University of Virginia Library

33. CHAPTER XXXIII.

The tread of Coronado's horse passing within fifteen feet of Thurstane
roused him from the troubled sleep into which he had sunk after his long fainting
fit.

Slowly he opened his eyes, to see nothing but long grasses close to his face,
and through them a haze of mountains and sky. His first moments of wakening
were so far from being a full consciousness that he did not comprehend
where he was. He felt very, very weak, and he continued to lie still.

But presently he became aware of sounds; there was a trampling, and then
there were words; the voices of life summoned him to live. Instantly he remembered
two things: the starving comrades whom it was his duty to save,
and the loved girl whom he longed to find. Slowly and with effort, grasping at
the rock to aid his trembling knees, he rose to his feet just as Clara turned
her horse's head toward the plain.

Coronado threw a last anxious glance in the direction of the wretch whom he
meant to abandon to the desert. To his horror he saw a lean, smirched, ghostly
face looking at him in a dazed way, as if out of the blinding shades of death.
The quickness of this villain was so wonderful that one is almost tempted to
call it praiseworthy. He perceived at once that Thurstane would be discovered,
and that he, Coronado, must make the discovery, or he might be charged with
attempting to leave him to die.

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed loudly, “there he is!”

Clara turned: there was a scream of joy: she was on the ground, running:
she was in Thurstane's arms. During that unearthly moment there was no

thought in those two of Coronado, or of any being but each other. It is impossible
fully to describe such a meeting; its exterior signs are beyond language;
its emotion is a lifetime. If words are feeble in presence of the heights and
depths of the Colorado, they are impotent in presence of the altitudes and abysses
of great passion. Human speech has never yet completely expressed human intellect,
and it certainly never will completely express human sentiments. These
lovers, who had been wandering in chasms impenetrable to hope, were all of a
sudden on mountain summits dizzy with joy. What could they say for themselves,
or what can another say for them?

Clara only uttered inarticulate murmurs, while her hands crawled up Thurstane's
arms, pressing and clutching him to make sure that he was alive. There
was an indescribable pathos in this eagerness which could not trust to sight, but
must touch also, as if she were blind. Thurstane held her firmly, kissing hair,
forehead, and temples, and whispering, “Clara! Clara!” Her face, which had
turned white at the first glimpse of him, was now roseate all over and damp
with a sweet dew. It became smirched with the dust of his face; but she would
only have rejoiced, had she known it; his very squalor was precious to her.

At last she fell back from him, held him at arm's length with ease, and stared
at him. “Oh, how sick!” she gasped. “How thin! You are starving.”

She ran to her horse, drew from her saddle-bags some remnants of food, and
brought them to him. He had sunk down faint upon a stone, and he was too
weak to speak aloud; but he gave her a smile of encouragement which was at
once pathetic and sublime. It said, “I can bear all alone; you must not suffer
for me.” But it said this out of such visible exhaustion, that, instead of being
comforted, she was terrified.

“Oh, you must not die,” she whispered with quivering mouth. “If you die,
I will die.”

Then she checked her emotion and added, “There! Don't mind me. I am
silly. Eat.”

Meanwhile Coronado looked on with such a face as Iago might have worn
had he felt the jealousy of Othello. For the first time he positively knew that
the woman he loved was violently in love with another. He suffered so horribly
that we should be bound to pity him, only that he suffered after the fashion of
devils, his malignity equalling his agony. While he was in such pain that his
heart ceased beating, his fingers curled like snakes around the handle of his revolver.
Nothing kept him from shooting that man, yes, and that woman also,
but the certainty that the deed would make him a fugitive for life, subject everywhere
to the summons of the hangman.

Once, almost overcome by the temptation, he looked around for the train. It
was within hearing; he thought he saw Mrs. Stanley watching him; two of his
Mexicans were approaching at full speed. He dismounted, sat down upon a
stone, partially covered his face with his hand, and tried to bring himself to look
at the two lovers. At last, when he perceived that Thurstane was eating and
Clara merely kneeling by, he walked tremulously toward them, scarcely conscious
of his feet.

“Welcome to life, lieutenant,” he said. “I did not wish to interrupt. Now
I congratulate.”

Thurstane looked at him steadily, seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then
put out his hand.

“It was I who discovered you,” went on Coronado, as he took the lean,
grimy fingers in his buckskin gauntlet.

“I know it,” mumbled the young fellow; then with a visible effort he added,
“Thanks.”

Presently the two Mexicans pulled up with loud exclamations of joy and
wonder. One of them took out of his haversack a quantity of provisions and a
flask of aguardiente; and Coronado handed them to Thurstane with a smile,
hoping that he would surfeit himself and die.

“No,” said Clara, seizing the food. “You have eaten enough. You may
drink.”

“Where are the others?” she presently asked.

“In the hills,” he answered. “Starving. I must go and find them.”

“No, no!” she cried. “You must go to the train. Some one else will look
for them.”

One of the rancheros now dismounted and helped Thurstane into his saddle.
Then, the Mexican steadying him on one side and Clara riding near him on the
other, he was conducted to the train, which was at that moment going into park
near a thicket of willows.

In an amazingly short time he was very like himself. Healthy and plucky,
he had scarcely swallowed his food and brandy before he began to draw strength
from them; and he had scarcely begun to breathe freely before he began to talk
of his duties.

“I must go back,” he insisted. “Glover and Sweeny are starving. I must
look them up.”

“Certainly,” answered Coronado.

“No!” protested Clara. “You are not strong enough.”

“Of course not,” chimed in Aunt Maria with real feeling, for she was shocked
by the youth's haggard and ghastly face.

“Who else can find them?” he argued. “I shall want two spare animals.
Glover can't march, and I doubt whether Sweeny can.”

“You shall have all you need,” declared Coronado.

“He mustn't go,” cried Clara. Then, seeing in his face that he would go,
she added, “I will go with him.”

“No, no,” answered several voices. “You would only be in the way.”

“Give me my horse,” continued Thurstane. “Where are Meyer and
Kelly?”

He was told how they had gone on to Fort Yuma with Major Robinson,
taking his horse, the government mules, stores, etc.

“Ah! unfortunate,” he said. “However, that was right. Well, give me a
mule for myself, two mounted muleteers, and two spare animals; some provisions
also, and a flask of brandy. Let me start as soon as the men and beasts
have eaten. It is forty miles there and back.”

“But you can't find your way in the night,” persisted Clara.

“There is a moon,” answered Thurstane, looking at her gratefully; while
Coronado added encouragingly, “Twenty miles are easily done.”

“Oh yes!” hoped Clara. “You can almost get there before dark. Do start
at once.”

But Coronado did not mean that Thurstane should set out immediately. He
dropped various obstacles in the way: for instance, the animals and men must
be thoroughly refreshed; in short, it was dusk before all was ready.

Meantime Clara had found an opportunity of whispering to Thurstane.
“Must you?” And he had answered. looking at her as the Huguenot looks at
his wife in Millais's picture, “My dear love, you know that I must.”

“You will be careful of yourself?” she begged.

“For your sake.”

“But remember that man,” she whispered, looking about for Texas Smith.

“He is not going. Come, my own darling, don't frighten yourself. Think
of my poor comrades.”

“I will pray for them and for you all the time you are gone. But oh, Ralph,
there is one thing. I must tell you. I am so afraid. I did wrong to let Coronado
see how much I care for you. I am afraid—”

He seemed to understand her. “It isn't possible,” he murmured. Then,
after eyeing her gravely for a moment, he asked, “I may be always sure of you?
Oh yes! I knew it. But Coronado? Well, it isn't possible that he would try
to commit a treble murder. Nobody abandons starving men in a desert. Well,
I must go. I must save these men. After that we will think of these other
things. Good-by, my darling.”

The sultry glow of sunset had died out of the west, and the radiance of a full
moon was climbing up the heavens in the east when Thurstane set off on his pilgrimage
of mercy. Clara watched him as long as the twilight would let her see
him, and then sat down with drooped face, like a flower which has lost the sun.
If any one spoke to her, she answered tardily and not always to the purpose.
She was fulfilling her promise; she was praying for Thurstane and the men
whom he had gone to save; that is, she was praying when her mind did not
wander into reveries of terror. After a time she started up with the thought,
“Where is Texas Smith?” He was not visible, and neither was Coronado.
Suspicious of some evil intrigue, she set out in search of them, made the circuit
of the fires, and then wandered into the willow thickets. Amid the underwood,
hastening toward the wagons, she met Coronado.

“Ah!” he started. “Is that you, my little cousin? You are as terrible in
the dark as an Apache.”

“Coronado, where is your hunter?” she asked with a beating heart.

“I don't know. I have been looking for him. My dear cousin, what do you
want?”

“Coronado, I will tell you the truth. That man is a murderer. I know it.”

Coronado just took the time to draw one long breath, and then replied with
sublime effrontery, “I fear so. I learn that he has told horrible stories about
himself. Well, to tell the truth, I have discharged him.”

“Oh, Coronado!” gasped Clara, not knowing whether to believe him or not.

“Shall I confess to you,” he continued, “that I suspect him of having weakened
that towline so as to send our friend down the San Juan?”

“He never went near the boat,” heroically answered Clara, at the same time
wishing she could see Coronado's face.

“Of course not. He probably hired some one. I fear our rancheros are
none too good to be bribed. I will confess to you, my cousin, that ever since
that day I have been watching Smith.”

“Oh, Coronado!” repeated Clara. She was beginning to believe this prodigious
liar, and to be all the more alarmed because she did believe him. “So
you have sent him away? I am so glad. Oh, Coronado, I thank you. But
help me look for him now. I want to know if he is in camp.”

It is almost impossible to do Coronado justice. While he was pretending to
aid Clara in searching for Texas Smith, he knew that the man had gone out to
murder Thurstane. We must remember that the man was almost as wretched
as he was wicked; if punishment makes amends for crime, his was in part absolved.

As he walked about with the girl he thought over and over, Will it
kill her? He tried to answer, No. Another voice persisted in saying, Yes. In
his desperation he at last replied, Let it!

We must follow Texas Smith. He had not started on his errand until he
had received five hundred dollars in gold, and five hundred in a draft on San
Francisco. Then he had himself proposed, “I mought quit the train, an' take
my own resk acrost the plains.” This being agreed to, he had mounted his
horse, slipped away through the willows, and ridden into the desert after Thurstane.

He knew the trail; he had been from Cactus Pass to Diamond River and
back again; he knew it at least as well as the man whose life he was tracking.
He thought he remembered the spring where Glover had broken down, and felt
pretty sure that it could not be less than twenty miles from the camp. Mounted
as he was, he could put himself ahead of Thurstane and ambush him in some
ravine. Of a sudden he laughed. It was not a burst of merriment, but a grim
wrinkling of his dark, haggard cheeks, followed by a hissing chuckle. Texas
seldom laughed, and with good reason, for it was enough to scare people.

“Mought be done,” he muttered. “Mought git the better of 'em all that
way. Shute, 'an then yell. The greasers 'ud think it was Injuns. an' they'd
travel for camp. Then I'd stop the spare mules an' start for Californy.”

For Texas this plan was a stroke of inspiration. He was not an intelligent
scoundrel. All his acumen, though bent to the one point of roguery, had barely
sufficed hitherto to commit murders and escape hanging. He had never prospered
financially, because he lacked financial ability. He was a beast, with all
a tiger's ferocity, but with hardly more than a tiger's intelligence. He was a
savage numskull. An Apache Tonto would have been more than his match in
the arts of murder, and very nearly his match in the arts of civilization.

Instead of following Thurstane directly, he made a circuit of several miles
through a ravine, galloped across a wide grassy plain, and pulled up among some
rounded hillocks. Here, as he calculated, he was fifteen miles from camp, and
five from the spot where lay Glover and Sweeny. The moon had already gone
down and left the desert to the starlight. Posting himself behind a thicket, he
waited for half an hour or more, listening with indefatigable attention.

He had no scruples, but he had some fears. If he should miss, the lieutenant
would fire back, and he was cool enough to fire with effect. Well, he wouldn't
miss; what should he miss for? As for the greasers, they would run at the
first shot. Nevertheless, he did occasionally muddle over the idea of going off
to California with his gold, and without doing this particular job. What kept
him to his agreement was the hope of stealing the spare mules, and the fear that
the draft might not be paid if he shirked his work.

“I s'pose I must show his skelp,” thought Texas, “or they won't hand over
the dust.”

At last there was a sound; he had set his ambush just right; there were
voices in the distance; then hoofs in the grass. Next he saw something; it
was a man on a mule; yes, and it was the right man.

He raised his cocked rifle and aimed, sighting the head, three rods away.
Suddenly his horse whinnied, and then the mule of the other reared; but the
bullet had already sped. Down went Thurstane in the darkness, while, with an
Apache yell, Texas Smith burst from his ambush and charged upon the greasers.