University of Virginia Library

31. CHAPTER XXXI.

Leaving Thurstane in the desert, we return to Clara in the desert. It will
be remembered that she stood on the roof of the Casa Grande when her lover
was swept oarless down the San Juan.

She was watching him; of course she was watching him; at the moment of
the catastrophe she saw him; she felt sure also that he was looking at her.
The boat began to fly down the current; then the two oarsmen fell to paddling
violently; what did it mean? Far from guessing that the towline had snapped,
she was not aware that there was one.

On went the boat; presently it whirled around helplessly; it was nearing the
rocks of the rapid; there was evidently danger. Running to the edge of the
roof, Clara saw a Mexican cattle-driver standing on the wall of the enclosure,
and called to him, “What is the matter?”

“The lariats have broken,” he replied. “They are drifting.”

Clara uttered a little gasp of a shriek, and then did not seem to breathe again
for a minute. She saw Thurstane led away in captivity by the savage torrent;
she saw him rise up in the boat and wave her a farewell; she could not lift her
hand to respond; she could only stand and stare. She had a look, and there
was within her a sensation, as if her soul were starting out of her eyes. The
whole calamity revealed itself to her at once and without mercy. There was no
saving him and no going after him; he was being taken out of her sight; he was
disappearing; he was gone. She leaned forward, trying to look around the bend
of the river, and was balked by a monstrous, cruel advance of precipices. Then,
when she realized that he had vanished, there was a long scream ending in unconsciousness.

When she came to herself everybody was talking of the calamity. Coronado,
Aunt Maria, and others overflowed with babblings of regret, astonishment, explanations,
and consolation. The lariats had broken. How could it have happened!
How dreadful! etc.

“But he will land,” cried Clara, looking eagerly from face to face.

“Oh, certainly,” said Coronado. “Landings can be made. There are none
visible, but doubtless they exist.”

“And then he will march back here?” she demanded.

“Not easily. I am afraid, my dear cousin, not very easily. There would be
cañons to turn, and long ones. Probably he would strike for the Moqui country.”

“Across the desert? No water!”

Coronado shrugged his shoulders as if to say that he could not help it.

“If we go back to-morrow,” she began again, “do you think we shall overtake
them?”

“I think it very probable,” lied Coronado

“And if we don't overtake them, will they join us at the Moqui pueblos?”

“Yes, yes. I have little doubt of it.”

“When do you think we ought to start?”

“To-morrow morning.”

“Won't that be too early?”

“Day after to-morrow then.”

“Won't that be too late?”

Coronado nearly boiled over with rage. This girl was going to demand impossibilities
of him, and impossibilities that he would not perform if he could.
He must be here and he must be there; he must be quick enough and not a
minute too quick; and all to save his rival from the pit which he had just dug
for him. Turning his back on Clara, he paced the roof of the Casa in an excitement
which he could not conceal, muttering, “I will do the best I can—the best
I can.”

Presently the remembrance that he had at least gained one great triumph
enabled him to recover his self-possession and his foxy cunning.

“My dear cousin,” he said gently, “you must not suppose that I am not
greatly afflicted by this accident. I appreciate the high merit of Lieutenant
Thurstane, and I grieve sincerely at his misfortune. What can I do? I will
do the best I can for all. Trusting to your good sense, I will do whatever you
say. But if you want my advice, here it is. We ought for our own sakes to
leave here to-morrow; but for his sake we will wait a day. In that time he
may rejoin us, or he may regain the Moqui trail. So we will set out, if you have
no objection, on the morning of day after to-morrow, and push for the pueblos.
When we do start, we must march, as you know, at our best speed.”

“Thank you, Coronado,” said Clara. “It is the best you can do.”

There were not five minutes during that day and the next that the girl did
not look across the plain to the gorge of the dry cañon, in the hope that she
might see Thurstane approaching. At other times she gazed eagerly down the
San Juan, although she knew that he could not stem the current. Her love and
her sorrow were ready to believe in miracles. How is it possible, she often
thought, that such a brief sweep of water should carry him so utterly away? In
spite of her fear of vexing Coronado, she questioned him over and over as to the
course of the stream and the nature of its banks, only to find that he knew next
to nothing.

“It will be hard for him to return to us,” the man finally suggested, with an
air of being driven unwillingly to admit it. “He may have to go on a long way
down the river.”

The truth is that, not knowing whether the lost men could return easily or
not, he was anxious to get away from their neighborhood.

Before the second day of this suspense was over, Aunt Maria had begun to
make herself obnoxious. She hinted that Thurstane knew what he was about;
that the river was his easiest road to his station; that, in short, he had deserted,
Clara flamed up indignantly and replied, “I know him better.”

“Why, what has he got to do with us?” reasoned Aunt Maria. “He
doesn't belong to our party.”

“He has his men here. He wouldn't leave his soldiers.”

“His men! They can take care of themselves. If they can't, I should like
to know what they are good for. I think it highly probable he went off of his
own choice.”

“I think it highly probable you know nothing about it,” snapped Clara.
“You are incapable of judging him.”

The girl was not just now herself. Her whole soul was concentrated in justifying,
loving, and saving Thurstane; and her manner, instead of being serenely
and almost lazily gentle, was unpleasantly excited. It was as if some charming
alluvial valley should suddenly give forth the steam and lava of a volcano.

Finding no sympathy in Aunt Maria, and having little confidence in the
good-will of Coronado, she looked about her for help. There was Sergeant
Meyer; he had been Thurstane's right-hand man; moreover, he looked trustworthy.
She seized the first opportunity to beckon him up to her eerie on the
roof of the Casa.

“Sergeant, I must speak with you privately,” she said at once, with the
frankness of necessity.

The sergeant, a well-bred soldier, respectful to ladies, and especially to ladies
who were the friends of officers, raised his forefinger to his cap and stood at
attention.

“How came Lieutenant Thurstane to go down the river?” she asked.

“It was the lariat proke,” replied Meyer, in a whispering, flute-like voice
which he had when addressing his superiors.

“Did it break, or was it cut?”

The sergeant raised his small, narrow, and rather piggish gray eyes to hers
with a momentary expression of anxiety.

“I must pe gareful what I zay,” he answered, sinking his voice still lower.
“We must poth pe gareful. I examined the lariat. I fear it was sawed. But
we must not zay this.”

“Who sawed it?” demanded Clara with a gasp.

“It was no one in the poat,” replied Meyer diplomatically.

“Was it that man—that hunter—Smith?”

Another furtive glance between the sandy eyelashes expressed an uneasy astonishment;
the sergeant evidently had a secret on his mind which he must not
run any risk of disclosing.

“I do not zee how it was Schmidt” he fluted almost inaudibly. “He was
watching the peasts at their basture.”

“Then who did saw it?”

“I do not know. I do not feel sure that it was sawed.”

Perceiving that, either from ignorance or caution, he would not say more on
this point, Clara changed the subject and asked, “Can Lieutenant Thurstane go
down the river safely?”

“I would like noting petter than to make the exbedition myself,” replied
Meyer, once more diplomatic.

Now came a silence, the soldier waiting respectfully, the girl not knowing
how much she might dare to say. Not that she doubted Meyer; on the contrary,
she had a perfect confidence in him; how could she fail to trust one who
had been trusted by Thurstane?

“Sergeant,” she at last whispered, “we must find him.”

“Yes, miss,” touching his cap as if he were taking an oath by it.

“And you,” she hesitated, “must protect me.”

“Yes, miss,” and the sergeant repeated his gesture of solemn affirmation.

“Perhaps I will say more some time.”

He saluted again, and seeing that she had nothing to add, retired quietly.

For two nights there was little sleep for Clara. She passed them in pondering
Thurstane's chances, or in listening for his returning footsteps. Yet when
the train set out for the Moqui pueblos, she seemed as vigorous and more vivacious
than usual. What supported her now and for days afterward was what is
called the strength of fever.

The return across the desert was even more terrible than the advance, for
the two scant water-holes had been nearly exhausted by the Apaches, so that

both beasts and human beings suffered horribly with thirst. There was just this
one good thing about the parched and famished wilderness, that it relieved the
emigrants from all fear of ambushing enemies. Supernatural beings alone could
have bushwhacked here. The Apaches had gone.

Meanwhile Sergeant Meyer had a sore conscience. From the moment the
boat went down the San Juan he had more or less lain awake with the idea that,
according to the spirit of his instructions from Thurstane, he ought to have
Texas Smith tied up and shot. Orders were orders; there was no question
about that, as a general principle; the sergeant had never heard the statement
disputed. But when he came to consider the case now before him, he was outgeneralled
by a doubt. This drifting of a boat down a strange river, was it murder
in the sense intended by Thurstane? And, supposing it to be murder,
could it be charged in any way upon Smith? In the whole course of his military
experience Sergeant Meyer had never been more perplexed. On the evening
of the first day's march he could bear his sense of responsibility no longer, and
decided to call a council of war. Beckoning his sole remaining comrade aside
from the bivouac, he entered upon business.

“Kelly, we are unter insdructions,” he began in his flute-like tone.

“I know it, sergeant,” replied Kelly, decorously squirting his tobacco-juice
out of the corner of his mouth furthest from his superior.

“The question is, Kelly, whether Schmidt should pe shot.”

“The responsibility lies upon you, sergeant. I will shoot him if so be such
is orders.”

“Kelly, the insdructions were to shoot him if murder should habben in this
barty. The instructions were loose.”

“They were so, sergeant—not defining murder.”

“The question is, Kelly, whether what has habbened to the leftenant is murder.
If it is murder, then Schmidt must go.”

The two men were sitting on a bowlder side by side, their hands on their
knees and their muskets leaning against their shoulders. They did not look at
each other at all, but kept their grave eyes on the ground. Kelly squirted his
tobacco-juice sidelong two or three times before he replied.

“Sergeant,” he finally said, “my opinion is we can't set this down for murder
until we know somebody is dead.”

“Shust so, Kelly. That is my obinion myself.”

“Consequently it follows, sergeant, if you don't see to the contrary, that until
we know that to be a fact, it would be uncalled for to shoot Smith.”

“What you zay, Kelly, is shust what I zay.”

“Furthermore, however, sergeant, it might be right and in the way of duty,
to call up Smith and make him testify as to what he knows of this business,
whether it be murder, or meant for murder.”

“Cock your beece, Kelly.”

Both men cocked their pieces.

“Now I will gall Schmidt out and question him,” continued Meyer. “You
will stand on one side and pe ready to opey my orders.”

“Very good, sergeant,” said Kelly, and dropped back a little into the nearly
complete darkness.

Meyer sang out sharply, “Schmidt! Texas Schmidt!”

The desperado heard the summons, hesitated a moment, cocked the revolver
in his belt, loosened his knife in its sheath, rose from his blanket, and walked
slowly in the direction of the voice. Passing Kelly without seeing him, he confronted

Meyer, his hand on his pistol. There was not the slightest tremor in
the hoarse, low croak with which he asked, “What's the game, sergeant?”

“Schmidt, stand berfectly still,” said Meyer in his softest fluting. “Kelly
has his beece aimed at your head. If you stir hant or foot, you are a kawn
koose.”