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“Look a hyer!” remonstrated Smith, “ain't you pannin' me out a leetle too
fine? It mought 'a' been this way, an' it mought 'a' been that. But I've no
business to point if I can't find. When a man's got to the bottom of his pile,
you can't fo'ce him to borrow. 'Sposin' I set you barkin' up the wrong tree;
what good's that gwine to do?”

“Vell, Schmidt, I don't zay but what you zay right. You mustn't zay anyting
you don't know someting apout.”

After another silence, during which Texas continued to hold his hands above
his head, Meyer added, “Kelly, you may come to an order. Schmidt, you may
put down your hants. Will you haf a jew of topacco?”

The three men now approached each other, took alternate bites of the sergeant's
last plug of pigtail, and masticated amicably.

“You army fellers run me pootty close,” said Texas, after a while, in a tone
of complaint and humiliation. “I don't want to fight brass buttons. They're
too many for me. The Capm he lassoed me, an' choked me some; an' now
you're on it.”

“When things habben to officers, they must pe looked into,” replied Meyer.

“I dunno how in thunder the lariat got busted,” repeated Texas. “An' if I
should go for to guess, I mought guess wrong.”

“All right, Schmidt; I pelieve you. If there is no more drubble, you will
not pe called up again.”

“Ask him what he thinks of the leftenant's chances,” suggested Kelly to his
superior.

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“Reckon he'll hev to run the river a spell,” returned the borderer. “Reckon
he'll hev to run it a hell of a ways befo' he'll be able to git across the dam
country.”

“Ask him what the chances be of running the river safely,” added Kelly.

“Dam slim,” answered Texas; and there the talk ended. There was some
meditative chewing, after which the three returned to the bivouac, and either lay
down to sleep or took their tours at guard duty.

At dawn the party recommenced its flight toward the Moqui country. There
were sixty hours more of hard riding, insufficient sleep, short rations, thirst, and
anxiety. Once the suffering animals stampeded after water, and ran for several
miles over plateaux of rock, dashing off burdens and riders, and only halting
when they were plunged knee-deep in the water-hole which they had
scented. One of the wounded rancheros expired on the mule to which he was
strapped, and was carried dead for several hours, his ashy-brown face swinging
to and fro, until Coronado had him thrown into a crevice.

Amid these hardships and horrors Clara showed no sign of flagging or flinching.
She was very thin; bad food, excessive fatigue, and anxiety had reduced
her; her face was pinched, narrowed, and somewhat lined; her expression was
painfully set and eager. But she never asked for repose, and never complained.
Her mind was solely fixed upon finding Thurstane, and her feverish bright eyes
continually searched the horizon for him. She seemed to have lost her power
of sympathizing with any other creature. To Mrs. Stanley's groanings and
murmurings she vouchsafed rare and brief condolences. The dead muleteer and
the tortured, bellowing animals attracted little of her notice. She was not hard-hearted;
she was simply almost insane. In this state of abnormal exaltation
she continued until the party reached the quiet and safety of the Moqui pueblos.

Then there was a change; exhausted nature required either apathy or death;
and for two days she lay in a sort of stupor, sleeping a great deal, and crying
often when awake. The only person capable of rousing her was Sergeant
Meyer, who made expeditions to the other pueblos for news of Thurstane, and
brought her news of his hopes and his failures.

After a three days' rest Coronado decided to resume his journey by moving
southward toward the Bernalillo trail. Freed from Thurstane, he no longer
contemplated losing Clara in the desert, but meant to marry her, and trusted
that he could do it. Two of his wagons he presented to the Moquis, who were,
of course, delighted with the acquisition, although they had no more use for
wheeled vehicles than for gunboats. With only four wagons, his animals were
more than sufficient, and the train made tolerably rapid progress, in spite of the
roughness of the country.

The land was still a wonder. The water wizards of old had done their grotesque
utmost here. What with sculpturing and frescoing, they had made that
most fantastic wilderness the Painted Desert. It looked like a mirage. The
travellers had an impression that here was some atmospheric illusion. It seemed
as if it could not last five minutes if the sun should shine upon it. There were
crowding hills so variegated and gay as to put one in mind of masses of soap-bubbles.
But the coloring was laid on fifteen hundred feet deep. It consisted
of sandstone marls, red, blue, green, orange, purple, white, brown, lilac, and yellow,
interstratified with magnesian limestone in bands of purple, bluish-white,
and mottled, with here and there shining flecks or great glares of gypsum.

Among the more delicate wonders of the scene were the petrified trunks
which had once been pines and cedars, but which were now flint or jasper. The

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washings of geologic æons have exposed to view immense quantities of these
enchanted forests. Fragments of silicified trees are not only strewn over the
lowlands, but are piled by the hundred cords at the bases of slopes, seeming
like so much drift-wood from wonder-lands far up the stream of time. Generally
they are in short bits, broken square across the grain, as if sawed. Some are
jasper, and look like masses of red sealing-wax; others are agate, or opalescent
chalcedony, beautifully lined and variegated; many retain the graining, layers,
knots, and other details of their woody structure.

In places where the marls had been washed away gently, the emigrants found
trunks complete, from root to summit, fifty feet in length and three in diameter.
All the branches, however, were gone; the tree had been uprooted, transported,
whirled and worn by deluges; then to commemorate the victory of the water
sprites, it had been changed into stone. The sight of these remnants of antediluvian
woodlands made history seem the reminiscence of a child. They were
already petrifactions when the human race was born.

The Painted Desert has other marvels. Throughout vast stretches you pass
between tinted mesas, or tables, which face each other across flat valleys like
painted palaces across the streets of Genova la Superba. They are giant splendors,
hundreds of feet in height, built of blood-red sandstone capped with variegated
marls. The torrents, which scooped out the intersecting levels, amused
their monstrous leisure with carving the points and abutments of the mesa into
fantastic forms, so that the traveller sees towers, minarets, and spires loftier than
the pinnacles of cathedrals.

The emigrants were often deceived by these freaks of nature. Beheld from a
distance, it seemed impossible that they should not be ruins, the monuments of
some Cyclopean race. Aunt Maria, in particular, discovered casas grandes
and casas de Montezuma very frequently.

“There is another casa,” she would say, staring through her spectacles (broken)
at a butte three hundred feet high. “What a people it must have been
which raised such edifices!”

And she would stick to it, too, until she was close up to the solid rock, and
then would renew the transforming miracle five or ten miles further on.

During this long and marvellous journey Coronado renewed his courtship.
He was cautious, however; he made a confidant of his friend Aunt Maria; begged
her favorable intercession.

“Clara,” said Mrs. Stanley, as the two women jolted along in one of the lumbering
wagons, “there is one thing in your life which perhaps you don't suspect.”

The girl, who wanted to hear about Thurstane all the time, and expected to
hear about him, asked eagerly, “What is it?”

“You have made Mr. Coronado fall in love with you,” said Aunt Maria,
thinking it wise to be clear and straightforward, as men are reputed to be.

The young lady, instantly revolting from the subject, made no reply.

“I think, Clara, that if you take a husband—and most women do—he would
be just the person for you.”

Clara, once the gentlest of the gentle, was perfectly angelic no longer. She
gave her relative a stare which was partly intense misery, but which had much
the look of pure anger, as indeed it was in a measure.

The expressions of violent emotion are alarming to most people. Aunt
Maria, beholding this tortured soul glaring at her out of its prison windows, recoiled
in surprise and awe. There was not another word spoken at the time

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concerning the obnoxious match-making. A single stare of Marius had put to
flight the executioner.

In one way and another Clara continued to baffle her suitor and her advocate.
The days dragged on; the expedition steadily traversed the desert; the Santa
Anna region was crossed, and the Bernalillo trail reached; one hundred, two
hundred, three hundred miles and more were left behind; and still Coronado,
though without a rival, was not accepted.

Then came an adventure which partly helped and partly hindered his plans.
The train was overtaken by a detachment of the Fifth United States Cavalry,
commanded by Major John Robinson, pushing for California. Of course Sergeant
Meyer reported himself and Kelly to the Major, and of course the Major
ordered them to join his party as far as Fort Yuma. This deprived Clara of her
trusted protectors; but on the other hand, she threatened to take advantage of
the escort of Robinson for the rest of her journey; and the mere mention of this
at once brought Coronado on his soul's marrow-bones. He swore by the heaven
above, by all the saints and angels, by the throne of the Virgin Mary, by every
sacred object he could think of, that not another word of love should pass his
lips during the journey, that he would live the life of a dead man, etc. Overcome
by his pleadings, and by the remonstrances of Aunt Maria, who did not
want to have her favorite driven to commit suicide, Clara agreed to continue with
the train.

After this scene followed days of hot travelling over hard, gravelly plains,
thinly coated with grass and dotted with cacti, mezquit trees, the leafless palo
verde, and the greasewood bush. Here and there towered that giant cactus, the
saguarra, a fluted shaft, thirty, forty, and even sixty feet high, with a coronet of
richly-colored flowers, the whole fabric as splendid as a Corinthian column.
Prickly pears, each one large enough to make a thicket, abounded. Through
the scorching sunshine ran scorpions and lizards, pursued by enormous rattle-snakes.
During the days the heat ranged from 100 to 115 deg. in the shade,
while the nights were swept by winds as parching as the breath of an oven. The
distant mountains glared at the eye like metals brought to a white heat. Not seldom
they passed horses, mules, cattle, and sheep, which had perished in this terrible
transit and been turned to mummies by the dry air and baking sun. Some
of these carcasses, having been set on their legs by passing travellers, stood upright,
staring with blind eyeballs, grinning through dried lips, mockeries of life,
statues of death.

In spite of these hardships and horrors, Clara kept up her courage and was
almost cheerful; for in the first place Coronado had ceased his terrifying attentions,
and in the second place they were nearing Cactus Pass, where she hoped
to meet Thurstane. When love has not a foot of certainty to stand upon, it can
take wing and soar through the incredible. The idea that they two, divided
hundreds of miles back, should come together at a given point by pure accident,
was obviously absurd. Yet Clara could trust to the chance and live for it.

The scenery changed to mountains. There were barren, sublime, awful
peaks to the right and left. To the girl's eyes they were beautiful, for she
trusted that Thurstane beheld them. She was always on horseback now, scanning
every feature of the landscape, searching of course for him. She did not
pass a cactus, or a thicket of mezquit, or a bowlder without anxious examination.
She imagined herself finding him helpless with hunger, or passing him
unseen and leaving him to die. She was so pale and thin with constant anxiety

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that you might have thought her half starved, or recovering from some acute
malady.

About five one afternoon, as the train was approaching its halting-place at a
spring on the western side of the pass, Clara's feverish mind fixed on a group
of rocks half a mile from the trail as the spot where she would find Thurstane.
In obedience to similar impressions she had already made many expeditions of
this nature. Constant failure, and a consciousness that all this searching was
folly, could not shake her wild hopes. She set off at a canter alone; but after
going some four hundred yards she heard a gallop behind her, and, looking
over her shoulder, she saw Coronado. She did not want to be away from the
train with him; but she must at all hazards reach that group of rocks; something
within impelled her. Better mounted than she, he was soon by her side,
and after a while struck out in advance, saying, “I will look out for an ambush.”

When Coronado reached the rocks he was fifty yards ahead of Clara. He
made the circuit of them at a slow canter; in so doing he discovered the starving
and fainted Thurstane lying in the high grass beneath a low shelf of stone;
he saw him, he recognized him, and in an instant he trembled from head to foot.
But such was his power of self-control that he did not check his horse, nor cast
a second look to see whether the man was alive or dead. He turned the last
stone in the group, met Clara with a forced smile, and said gently, “There is
nothing.”

She reined up, drew a long sigh, thought that here was another foolish hope
crushed, and turned her horse's head toward the train.