badly wounded draft mules were disentangled from the harness, and their
places supplied with the four army mules, whose packs were thrown into the
wagons. These animals, by the way, had escaped injury, partly because they
had been tethered between the two lines of vehicles, and partly because
they had been well covered by their loads, which were plentifully
stuck-with arrows.

"We are ready to march," said Thurstane to Coronado. "I am sorry we can't
try to recover your men back there."

"No use," commented Texas Smith. "The Patchies have been at 'em. They're
chuck full of spear holes by this time."

Coronado shouted to the drivers to start. Commencing on the right, the
wagons filed off two by two toward the mouth of the canon, while the
Indians, gathered in a group half a mile away, looked on without a yell or
a movement. The instant that the vehicle which contained the ladies had
cleared itself of the others, Thurstane and Coronado rode alongside of it.

"So! you are safe!" said the former. "By Heavens, if they _had_ hurt you!"

"And you?" asked Clara, very quickly and eagerly, while scanning him from
head to foot.

Coronado saw that look, anxious for Thurstane alone; and, master of
dissimulation though he was, his face showed both pain and anger.

"Ah--oh--oh dear!" groaned Mrs. Stanley, as she made her appearance in the
front of the vehicle. "Well! this is rather more than I can bear. This is
just as much as a woman can put up with. Dear me! what is the matter with
your arm, Lieutenant?"

"Just a pin prick," said Thurstane.

Clara began to get out of the wagon, with the purpose of going to him, her
eyes staring and her face pale.

"Don't!" he protested, motioning her back. "It is nothing."

And, although the lacerated arm hurt him and was not easy to manage, he
raised it over his head to show that the damage was trifling.

"Do get in here and let us take care of you," begged Clara.

"Certainly!" echoed Aunt Maria, who was a compassionate woman at heart,
and who only lacked somewhat in quickness of sympathy, perhaps by reason
of her strong-minded notions.

"I will when I need it," said Ralph, flattered and gratified. "The arm
will do without dressing till we reach camp. There are other wounded.
Everybody has fought. Mr. Coronado here has done deeds worthy of his
ancestors."

"Ah, Mr. Coronado!" smiled Aunt Maria, delighted that her favorite had
distinguished himself.

"Captain Glover, what's the matter with your nose?" was the lady's next
outcry.

"Wal, it's been bored," replied Glover, tenderly fingering his sore
proboscis. "It's been, so to speak, eyelet-holed. I'm glad I hadn't but
one. The more noses a feller kerries in battle, the wuss for him. I hope
the darned rip'll heal up. I've no 'casion to hev a line rove through it
'n' be towed, that I know of."

"How did it feel when it went through?" asked Aunt Maria, full of
curiosity and awe.

"Felt's though I'd got the dreadfullest influenzee thet ever snorted.
Twitched 'n' tickled like all possessed."

"Was it an arrow?" inquired the still unsatisfied lady.

"Reckon 'twas. Never see it. But it kinder whished, 'n' I felt the
feathers. Darn 'em! When I felt the feathers, tell ye I was 'bout half
scairt. Hed 'n idee 'f th' angel 'f death, 'n' so on."

Of course Aunt Maria and Clara wanted to do much nursing immediately; but
there were no conveniences and there was no time; and so benevolence was
postponed.

"So you are hurt?" said Thurstane to Texas Smith, noticing his torn and
bloody shirt.

"It's jest a scrape," grunted the bushwhacker. "Mought'a'been worse."

"It was bad generalship trying to save you. We nearly paid high for it."

"That's so. Cost four greasers, as 'twas. Well, I'm worth four greasers."

"You're a devil of a fighter," continued the Lieutenant, surveying the
ferocious face and sullen air of the cutthroat with a soldier's admiration
for whatever expresses pugnacity.

"Bet yer pile on it," returned Texas, calmly conscious of his character.
"So be you."

The savage black eyes and the imperious blue ones stared into each other
without the least flinching and with something like friendliness.

Coronado rode up to the pair and asked, "Is that boy alive yet?"

"It's about time for him to flop round," replied Texas indifferently.
"Reckon you'll find him in the off hind wagon. I shoved him in thar."

Coronado cantered to the off hind wagon, peeped through the rear opening
of its canvas cover, discovered the youth lying on a pile of luggage,
addressed him in Spanish, and learned his story. He belonged to a hacienda
in Bernalillo, a hundred miles or more west of Santa Fe. The Apaches had
surprised the hacienda and plundered it, carrying him off because, having
formerly been a captive among them, he could speak their language, manage
the bow, etc.

For all this Coronado cared nothing; he wanted to know why the band had
left Bernalillo; also why it had attacked his train. The boy explained
that the raiders had been driven off the southern route by a party of
United States cavalry, and that, having lost a number of their braves in
the fight, they had sworn vengeance on Americans.

"Did you hear them say whose train this was?" demanded Coronado.

"No, Senor."

"Do you think they knew?"

"Senor, I think not."

"Whose band was this?"

"Manga Colorada's."

"Where is Delgadito?"

"Delgadito went the other side of the mountain. They were both going to
fight the Moquis."

"So we shall find Delgadito in the Moqui valley?"

"I think so, Senor."

After a moment of reflection Coronado added, "You will stay with us and
take care of mules. I will do well by you."

"Thanks, Senor. Many thanks."

Coronado rejoined Thurstane and told his news. The officer looked grave;
there might be another combat in store for the train; it might be an
affair with both bands of the Apaches.

"Well," he said, "we must keep our eyes open. Every one of us must do his
very utmost. On the whole, I can't believe they can beat us."

"Nombre de Dios!" thought Coronado. "How will this accursed job end? I
wish I were out of it."

They were now traversing the canon from which they had been so long
debarred. It was a peaceful solitude; no life but their own stirred within
its sandstone ramparts; and its windings soon carried them out of sight of
their late assailants. For four hours they slowly threaded it, and when
night came on they were still in it, miles away from their expected
camping ground. No water and no grass; the animals were drooping with
hunger, and all suffered with thirst; the worst was that the hurts of the
wounded could not be properly dressed. But progress through this labyrinth
of stones in the darkness was impossible, and the weary, anxious, fevered
travellers bivouacked as well as might be.

Starting at dawn, they finished the canon in about an hour, traversed an
uneven plateau which stretched beyond its final sinuous branch gullies,
and found themselves on the brow of a lofty terrace, overlooking a sublime
panorama. There was an immense valley, not smooth and verdurous, but a
gigantic nest of savage buttes and crags and hills, only to be called a
valley because it was enclosed by what seemed a continuous line of
eminences. On the north and east rose long ranges and elevated
table-lands; on the west, the savage rolls and precipices of the Sierra
del Carrizo; and on the south, a more distant bordering of hazy mountains,
closing to the southwest, a hundred miles away, in the noble snowy peaks
of Monte San Francisco.

With his field-glass, Thurstane examined one after another of the mesas
and buttes which diversified this enormous depression. At last his
attention settled on an isolated bluff or mound, with a flattened surface
three or four miles in length, the whole mass of which seemed to be solid
and barren rock. On this truncated pyramid he distinguished, or thought he
distinguished, one or more of the pueblos of the Moquis. He could not be
quite sure, because the distance was fifteen miles, and the walls of these
villages are of the same stone with the buttes upon which they stand.

"There is our goal, if I am not mistaken," he said to Coronado. "When we
get there we can rest."

The train pushed onward, slowly descending the terrace, or rather the
succession of terraces. After reaching a more level region, and while
winding between stony hills of a depressing sterility, it came suddenly,
at the bottom of a ravine, upon fresh green turf and thickets of willows,
the environment of a small spring of clear water. There was a halt; all
hands fell to digging a trench across the gully; when it had filled, the
animals were allowed to drink; in an hour more they had closely cropped
all the grass. This was using up time perilously, but it had to be done,
for the beasts were tottering.

Moving again; five miles more traversed; another spring and patch of turf
discovered; a rough ravine through a low sandstone ridge threaded; at last
they were on one of the levels of the valley. Three of the Moqui towns
were now about eight miles distant, and with his glass Thurstane could
distinguish the horizontal lines of building. The trail made straight for
the pueblos, but it was almost impassable to wagons, and progress was very
slow. It was all the slower because of the weakness of the mules, which
throughout all this hair-brained journey had been severely worked, and of
late had been poorly fed.

Presently the travellers turned the point of a naked ridge which projected
laterally into the valley. There they came suddenly upon a wide-spread
sweep of turf, contrasting so brilliantly with the bygone infertilities
that it seemed to them a paradise, and stretching clear on to the bluff of
the pueblos.

There, too, with equal suddenness, they came upon peril. Just beyond the
nose of the sandstone promontory there was a bivouac of half naked,
dark-skinned horsemen, recognizable at a glance as Apaches. It was
undoubtedly the band of Delgadito.

The camp was half a mile distant. The Indians, evidently surprised at the
appearance of the train, were immediately in commotion. There was a rapid
mounting, and in five minutes they were all on horseback, curveting in
circles, and brandishing their lances, but without advancing.

"Manga Colorada hasn't reached here yet," observed Thurstane.

"That's so," assented Texas Smith. "They hain't heerd from the cuss, or
they'd a bushwhacked us somewhar. Seein' he dasn't follow our trail, he
had to make a big turn to git here. But he'll be droppin' along, an' then
we'll hev a fight. I reckon we'll hev one any way. Them cusses ain't
friendly. If they was, they'd a piled in helter-skelter to hev a talk an'
ask fur whiskey."

"We must keep them at a distance," said Thurstane.

"You bet! The first Injun that comes nigh us. I'll shute him. They mustn't
be 'lowed to git among us. First you know you'd hear a yell, an' find
yourself speared in the back. An' them that's speared right off is the
lucky ones."

"Not one of us must fall into their hands," muttered the officer, thinking
of Clara.

"Cap, that's so," returned Texas grimly. "When I fight Injuns, I never
empty my revolver. I keep one barl for myself. You'd better do the same.
Furthermore, thar oughter be somebody detailed to shute the women folks
when it comes to the last pinch. I say this as a friend."

As a friend! It was the utmost stretch of Texas Smith's humanity and
sympathy. Obviously the fellow had a soft side to him.

The fact is that he had taken a fancy to Thurstane since he had learned
his fighting qualities, and would rather have done him a favor than murder
him. At all events his hatred to "Injuns" was such that he wanted the
lieutenant to kill a great many of them before his own turn came.

"So you think we'll have a tough job of it?" inferred Ralph.

"Cap, we ain't so many as we was. An' if Manga Colorada comes up, thar'll
be a pile of red-skins. It may be they'll outlast us; an' so I say as a
friend, save one shot; save it for yourself, Cap."

But the Apaches did not advance. They watched the train steadily; they
held a long consultation which evidently referred to it; at last they
seemed to decide that it was in too good order to fall an easy prey; there
was some wild capering along its flanks, at a safe distance; and then,
little by little, the gang resettled in its bivouac. It was like a swarm
of hornets, which should sally out to reconnoitre an enemy, buzz about
threateningly for a while, and sail back to their nest.

The plain, usually dotted with flocks of sheep, was now a solitude. The
Moquis had evidently withdrawn their woolly wealth either to the summit of
the bluff, or to the partially sheltered pasturage around its base. The
only objects which varied the verdant level were scattered white rocks,
probably gypsum or oxide of manganese, which glistened surprisingly in the
sunlight, reminding one of pearls sown on a mantel of green velvet. But
already the travellers could see the peach orchards of the Moquis, and the
sides of the lofty butte laid out in gardens supported by terrace-walls of
dressed stone, the whole mass surmounted by the solid ramparts of the
pueblos.

At this moment, while the train was still a little over two miles from the
foot of the bluff, and the Apache camp more than three miles to the rear,
Texas Smith shouted, "The cusses hev got the news."

It was true; the foremost riders, or perhaps only the messengers, of Manga
Colorada had readied Delgadito; and a hundred warriors were swarming after
the train to avenge their fallen comrades.

Now ensued a race for life, the last pull of the mules being lashed out of
them, and the Indians riding at the topmost speed of their wiry ponies.




CHAPTER XIII.


When the race for life and death commenced between the emigrants and the
Apaches, it seemed as if the former would certainly be able to go two
miles before the latter could cover six.

But the mules were weak, and the soil of the plain was a thin loam into
which the wheels sank easily, so that the heavy wagons could not be
hurried beyond a trot, and before long were reduced to a walk. Thus, while
the caravan was still half a mile from its city of refuge, the foremost
hornets of Delgadito's swarm were already circling around it.

The chief could not charge at once, however, for the warriors whom he had
in hand numbered barely a score, and their horses, blown with a run of
over five miles, were unfit for sharp fighting work. For a few minutes
nothing happened, except that the caravan continued its silent, sullen
retreat, while the pursuers cantered yelling around it at a safe distance.
Not a shot was fired by the emigrants; not a brave dashed up to let fly
his arrows. At last there were fifty Apaches; then there was a hurried
council; then a furious rush. Evidently the savages were ashamed to let
their enemies escape for lack of one audacious assault.

This charge was led by a child. A boy not more than fourteen years of age,
screaming like a little demon and discharging his arrows at full speed
with wicked dexterity, rode at the head of this savage _hourra_ of the
Cossacks of the American desert. As the fierce child came on, Coronado saw
him and recognized him with a mixture of wonder, dread, and hate. Here was
the son of the false-hearted savage who had accepted his money, agreed to
do his work, and then turned against him. Should he kill him? It would
open an account of blood between himself and the father. Never mind;
vengeance is sweet; moreover, the youngster was dangerous.

Coronado raised his revolver, steadied it across his left arm, took a calm
aim, and fired. The handsome, headlong, terrible boy swayed forward,
rolled slowly over the pommel of his saddle, and fell to the ground
motionless. In the next moment there was a general rattle of firearms from
the train, and the mass of the charging column broke up into squads which
went off in aimless caracolings. Barring a short struggle by half a dozen
braves to recover the young chief's body, the contest was over; and in two
minutes more the Apaches were half a mile distant, looking on in sulky
silence while the train crawled toward the protecting bluff.

"Hurrah!" shouted Thurstane. "That was quick work. Delgadito doesn't take
his punishment well."

"Reckon they see we had friends," observed Captain Glover. "Jest look at
them critters pile down the mounting. Darned if they don't skip like
nanny-goats."

Down the huge steep slope, springing along rocky, sinuous paths or over
the walls of the terraces, came a hundred or a hundred and fifty men,
running with a speed which, considering the nature of the footing, was
marvellous. Before many in the train were aware of their approach, they
were already among the wagons, rushing up to the travellers with
outstretched hands, the most cordial, cheerful, kindly-eyed people that
Thurstane had seen in New Mexico. Good features, too; that is, they were
handsomer than the usual Indian type; some even had physiognomies which
reminded one of Italians. Their hair was fine and glossy for men of their
race; and, stranger still, it bore an appearance of careful combing.
Nearly all wore loose cotton trousers or drawers reaching to the knee,
with a kind of blouse of woollen or cotton, and over the shoulders a gay
woollen blanket tied around the waist. In view of their tidy raiment and
their general air of cleanliness, it seemed a mistake to class them as
Indians. These were the Moquis, a remnant of one of the semi-civilizations
of America, perhaps a colony left behind by the Aztecs in their
migrations, or possibly by the temple-builders of Yucatan.

Impossible to converse with them. Not a person in the caravan spoke the
Moqui tongue, and not a Moqui spoke or understood a word of Spanish or
English. But it was evident from their faces and gestures that they were
enthusiastically friendly, and that they had rushed down from their
fastness to aid the emigrants against the Apaches. There was even a little
sally into the plain, the Moquis running a quarter of a mile with amazing
agility, spreading out into a loose skirmishing line of battle,
brandishing their bows and defying the enemy to battle. But this ended in
nothing; the Apaches sullenly cantered away; the others soon checked their
pursuit.

Now came the question of encampment. To get the wagons up the bluff, eight
hundred feet or so in height, along a path which had been cut in the rock
or built up with stone, was obviously impossible. Would there be safety
where they were, just at the base of the noble slope? The Moquis assured
them by signs that the plundering horse-Indians never came so near the
pueblos. Camp then; the wagons were parked as usual in a hollow square;
the half-starved animals were unharnessed and allowed to fly at the
abundant grass; the cramped and wearied travellers threw themselves on the
ground with delight.

"What a charming people these Monkeys are!" said Aunt Maria, surveying the
neat and smiling villagers with approval.

"Moquis," Coronado corrected her, with a bow.

"Oh, Mo-kies," repeated Aunt Maria, this time catching the sound exactly.
"Well, I propose to see as much of them as possible. Why shouldn't the
women and the wounded sleep in the city?"

"It is an excellent idea," assented Coronado, although he thought with
distaste that this would bring Clara and Thurstane together, while he
would be at a distance.

"I suppose we shall get an idea from it of the ancient city of Mexico, as
described by Prescott," continued the enthusiastic lady.

"You will discover a few deviations in the ground plan," returned
Coronado, for once ironical.

Aunt Maria's suggestion with regard to the women and the wounded was
adopted. The Moquis seemed to urge it; so at least they were understood.
Within a couple of hours after the halt a procession of the feebler folk
commenced climbing the bluff, accompanied by a crowd of the hospitable
Indians. The winding and difficult path swarmed for a quarter of a mile
with people in the gayest of blankets, some ascending with the strangers
and some coming down to greet them.

"I should think we were going up to the Temple of the Sun to be
sacrified," said Clara, who had also read Prescott.

"To be worshipped," ventured Thurstane, giving her a look which made her
blush, the boldest look that he had yet ventured.

The terraces, as we have stated, were faced with partially dressed stone.
They were in many places quite broad, and were cultivated everywhere with
admirable care, presenting long green lines of corn fields or of peach
orchards. Half-way up the ascent was a platform of more than ordinary
spaciousness which contained a large reservoir, built of chipped stone
strongly cemented, and brimming with limpid water. From this cistern large
earthen pipes led off in various directions to irrigate the terraces
below.

"It seems to me that we are discovering America," exclaimed Aunt Maria,
her face scarlet with exercise and enthusiasm.

Presently she asked, in full faith that she was approaching a metropolis,
"What is the name of the city?"

"This must be Tegua," replied Thurstane. "Tegua is the most eastern of the
Moqui pueblos. There are three on this bluff. Mooshaneh and two others are
on a butte to the west. Oraybe is further north."

"What a powerful confederacy!" said Aunt Maria. "The United States of the
Moquis!"

After a breathless ascent of at least eight hundred feet, they reached the
undulated, barren, rocky surface of a plateau. Here the whole population
of Tegua had collected; and for the first time the visitors saw Moqui
women and children. Aunt Maria was particularly pleased with the specimens
of her own sex; she went into ecstasies over their gentle physiognomies
and their well-combed, carefully braided, glossy hair; she admired their
long gowns of black woollen, each with a yellow stripe around the waist
and a border of the same at the bottom.

"Such a sensible costume!" she said. "So much more rational and convenient
than our fashionable fripperies!"

Another fact of great interest was that the Moquis were lighter
complexioned than Indians in general. And when she discovered a woman with
fair skin, blue eyes, and yellow hair--one of those albinos who are found
among the inhabitants of the pueblos--she went into an excitement which
was nothing less than ethnological.

"These are white people," she cried, losing sight of all the brown faces.
"They are some European race which colonized America long before that
modern upstart, Columbus. They are undoubtedly the descendants of the
Northmen who built the old mill at Newport and sculptured the Dighton
Rock."

"There is a belief," said Thurstane, "that some of these pueblo people,
particularly those of Zuni, are Welsh. A Welsh prince named Madoc, flying
before the Saxons, is said to have reached America. There are persons who
hold that the descendants of his followers built the mounds in the
Mississippi Valley, and that some of them became the white Mandans of the
upper Missouri, and that others founded this old Mexican civilization. Of
course it is all guess-work. There's nothing about it in the Regulations."

"I consider it highly probable," asserted Aunt Maria, forgetting her
Scandinavian hypothesis. "I don't see how you can doubt that that
flaxen-haired girl is a descendant of Medoc, Prince of Wales."

"Madoc," corrected Thurstane.

"Well, Madoc then," replied Aunt Maria rather pettishly, for she was
dreadfully tired, and moreover she didn't like Thurstane.

A few minutes' walk brought them to the rampart which surrounded the
pueblo. Its foundation was a solid blind wall, fifteen feet or so in
height, and built of hewn stone laid in clay cement. Above was a second
wall, rising from the first as one terrace rises from another, and
surmounted by a third, which was also in terrace fashion. The ground tier
of this stair-like structure contained the storerooms of the Moquis, while
the upper tiers were composed of their two-story houses, the entire mass
of masonry being upward of thirty feet high, and forming a continuous line
of fortification. This rampart of dwellings was in the shape of a
rectangle, and enclosed a large square or plaza containing a noble
reservoir. Compact and populous, at once a castle and a city, the place
could defy all the horse Indians of North America.

"Bless me! this is sublime but dreadful," said Aunt Maria when she learned
that she must ascend to the landing of the lower wall by a ladder. "No
gate? Isn't there a window somewhere that I could crawl through? Well,
well! Dear me! But it's delightful to see how safe these excellent people
have made themselves."

So with many tremblings, and with the aid of a lariat fastened around her
waist and vigorously pulled from above by two Moquis, Aunt Maria clutched
and scraped her way to the top of the foundation terrace.

"I shall never go down in the world," she remarked with a shuddering
glance backward. "I shall pass the rest of my days here."

From the first platform the travellers were led to the second and third by
stone stairways. They were now upon the inside of the rectangle, and could
see two stories of doors facing the plaza and the reservoir in its centre,
the whole scene cheerful with the gay garments and smiling faces of the
Moquis.

"Beautiful!" said Aunt Maria. "That court is absolutely swept and dusted.
One might give a ball there. I should like to hear Lucretia Mott speak in
it."

Her reflections were interrupted by the courteous gestures of a
middle-aged, dignified Moqui, who was apparently inviting the party to
enter one of the dwellings.

Pepita and the other two Indian women, with the wounded muleteers, were
taken to another house. Aunt Maria, Clara, Thurstane, and Phineas Glover
entered the residence of the chief, and found themselves in a room six or
seven feet high, fifteen feet in length and ten in breadth. The floor was
solid, polished clay; the walls were built of the large, sunbaked bricks
called adobes; the ceilings were of beams, covered by short sticks, with
adobes over all. Skins, bows and arrows, quivers, antlers, blankets,
articles of clothing, and various simple ornaments hung on pegs driven
into the walls or lay packed upon shelves.

"They are a musical race, I see," observed Aunt Maria, pointing to a pair
of painted drumsticks tipped with gay feathers, and a reed wind-instrument
with a bell-shaped mouth like a clarionet. "Of course they are. The Welsh
were always famous for their bards and their harpers. Does anybody in our
party speak Welsh? What a pity we are such ignoramuses! We might have an
interesting conversation with these people. I should so like to hear their
traditions about the voyage across the Atlantic and the old mill at
Newport."

Her remarks were interrupted by a short speech from the chief, whom she at
first understood as relating the adventures of his ancestors, but who
finally made it clear that he was asking them to take seats. After they
were arranged on a row of skins spread along the wall, a shy, meek, and
pretty Moqui woman passed around a vase of water for drinking and a tray
which contained something not unlike a bundle of blue wrapping paper.

"Is this to wipe our hands on?" inquired Aunt Maria, bringing her
spectacles to bear on the contents of the tray.

"It smells like corn bread," said Clara.

So it was. The corn of the Moquis is blue, and grinding does not destroy
the color. The meal is stirred into a thin gruel and cooked by pouring
over smooth, flat, heated stones, the light shining tissues being rapidly
taken off and folded, and subsequently made up in bundles.

The party made a fair meal off the blue wrapping paper. Then the meek-eyed
woman reappeared, removed the dishes, returned once more, and looked
fixedly at Thurstane's bloody sleeve.

"Certainly!" said Aunt Maria. "Let her dress your arm. I have no doubt
that unpretending woman knows more about surgery than all the men doctors
in New York city. Let her dress it."

Thurstane partially threw off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeve.
Clara gave one glance at the huge white arm with the small crimson hole in
it, and turned away with a thrill which was new to her. The Moqui woman
washed the wound, applied a dressing which looked like chewed leaves, and
put on a light bandage.

"Does it feel any better?" asked Aunt Maria eagerly.

"It feels cooler," said Thurstane.

Aunt Maria looked as if she thought him very ungrateful for not saying
that he was entirely well.

"An' my nose," suggested Glover, turning up his lacerated proboscis.

"Yes, certainly; your poor nose," assented Aunt Maria. "Let the lady cure
it."

The female surgeon fastened a poultice upon the tattered cartilage by
passing a bandage around the skipper's sandy and bristly head.

"Works like a charm 'n' smells like peach leaves," snuffled the patient.
"It's where it's handy to sniff at--that's a comfort."

After much dumb show, arrangements were made for the night. One of the
inner rooms was assigned to Mrs. Stanley and Clara, and another to
Thurstane and Glover. Bedding, provisions, and some small articles as
presents for the Moquis were sent up from the train by Coronado.

But would the wagons, the animals, and the human members of the party
below be safe during the night? Young as he was, and wounded as he was,
Thurstane was so badgered by his army habit of incessant responsibility
that he could not lie down to rest until he had visited the camp and
examined personally into probabilities of attack and means of defence. As
he descended the stony path which scored the side of the butte, his
anxiety was greatly increased by the appearance of a party of armed Moquis
rushing like deer down the steep slope, as if to repel an attack.




CHAPTER XIV.


Thurstane found the caravan in excellent condition, the mules being
tethered at the reservoir half-way up the acclivity, and the wagons parked
and guarded as usual, with Weber for officer of the night.

"We are in no tanger, Leftenant," said the sergeant. "A large barty of
these bueplo beeble has shust gone to the vront. They haf daken atfandage
of our bresence to regover a bortion of the blain. I haf sent Kelly along
to look after them a leetle und make them keep a goot watch. We are shust
as safe as bossible. Und to-morrow we will basture the animals. It is a
goot blace for a gamp, Leftenant, und we shall pe all right in a tay or
two."

"Does Shubert's leg need attention?"

"No. It is shust nothing. Shupert is for tuty."

"And you feel perfectly able to take care of yourselves here?"

"Berfectly, Leftenant."

"Forty rounds apiece!"

"They are issued, Leftenant."

"If you are attacked, fire heavily; and if the attack is sharp, retreat to
the bluff. Never mind the wagons; they can be recovered."

"I will opey your instructions, Leftenant."

Thurstane was feverish and exhausted; he knew that Weber was as good a
soldier as himself; and still he went back to the village with an anxious
heart; such is the tenderness of the military conscience as to _duty_.

By the time he reached the upper landing of the wall of the pueblo it was
sunset, and he paused to gaze at a magnificent landscape, the _replica_ of
the one which he had seen at sunrise. There were buttes, valleys, and
canons, the vast and lofty plateaus of the north, the ranges of the Navajo
country, the Sierra del Carrizo, and the ice peaks of Monte San Francisco.
It was sublime, savage, beautiful, horrible. It seemed a revelation from