and forming the load of a single
mule. Meyer got it out, bent it on to its frame, and found it in good condition.

“Very good,” said Thurstane. “Roll it up again and store it safely. We
may want it to-morrow.”

Meantime Clara had thought out her problem. In her indignation at Texas
Smith she had contemplated denouncing him before the whole party, and had
found that she had not the courage. She had wanted to make a confidant of
her relative, and had decided that nothing could be more unwise. Aunt Maria
was good, but she lacked practical sense; even Clara, girl as she was, could see
the one fact as well as the other. Her final and sagacious resolve was to tell
the tale to Thurstane alone.

Mrs. Stanley, still jaded through with her forced march, fell asleep immediately
after breakfast. Clara went to the brink of the roof, caught the officer's
eye, and beckoned him to come to her.

“We must not be seen,” she whispered when he was by her side. “Come
inside the tower. There has been something dreadful. I must tell you.”

Then she narrated how she had surprised and interrupted Texas Smith in
his attempt at murder; for the time she was all Spanish in feeling, and told the
story with fervor, with passion; and the moment she had ended it she began to
cry. Thurstane was so overwhelmed by her emotion that he no more thought
of the danger which he had escaped than if it had been the buzzing of a mosquito.
He longed to comfort her; he dared to put his hand upon her waist;
rather, we should say, he could not help it. If she noticed it she had no objection
to it, for she did not move; but the strong and innocent probability is that
she really did not notice it.

“Oh, what can it mean?” she sobbed. “Why did he do it? What will
you do?”

“Never mind,” he said, his voice tender, his blue-black eyes full of love, his
whole face angelic with affection. “Don't be troubled. Don't be anxious. I
will do what is right. I will put him under arrest and try him, if it seems best.
But I don't want you to be troubled. It shall all come out right. I mean to
live till you are safe.”

After a time he succeeded in soothing her, and then there came a moment in
which she seemed to perceive that his arm was around her waist, for she drew a
little away from him, coloring splendidly. But he had held her too long to be
able to let her go thus; he took her hands and looked in her face with the solemnity
of a love which pleads for life.

“Will you forgive me?” he murmured. “I must say it. I cannot help it.
I love you with all my soul. I dare not ask you to be my wife. I am not fit for
you. But have pity on me. I couldn't help telling you.”

He just saw that she was not angry; yes, he was so shy and humble that he
could not see more; but that little glimpse of kindliness was enough to lure him
forward. On he went, hastily and stammeringly, like a man who has but a moment
in which to speak, only a moment before some everlasting farewell.

“Oh, Miss Van Diemen! Is there—can there ever be—any hope for me?”

It was one of the questions which arise out of great abysses from men who
in their hopelessness still long for heaven. No prisoner at the bar, faintly trusting
that in the eyes of his judge he might find mercy, could be more anxious
than was Thurstane at that moment. The lover who does not yet know that he
will be loved is a figure of tragedy.