is more than an old man is fitted to strive with. An old man--an old,
sick, worn-out man!"

"You are sure about the will?" demanded the nephew.

"I have a copy of it," said Garcia, eagerly. "Here it is. Read it. O Madre
de Dios! there is no doubt about it. I can trust my lawyer. It all goes to
her. It only comes to me if she dies childless and intestate."

"This is a horrible dilemma to force us into," observed Coronado, after he
had read the paper.

"So it is," assented Garcia, looking at him with indescribable anxiety.
"So it is; so it is. What is to be done?"

"Suppose I should marry her?"

The old man's countenance fell; he wanted to call his nephew a pig, a dog,
and everything else that is villainous; but he restrained himself and
merely whimpered, "It would be better than nothing. You could help me."

"There is little chance of it," said Coronado, seeing that the proposition
was not approved. "She likes the American lieutenant much, and does not
like me at all."

"Then--" began Garcia, and stopped there, trembling all over.

"Then what?"

The venomous old toad made a supreme effort and whispered, "Suppose she
should die?"

Coronado wheeled about, walked two or three times up and down the room,
returned to where Garcia sat quivering, and murmured, "It must be done
quickly."

"Yes, yes," gasped the old man. "She must--it must be childless and
intestate."

"She must go off in some natural way," continued the nephew.

The uncle looked up with a vague hope in his one dusky and filmy eye.

"Perhaps the isthmus will do it for her."

Again the old man turned to an image of despair, as he mumbled, "O Madre
de Dios! no, no. The isthmus is nothing."

"Is the overland route more dangerous?" asked Coronado.

"It might be made more dangerous. One gets lost in the desert. There are
Apaches."

"It is a horrible business," growled Coronado, shaking his head and biting
his lips.

"Oh, horrible, horrible!" groaned Garcia. "Munoz was a pig, and a dog, and
a toad, and a snake."

"You old coward! can't you speak out?" hissed Coronado, losing his
patience. "Do you want me both to devise and execute, while you take the
purses? Tell me at once what your plan is."

"The overland route," whispered Garcia, shaking from head to foot. "You go
with her. I pay--I pay everything. You shall have men, horses, mules,
wagons, all you want."

"I shall want money, too. I shall need, perhaps, two thousand dollars.
Apaches."

"Yes, yes," assented Garcia. "The Apaches make an attack. You shall have
money. I can raise it; I will."

"How soon will you have a train ready?"

"Immediately. Any day you want. You must start at once. She must not know
of the will. She might remain here, and let the estate be settled for her,
and draw on it. She might go back to New York. Anybody would lend her
money."

"Yes, events hurry us," muttered Coronado. "Well, get your cursed train
ready. I will induce her to take it. I must unsay now all that I said in
favor of the isthmus."

"Do be judicious," implored Garcia. "With judgment, with judgment. Lost on
the plains. Stolen by Apaches. No killing. No scandals. O my God, how I
hate scandals and uproars! I am an old man, Carlos. With judgment, with
judgment."

"I comprehend," responded Coronado, adding a long string of Spanish
curses, most of them meant for his uncle.




CHAPTER III.


That very day Coronado made a second call on Clara and her Aunt Maria, to
retract, contradict, and disprove all that he had said in favor of the
isthmus and against the overland route.

Although his visit was timed early in the evening, he found Lieutenant
Thurstane already with the ladies. Instead of scowling at him, or
crouching in conscious guilt before him, he made a cordial rush for his
hand, smiled sweetly in his face, and offered him incense of gratitude.

"My dear Lieutenant, you are perfectly right," he said, in his fluent
English. "The journey by the isthmus is not to be thought of. I have just
seen a friend who has made it. Poisonous serpents in myriads. The most
deadly climate in the world. Nearly everybody had the _vomito_; one-fifth
died of it. You eat a little fruit; down you go on your back--dead in four
hours. Then there are constant fights between the emigrants and the
sullen, ferocious Indians of the isthmus. My poor friend never slept with
his revolver out of his hand. I said to him, 'My dear fellow, it is cruel
to rejoice in your misfortunes, but I am heartily glad that I have heard
of them. You have saved the life of the most remarkable woman that I ever
knew, and of a cousin of mine who is the star of her sex.'"

Here Coronado made one bow to Mrs. Stanley and another to Clara, at the
same time kissing his sallow hand enthusiastically to all creation. Aunt
Maria tried to look stern at the compliment, but eventually thawed into a
smile over it. Clara acknowledged it with a little wave of the hand, as
if, coming from Coronado, it meant nothing more than good-morning, which
indeed was just about his measure of it.

"Moreover," continued the Mexican, "overland route? Why, it is overland
route both ways. If you go by the isthmus, you must traverse all Texas and
Louisiana, at the very least. You might as well go at once to San Diego.
In short, the route by the isthmus is not to be thought of."

"And what of the overland route?" asked Mrs. Stanley.

"The overland route is the _other_," laughed Coronado.

"Yes, I know. We must take it, I suppose. But what is the last news about
it? You spoke this morning of Indians, I believe. Not that I suppose they
are very formidable."

"The overland route does not lead directly through paradise, my dear Mrs.
Stanley," admitted Coronado with insinuating candor. "But it is not as bad
as has been represented. I have never tried it. I must rely upon the
report of others. Well, on learning that the isthmus would not do for you,
I rushed off immediately to inquire about the overland. I questioned
Garcia's teamsters. I catechized some newly-arrived travellers. I pumped
dry every source of information. The result is that the overland route
will do. No suffering; absolutely none; not a bit. And no danger worth
mentioning. The Apaches are under a cloud. Our American conquerors and
fellow-citizens" (here he gently patted Thurstane on the shoulder-strap),
"our Romans of the nineteenth century, they tranquillize the Apaches. A
child might walk from here to Fort Yuma without risking its little scalp."

All this was said in the most light-hearted and airy manner conceivable.
Coronado waved and floated on zephyrs of fancy and fluency. A butterfly or
a humming-bird could not have talked more cheerily about flying over a
parterre of flowers than he about traversing the North American desert.
And, with all this frivolous, imponderable grace, what an accent of verity
he had! He spoke of the teamsters as if he had actually conversed with
them, and of the overland route as if he had been studiously gathering
information concerning it.

"I believe that what you say about the Apaches is true," observed
Thurstane, a bit awkwardly.

Coronado smiled, tossed him a little bow, and murmured in the most
cordial, genial way, "And the rest?"

"I beg pardon," said the Lieutenant, reddening. "I didn't mean to cast
doubt upon any of your statements, sir."

Thurstane had the army tone; he meant to be punctiliously polite; perhaps
he was a little stiff in his politeness. But he was young, had had small
practice in society, was somewhat hampered by modesty, and so sometimes
made a blunder. Such things annoyed him excessively; a breach of etiquette
seemed something like a breach of orders; hadn't meant to charge Coronado
with drawing the long bow; couldn't help coloring about it. Didn't think
much of Coronado, but stood somewhat in awe of him, as being four years
older in time and a dozen years older in the ways of the world.

"I only meant to say," he continued, "that I have information concerning
the Apaches which coincides with yours, sir. They are quiet, at least for
the present. Indeed, I understand that Red Sleeve, or Manga Colorada, as
you call him, is coming in with his band to make a treaty."

"Admirable!" cried Coronado. "Why not hire him to guarantee our safety?
Set a thief to catch a thief. Why does not your Government do that sort of
thing? Let the Apaches protect the emigrants, and the United States pay
the Apaches. They would be the cheapest military force possible. That is
the way the Turks manage the desert Arabs."

"Mr. Coronado, you ought to be Governor of New Mexico," said Aunt Maria,
stricken with admiration at this project.

Thurstane looked at the two as if he considered them a couple of fools,
each bigger than the other. Coronado advanced to Mrs. Stanley, took her
hand, bowed over it, and murmured, "Let me have your influence at
Washington, my dear Madame." The remarkable woman squirmed a little,
fearing lest he should kiss her ringers, but nevertheless gave him a
gracious smile.

"It strikes me, however," she said, "that the isthmus route is better. We
know by experience that the journey from here to Bent's Fort is safe and
easy. From there down the Arkansas and Missouri to St. Louis it is mostly
water carriage; and from St. Louis you can sail anywhere."

Coronado was alarmed. He must put a stopper on this project. He called up
all his resources.

"My dear Mrs. Stanley, allow me. Remember that emigrants move westward,
and not eastward. Coming from Bent's Fort you had protection and company;
but going towards it would be different. And then think what you would
lose. The great American desert, as it is absurdly styled, is one of the
most interesting regions on earth. Mrs. Stanley, did you ever hear of the
Casas Grandes, the Casas de Montezuma, the ruined cities of New Mexico? In
this so-called desert there was once an immense population. There was a
civilization which rose, flourished, decayed, and disappeared without a
historian. Nothing remains of it but the walls of its fortresses and
palaces. Those you will see. They are wonderful. They are worth ten times
the labor and danger which we shall encounter. Buildings eight hundred
feet long by two hundred and fifty feet deep, Mrs. Stanley. The
resting-places and wayside strongholds of the Aztecs on their route from
the frozen North to found the Empire of the Montezumas! This whole region
is strewn, and cumbered, and glorified with ruins. If we should go by the
way of the San Juan--"

"The San Juan!" protested Thurstane. "Nobody goes by the way of the San
Juan."

Coronado stopped, bowed, smiled, waited to see if Thurstane had finished,
and then proceeded.

"Along the San Juan every hilltop is crowned with these monuments of
antiquity. It is like the castled Rhine. Ruins looking in the faces of
ruins. It is a tragedy in stone. It is like Niobe and her daughters.
Moreover, if we take this route we shall pass the Moquis. The independent
Moquis are a fragment of the ancient ruling race of New Mexico. They live
in stone-built cities on lofty eminences. They weave blankets of exquisite
patterns and colors, and produce a species of pottery which almost
deserves the name of porcelain."

"Really, you ought to write all this," exclaimed Aunt Maria, her
imagination fired to a white heat.

"I ought," said Coronado, impressively. "I owe it to these people to
celebrate them in history. I owe them that much because of the name I
bear. Did you ever hear of Coronado, the conqueror of New Mexico, the
stormer of the seven cities of Cibola? It was he who gave the final shock
to this antique civilization. He was the Cortes of this portion of the
continent. I bear his name, and his blood runs in my veins."

He held down his head as if he were painfully oppressed by the sense of
his crimes and responsibilities as a descendant of the waster of
aboriginal New Mexico. Mrs. Stanley, delighted with his emotion, slily
grasped and pressed his hand.

"Oh, man! man!" she groaned. "What evils has that creature man wrought in
this beautiful world! Ah, Mr. Coronado, it would have been a very
different planet had woman had her rightful share in the management of its
affairs."

"Undoubtedly," sighed Coronado. He had already obtained an insight into
this remarkable person's views on the woman question, the superiority of
her own sex, the stolidity and infamy of the other. It was worth his while
to humor her on this point, for the sake of gaining an influence over her,
and so over Clara. Cheered by the success of his history, he now launched
into pure poetry.

"Woman has done something," he said. "There is every reason to believe
that the cities of the San Juan were ruled by queens, and that some of
them were inhabited by a race of Amazons."

"Is it possible?" exclaimed Aunt Maria, flushing and rustling with
interest.

"It is the opinion of the best antiquarians. It is my opinion. Nothing
else can account for the exquisite earthenware which is found there.
Women, you are aware, far surpass men in the arts of beauty. Moreover, the
inscriptions on hieroglyphic rocks in these abandoned cities evidently
refer to Amazons. There you see them doing the work of men--carrying on
war, ruling conquered regions, founding cities. It is a picture of a
golden age, Mrs. Stanley."

Aunt Maria meant to go by way of the San Juan, if she had to scalp
Apaches herself in doing it.

"Lieutenant Thurstane, what do you say?" she asked, turning her sparkling
eyes upon the officer.

"I must confess that I never heard of all these things," replied
Thurstane, with an air which added, "And I don't believe in most of them."

"As for the San Juan route," he continued, "it is two hundred miles at
least out of our way. The country is a desert and almost unexplored. I
don't fancy the plan--I beg your pardon, Mr. Coronado--but I don't fancy
it at all."

Aunt Maria despised him and almost hated him for his stupid, practical,
unpoetic common sense.

"I must say that I quite fancy the San Juan route," she responded, with
proper firmness.

"I venture to agree with you," said Coronado, as meekly as if her fancy
were not of his own making. "Only a hundred miles off the straight line
(begging your pardon, my dear Lieutenant), and through a country which is
naturally fertile--witness the immense population which it once supported.
As for its being unexplored, I have explored it myself; and I shall go
with you."

"Shall you!" cried Aunt Maria, as if that made all safe and delightful.

"Yes. My excellent Uncle Garcia (good, kind-hearted old man) takes the
strongest interest in this affair. He is resolved that his charming little
relative here, La Senorita Clara, shall cross the continent in safety and
comfort. He offers a special wagon train for the purpose, and insists that
I shall accompany it. Of course I am only too delighted to obey him."

"Garcia is very good, and so are you, Coronado," said Clara, very thankful
and profoundly astonished. "How can I ever repay you both? I shall always
be your debtor."

"My dear cousin!" protested Coronado, bowing and smiling. "Well, it is
settled. We will start as soon as may be. The train will be ready in a day
or two."

"I have no money," stammered Clara. "The estate is not settled."

"Our good old Garcia has thought of everything. He will advance you what
you want, and take your draft on the executors."

"Your uncle is one of nature's noblemen," affirmed Aunt Maria. "I must
call on him and thank him for his goodness and generosity."

"Oh, never!" said Coronado. "He only waits your permission to visit you
and pay you his humble respects. Absence has prevented him from attending
to that delightful duty heretofore. He has but just returned from
Albuquerque."

"Tell him I shall be glad to see him," smiled Aunt Maria. "But what does
he say of the San Juan route?"

"He advises it. He has been in the overland trade for thirty years. He is
tenderly interested in his relative Clara; and he advises her to go by way
of the San Juan."

"Then so it shall be," declared Aunt Maria.

"And how do you go, Lieutenant?" asked Coronado, turning to Thurstane.

"I had thought of travelling with you," was the answer, delivered with a
grave and troubled air, as if now he must give up his project.

Coronado was delighted. He had urged the northern and circuitous route
mainly to get rid of the officer, taking it for granted that the latter
must join his new command as soon as possible. He did not want him
courting Clara all across the continent; and he, did not want him saving
her from being lost, if it should become necessary to lose her.

"I earnestly hope that we shall not be deprived of your company," he said.

Thurstane, in profound thought, simply bowed his acknowledgments. A few
minutes later, as he rose to return to his quarters, he said, with an air
of solemn resolution, "If I can possibly go with you, I _will_."

All the next day and evening Coronado was in and out of the Van Diemen
house. Had there been a mail for the ladies, he would have brought it to
them; had it contained a letter from California, he would have abstracted
and burnt it. He helped them pack for the journey; he made an inventory of
the furniture and found storeroom for it; he was a valet and a spy in one.
Meantime Garcia hurried up his train, and hired suitable muleteers for the
animals and suitable assassins for the travellers. Thurstane was also
busy, working all day and half of the night over his government accounts,
so that he might if possible get off with Clara.

Coronado thought of making interest with the post-commandant to have
Thurstane kept a few days in Santa Fe. But the post-commandant was a grim
and taciturn old major, who looked him through and through with a pair of
icy gray eyes, and returned brief answers to his musical commonplaces.
Coronado did not see how he could humbug him, and concluded not to try it.
The attempt might excite suspicion; the major might say, "How is this your
business?" So, after a little unimportant tattle, Coronado made his best
bow to the old fellow, and hurried off to oversee his so-called cousin.

In the evening he brought Garcia to call on the ladies. Aunt Maria was
rather surprised and shocked to see such an excellent man look so much
like an infamous scoundrel. "But good people are always plain," she
reasoned; and so she was as cordial to him as one can be in English to a
saint who understands nothing but Spanish. Garcia, instructed by Coronado,
could not bow low enough nor smile greasily enough at Aunt Maria. His dull
commonplaces moreover, were translated by his nephew into flowering
compliments for the lady herself, and enthusiastic professions of faith in
the superior intelligence and moral worth of all women. So the two got
along famously, although neither ever knew what the other had really said.

When Clara appeared, Garcia bowed humbly without lifting his eyes to her
face, and received her kiss without returning it, as one might receive the
kiss of a corpse.

"Contemptible coward!" thought Coronado. Then, turning to Mrs. Stanley, he
whispered, "My uncle is almost broken down with this parting."

"Excellent creature!" murmured Aunt Maria, surveying the old toad with
warm sympathy. "What a pity he has lost one eye! It quite injures the
benevolent expression of his face."

Although Garcia was very distantly connected with Clara, she gave him the
title of uncle.

"How is this, my uncle?" she said, gaily. "You send your merchandise
trains through Bernalillo, and you send me through Santa Anna and Rio
Arriba."

Garcia, cowed and confounded, made no reply that was comprehensible.

"It is a newly discovered route," put in Coronado, "lately found to be
easier and safer than the old one. Two hundred and fifty years in learning
the fact, Mrs. Stanley! Just as we were two hundred and fifty years
without discovering the gold of California."

"Ah!" said Clara. Absent since her childhood from New Mexico, she knew
little about its geography, and could be easily deceived.

After a while Thurstane entered, out of breath and red with haste. He had
stolen ten minutes from his accounts and stores to bring Miss Van Diemen a
piece of information which was to him important and distressing.

"I fear that I shall not be able to go with you," he said. "I have
received orders to wait for a sergeant and three recruits who have been
assigned to my company. The messenger reports that they are on the march
from Fort Bent with an emigrant train, and will not be here for a week. It
annoys me horribly, Miss Van Diemen. I thought I saw my way clear to be of
your party. I assure you I earnestly desired it. This route--I am afraid
of it--I wanted to be with you."

"To protect me?" queried Clara, her face lighting up with a grateful
smile, so innocent and frank was she. Then she turned grave, again, and
added, "I am sorry."

Thankful for these last words, but nevertheless quite miserable, the
youngster worshipped her and trembled for her.

This conversation had been carried on in a quiet tone, so that the others
of the party had not overheard it, not even the watchful Coronado.

"It is too unfortunate," said Clara, turning to them, "Lieutenant
Thurstane cannot go with us."

Garcia and Coronado exchanged a look which said, "Thank--the devil!"




CHAPTER IV.


The next day brought news of an obstacle to the march of the wagon train
through Santa Anna and Rio Arriba.

It was reported that the audacious and savage Apache chieftain, Manga
Colorada, or Red Sleeve, under pretence of wanting to make a treaty with
the Americans, had approached within sixty miles of Santa Fe to the west,
and camped there, on the route to the San Juan country, not making
treaties at all, but simply making hot beefsteaks out of Mexican cattle
and cold carcasses out of Mexican rancheros.

"We shall have to get those fellows off that trail and put them across the
Bernalillo route," said Coronado to Garcia.

"The pigs! the dogs! the wicked beasts! the devils!" barked the old man,
dancing about the room in a rage. After a while he dropped breathless into
a chair and looked eagerly at his nephew for help.

"It will cost at least another thousand," observed the younger man.

"You have had two thousand," shuddered Garcia. "You were to do the whole
accursed job with that."

"I did not count on Manga Colorada. Besides, I have given a thousand to
our little cousin. I must keep a thousand to meet the chances that may
come. There are men to be bribed."

Garcia groaned, hesitated, decided, went to some hoard which he had put
aside for great needs, counted out a hundred American eagles, toyed with
them, wept over them, and brought them to Coronado.

"Will that do?" he asked. "It must do. There is no more."

"I will try with that," said the nephew. "Now let me have a few good men
and your best horses. I want to see them all before I trust myself with
them."

Coronado felt himself in a position to dictate, and it was curious to see
how quick he put on magisterial airs; he was one of those who enjoy
authority, though little and brief.

"Accursed beast!" thought Garcia, who did not dare just now to break out
with his "pig, dog," etc. "He wants me to pay everything. The thousand
ought to be enough for men and horses and all. Why not poison the girl at
once, and save all this money? If he had the spirit of a man! O Madre de
Dios! Madre de Dios! What extremities! what extremities!"

But Garcia was like a good many of us; his thoughts were worse than his
deeds and words. While he was cogitating thus savagely, he was saying
aloud, "My son, my dear Carlos, come and choose for yourself."

Turning into the court of the house, they strolled through a medley of
wagons, mules, horses, merchandise, muleteers, teamsters, idlers, white
men and Indians. Coronado soon picked out a couple of rancheros whom he
knew as capital riders, fair marksmen, faithful and intelligent. Next his
eye fell upon a man in Mexican clothing, almost as dark and dirty too as
the ordinary Mexican, but whose height, size, insolence of carriage, and
ferocity of expression marked him as of another and more pugnacious, more
imperial race.

"You are an American," said Coronado, in his civil manner, for he had two
manners as opposite as the poles.

"I be," replied the stranger, staring at Coronado as a Lombard or Frankish
warrior might have stared at an effeminate and diminutive Roman.

"May I ask what your name is?"

"Some folks call me Texas Smith."

Coronado shifted uneasily on his feet, as a man might shift in presence of
a tiger, who, as he feared, was insufficiently chained. He was face to
face with a fellow who was as much the terror of the table-land, from the
borders of Texas to California, as if he had been an Apache chief.

This noted desperado, although not more than twenty-six or seven years
old, had the horrible fame of a score of murders. His appearance mated
well with his frightful history and reputation. His intensely black eyes,
blacker even than the eyes of Coronado, had a stare of absolutely
indescribable ferocity. It was more ferocious than the merely brutal glare
of a tiger; it was an intentional malignity, super-beastly and sub-human.
They were eyes which no other man ever looked into and afterward forgot.
His sunburnt, sallow, haggard, ghastly face, stained early and for life
with the corpse-like coloring of malarious fevers, was a fit setting for
such optics. Although it was nearly oval in contour, and although the
features were or had been fairly regular, yet it was so marked by hard,
and one might almost say fleshless muscles, and so brutalized by long
indulgence in savage passions, that it struck you as frightfully ugly. A
large dull-red scar on the right jaw and another across the left cheek
added the final touches to this countenance of a cougar.

"He is my man," whispered Garcia to Coronado. "I have hired him for the
great adventure. Sixty piastres a month. Why not take him with you
to-day?"

Coronado gave another glance at the gladiator and meditated. Should he
trust this beast of a Texan to guard him against those other beasts, the
Apaches? Well, he could die but once; this whole affair was detestably
risky; he must not lose time in shuddering over the first steps.

"Mr. Smith," he said, "very glad to know that you are with us. Can you
start in an hour for the camp of Manga Colorada? Sixty miles there. We
must be back by to-morrow night. It would be best not to say where we are
going."

Texas Smith nodded, turned abruptly on the huge heels of his Mexican
boots, stalked to where his horse was fastened, and began to saddle him.

"My dear uncle, why didn't you hire the devil?" whispered Coronado as he
stared after the cutthroat.

"Get yourself ready, my nephew," was Garcia's reply. "I will see to the
men and horses."

In an hour the expedition was off at full gallop. Coronado had laid aside
his American dandy raiment, and was in the full costume of a Mexican of
the provinces--broad-brimmed hat of white straw, blue broadcloth jacket
adorned with numerous small silver buttons, velvet vest of similar
splendor, blue trousers slashed from the knee downwards and gay with
buttons, high, loose embroidered boots of crimson leather, long steel
spurs jingling and shining. The change became him; he seemed a larger and
handsomer man for it; he looked the caballero and almost the hidalgo.

Three hours took the party thirty miles to a hacienda of Garcia's, where
they changed horses, leaving their first mounting for the return. After
half an hour for dinner, they pushed on again, always at a gallop, the
hoofs clattering over the hard, yellow, sunbaked earth, or dashing
recklessly along smooth sheets of rock, or through fields of loose,
slippery stones. Rare halts to breathe the animals; then the steady,
tearing gallop again; no walking or other leisurely gait. Coronado led the
way and hastened the pace. There was no tiring him; his thin, sinewy,
sun-hardened frame could bear enormous fatigue; moreover, the saddle was
so familiar to him that he almost reposed in it. If he had needed physical
support, he would have found it in his mental energy. He was capable of
that executive furor, that intense passion of exertion, which the man of
Latin race can exhibit when he has once fairly set himself to an
enterprise. He was of the breed which in nobler days had produced
Gonsalvo, Cortes, Pizarro, and Darien.

These riders had set out at ten o'clock in the morning; at five in the
afternoon they drew bridle in sight of the Apache encampment. They were on
the brow of a stony hill: a pile of bare, gray, glaring, treeless,
herbless layers of rock; a pyramid truncated near its base, but still of
majestic altitude; one of the pyramids of nature in that region; in short,
a butte. Below them lay a valley of six or eight miles in length by one or
two in breadth, through the centre of which a rivulet had drawn a paradise
of verdure. In the middle of the valley, at the head of a bend in the
rivulet, was a camp of human brutes. It was a bivouac rather than a camp.
The large tents of bison hide used by the northern Indians are unknown to
the Apaches; they have not the bison, and they have less need of shelter
in winter. What Coronado saw at this distance was, a few huts of branches,
a strolling of many horses, and some scattered riders.

Texas Smith gave him a glance of inquiry which said, "Shall we go
ahead--or fire?"

Coronado spurred his horse down the rough, disjointed, slippery declivity,
and the others followed. They were soon perceived; the Apache swarm was
instantly in a buzz; horses were saddled and mounted, or mounted without
saddling; there was a consultation, and then a wild dash toward the
travellers. As the two parties neared each other at a gallop, Coronado
rode to the front of his squad, waving his sombrero. An Indian who wore
the dress of a Mexican caballero, jacket, loose trousers, hat, and boots,
spurred in like manner to the front, gestured to his followers to halt,
brought his horse to a walk, and slowly approached the white man. Coronado
made a sign to show that his pistols were in his holsters; and the Apache
responded by dropping his lance and slinging his bow over his shoulder.
The two met midway between the two squads of staring, silent horsemen.

"Is it Manga Colorada?" asked the Mexican, in Spanish.

"Manga Colorada," replied the Apache, his long, dark, haggard, savage face
lighting up for a moment with a smile of gratified vanity.

"I come in peace, then," said Coronado. "I want your help; I will pay for
it."

In our account of this interview we shall translate the broken Spanish of
the Indian into ordinary English.

"Manga Colorada will help," he said, "if the pay is good."

Even during this short dialogue the Apaches had with difficulty restrained
their curiosity; and their little wiry horses were now caracoling,
rearing, and plunging in close proximity to the two speakers.

"We will talk of this by ourselves," said Coronado. "Let us go to your
camp."

The conjoint movement of the leaders toward the Indian bivouac was a
signal for their followers to mingle and exchange greetings. The
adventurers were enveloped and very nearly ridden down by over two hundred
prancing, screaming horsemen, shouting to their visitors in their own
guttural tongue or in broken Spanish, and enforcing their wild speech with
vehement gestures. It was a pandemonium which horribly frightened the