some other world. It was a nightmare of nature.
Clara met him on the landing with the smile which she now often gave him.
"I was anxious about you," she said. "You were too weak to go down there.
You look very tired. Do come and eat, and then rest. You will make
yourself sick. I was quite anxious about you."

It was a delightful repetition. How his heart and his eyes thanked her for
being troubled for his sake! He was so cheered that in a moment he did not
seem to be tired at all. He could have watched all that night, if it had
been necessary for her safety, or even for her comfort. The soul certainly
has a great deal to do with the body.

While our travellers sleep, let us glance at the singular people among
whom they have found refuge.

It is said hesitatingly, by scholars who have not yet made comparative
studies of languages, that the Moquis are not _red men_, like the
Algonquins, the Iroquois, the Lenni-Lenape, the Sioux, and in general
those whom we know as _Indians_. It is said, moreover, that they are of
the same generic stock with the Aztecs of Mexico, the ancient Peruvians,
and all the other city-building peoples of both North and South America.

It was an evil day for the brown race of New Mexico when horses strayed
from the Spanish settlements into the desert, and the savage red tribes
became cavalry. This feeble civilization then received a more cruel shock
than that which had been dealt it by the storming columns of the
conquistadors. The horse transformed the Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and
Navajos from snapping-turtles into condors. Thenceforward, instead of
crawling in slow and feeble bands to tease the dense populations of the
pueblos, they could come like a tornado, and come in a swarm. At no time
were the Moquis and their fellow agriculturists and herdsmen safe from
robbery and slaughter. Such villages as did not stand upon buttes
inaccessible to horsemen, and such as did not possess fertile lands
immediately under the shelter of their walls, were either abandoned or
depopulated by slow starvation.

It is thus that we may account for many of the desolate cities which are
now found in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Not of course for all; some,
we know, were destroyed by the early Spaniards; others may have been
forsaken because their tillable lands became exhausted; others doubtless
fell during wars between different tribes of the brown race. But the
cavalry of the desert must necessarily have been a potent instrument of
destruction.

It is a pathetic spectacle, this civilization which has perished, or is
perishing, without the poor consolation of a history to record its
sufferings. It comes near to being a repetition of the silent death of the
flint and bronze races, the mound-raisers, and cave-diggers, and
cromlech-builders of Europe.

Captain Phineas Glover, rising at an early hour in the morning, and having
had his nosebag of medicament refilled and refitted, set off on an
appetizer around the ramparts of the pueblo, and came back marvelling.

"Been out to shake hands with these clever critters," he said. "Best
behavin' 'n' meekest lookin' Injuns I ever see. Put me in mind o' cows 'n'
lambs. An' neat! 'Most equal to Amsterdam Dutch. Seen a woman sweepin' up
her husband's tobacco ashes 'n' carryin' 'em out to throw over the wall.
Jest what they do in Broek. Ever been in Broek? Tell ye 'bout it some
time. But how d'ye s'pose this town was built? _I_ didn't see no stun up
here that was fit for quarryin'. So I put it to a lot of fellers where
they got their buildin' m'ter'ls. Wal, after figurin' round a spell, 'n'
makin' signs by the schuner load, found out the hull thing. Every stun in
this place was whittled out 'f the ruff-scuff at the bottom of the
mounting, 'n' fetched up here in blankets on men's shoulders. All the mud,
too, to make their bricks, was backed up in the same way. Feller off with
his blanket 'n' showed me how they did it. Beats all. Wust of it was,
couldn't find out how long it took 'em, nor how the job was lotted out to
each one."

"I suppose they made their women do it," said Aunt Maria grimly. "Men
usually put all the hard work on women."

"Wal, women folks do a heap," admitted Glover, who never contradicted
anybody. "But there's reason to entertain a hope that they didn't take the
brunt of it here. I looked over into the gardens down b'low the town, 'n'
see men plantin' corn, 'n' tendin' peach trees, but didn't see no women at
it. The women was all in the houses, spinnin', weavin', sewin', 'n' fixin'
up ginerally."

"Remarkable people!" exclaimed Aunt Maria. "They are at least as civilized
as we. Very probably more so. Of course they are. I must learn whether the
women vote, or in any way take part in the government. If so, these
Indians are vastly our superiors, and we must sit humbly at their feet."

During this talk the worn and wounded Thurstane had been lying asleep. He
now appeared from his dormitory, nodded a hasty good-morning, and pushed
for the door.

"Train's all right," said Glover. "Jest took a squint at it. Peaceful's a
ship becalmed. Not a darned Apache in sight."

"You are sure?" demanded the young officer.

"Better get some more peach-leaf pain-killer on your arm 'n' set straight
down to breakfast."

"If the Apaches have vamosed, Coronado might join us," suggested
Thurstane.

"Never!" answered Mrs. Stanley with solemnity. "His ancestor stormed
Cibola and ravaged this whole country. If these people should hear his
name pronounced, and suspect his relationship to their oppressor, they
might massacre him."

"That was three hundred years ago," smiled the wretch of a lieutenant.

"It doesn't matter," decided Mrs. Stanley.

And so Coronado, thanks to one of his splendid inventions, was not invited
up to the pueblo.

The travellers spent the day in resting, in receiving a succession of
pleasant, tidy visitors, and in watching the ways of the little community.
The weather was perfect, for while the season was the middle of May, and
the latitude that of Algeria and Tunis, they were nearly six thousand feet
above the level of the sea, and the isolated butte was wreathed with
breezes. It was delightful to sit or stroll on the landings of the
ramparts, and overlook the flourishing landscape near at hand, and the
peaceful industry which caused it to bloom.

Along the hillside, amid the terraced gardens of corn, pumpkins, guavas,
and peaches, many men and children were at work, with here and there a
woman.

The scene had not only its charms, but its marvels. Besides the grand
environment of plateaus and mountains in the distance, there were near at
hand freaks of nature such as one might look for in the moon. Nowhere
perhaps has the great water erosion of bygone aeons wrought more
grotesquely and fantastically than in the Moqui basin. To the west rose a
series of detached buttes, presenting forms of castles, towers, and
minarets, which looked more like the handiwork of man than the pueblo
itself. There were piles of variegated sandstone, some of them four
hundred feet in height, crowned by a hundred feet of sombre trap. Internal
fire had found vent here; its outflowings had crystallized into columnar
trap; the trap had protected the underlying sandstone from cycles of
water-flow; thus had been fashioned these sublime donjons and pinnacles.

They were not only sublime but beautiful. The sandstone, reduced by ages
to a crumbling marl, was of all colors. There were layers of green,
reddish-brown, drab, purple, red, yellow, pinkish, slate, light-brown,
orange, white, and banded. Nature, not contented with building enchanted
palaces, had frescoed them. At this distance, indeed, the separate tints
of the strata could not be discerned, but their general effect of
variegation was distinctly visible, and the result was a landscape of the
Thousand and One Nights.

To the south were groups of crested mounds, some of them resembling the
spreading stumps of trees, and others broad-mouthed bells, all of vast
magnitude. These were of sandstone marl, the caps consisting of hard red
and green shales, while the swelling boles, colored by gypsum, were as
white as loaf-sugar. It was another specimen of the handiwork of deluges
which no man can number.

Far away to the southwest, and yet faintly seen through the crystalline
atmosphere, were the many-colored knolls and rolls and cliffs of the
Painted Desert. Marls, shales, and sandstones, of all tints, were strewn
and piled into a variegated vista of sterile splendor. Here surely
enchantment and glamour had made undisputed abode.

All day the wounded and the women reposed, gazing a good deal, but
sleeping more. During the afternoon, however, our wonder-loving Mrs.
Stanley roused herself from her lethargy and rushed into an adventure such
as only she knew how to find. In the morning she had noticed, at the other
end of the pueblo from her quarters, a large room which was frequented by
men alone. It might be a temple; it might be a hall for the transaction of
public business; such were the diverse guesses of the travellers. Into the
mysteries of this apartment Aunt Maria resolved to poke.

She reached it; nobody was in it; suspicious circumstance! Aunt Maria put
an end to this state of questionable solitude by entering. A dark room; no
light except from a trap door; a very proper place for improper doings. At
one end rose a large, square block of red sandstone, on which was carved a
round face environed by rays, probably representing the sun. Aunt Maria
remembered the sacrificial altars of the Aztecs, and judged that the old
sanguinary religion of Tenochtitlan was not yet extinct. She became more
convinced of this terrific fact when she discovered that the red tint of
the stone was deepened in various places by stains which resembled blood.

Three or four horrible suggestions arose in succession to jerk at her
heartstrings. Were these Moquis still in the habit of offering human
sacrifices? Would a woman answer their purpose, and particularly a white
woman? If they should catch her there, in the presence of their deity,
would they consider it a leading of Providence? Aunt Maria,
notwithstanding her curiosity and courage, began to feel a desire to
retreat.

Her reflections were interrupted and her emotions accelerated by darkness.
Evidently the door had been shut; then she heard a rustling of approaching
feet and an awful whispering; then projected hands impeded her gropings
toward safety. While she stood still, too completely blinded to fly and
too frightened to scream, a light gleamed from behind the altar and
presently rose into a flame. The sacred fire!--she knew it as soon as she
saw it; she remembered Prescott, and recognized it at a glance.

By its flickering rays she perceived that the apartment was full of men,
all robed in blankets of ebony blackness, and all gazing at her in solemn
silence. Two of them, venerable elders with long white hair, stood in
front of the others, making genuflexions and signs of adoration toward the
carved face on the altar. Presently they advanced to her, one of them
suddenly seizing her by the shoulders and pinioning her arms behind her,
while the other drew from beneath his robe a long sharp knife of the
glassy flint known as obsidian.

At this point the horrified Aunt Maria found her voice, and uttered a
piercing scream.

At the close of her scream she by a supreme effort turned on her side,
raised her hands to her face, rubbed her eyes open, stared at Clara, who
was lying near her, and mumbled, "I've had an awful nightmare."

That was it. There was no altar, nor holy fire, nor high priest, nor flint
lancet. She hadn't been anywhere, and she hadn't even screamed, except in
imagination. She was on her blanket, alongside of her niece, in the house
of the Moqui chief, and as safe as need be.




CHAPTER XV.


But the visionary terror had scarcely gone when a real one came. Coronado
appeared--Coronado, the descendant of the great Vasquez--Coronado, whom
the Moquis would destroy if they heard his name--of whom they would not
leave two limbs or two fingers together. From her dormitory she saw him
walk into the main room of the house in his airiest and cheeriest manner,
bowing and smiling to right, bowing and smiling to left, winning Moqui
hearts in a moment, a charmer of a Coronado. He shook hands with the
chief; he shook hands with all the head men; next a hand to Thurstane and
another to Glover. Mrs. Stanley heard him addressed as Coronado; she
looked to see him scattered in rags on the floor; she tried to muster
courage to rush to his rescue.

There was no outcry of rage at the sound of the fatal name, and she could
not perceive that a Moqui countenance smiled the less for it.

Coronado produced a pipe, filled it, lighted it, and handed it to the
chief. That dignitary took it, bowed gravely to each of the four points of
the compass, exhaled a few whiffs, and passed it to his next blanketed
neighbor, who likewise saluted the four cardinal points, smoked a little,
and sent it on. Mrs. Stanley drew a sigh of relief; the pipe of peace had
been used, and there would be no bloodshed; she saw the whole bearing of
her favorite's audacious manoeuvre at a glance.

Coronado now glided into the obscure room where she and Clara were sitting
on their blankets and skins. He kissed his hand to the one and the other,
and rolled out some melodious congratulations.

"You reckless creature!" whispered Aunt Maria. "How dared you come up
here?"

"Why so?" asked the Mexican, for once puzzled.

"Your name! Your ancestor!"

"Ah!!" and Coronado smiled mysteriously. "There is no danger. We are under
the protection of the American eagle. Moreover, hospitalities have been
interchanged."

Next the experiences of the last twenty-four hours, first Mrs. Stanley's
version and then Coronado's, were related. He had little to tell: there
had been a quiet night and much slumber; the Moquis had stood guard and
been every way friendly; the Apaches had left the valley and gone to parts
unknown.

The truth is that he had slept more than half of the time. Journeying,
fighting, watching, and anxiety had exhausted him as well as every one
else, and enabled him to plunge into slumber with a delicious
consciousness of it as a restorative and a luxury.

Now that he was himself again, he wondered at what he had been. For two
days he had faced death, fighting like a legionary or a knight-errant, and
in short playing the hero. What was there in his nature, or what had there
been in his selfish and lazy life, that was akin to such fine frenzies? As
he remembered it all, he hardly knew himself for the same old Coronado.

Well, being safe again, he was a devoted lover again, and he must get on
with his courtship. Considering that Clara and Thurstane, if left much
together here in the pueblo, might lead each other into the temptation of
a betrothal, he decided that he must be at hand to prevent such a
catastrophe, and so here he was. Presently he began to talk to the girl in
Spanish; then he begged the aunt's pardon for speaking what was to her an
unknown tongue; but he had, he said, some family matters for his cousin's
ear; would Mrs. Stanley be so good as to excuse him?

"Certainly," returned that far-sighted woman, guessing what the family
matters might be, and approving them. "By the way, I have something to
do," she added. "I must attend to it immediately."

By this time she remembered all about her nightmare, and she was in a
state of inflammation as to the Moqui religion. If the dream were true, if
the Moquis were in the habit of sacrificing strong-minded women or any
kind of women, she must know it and put a stop to it. Stepping into the
central room, where Thurstane and Glover were smoking with a number of
Indians, she said in her prompt, positive way, "I must look into these
people's religion. Does anybody know whether they have any?"

The Lieutenant had a spark or two of information on the subject. Through
the medium of a Navajo who had strolled into the pueblo, and who spoke a
little Spanish and a good deal of Moqui, he had been catechising the chief
as to manners, customs, etc.

"I understand," he said, "that they have a sacred fire which they never
suffer to go out. They are believed to worship the sun, like the ancient
Aztecs. The sacred fire seems to confirm the suspicion."

"Sacred fire! vestal virgins, too, I suppose! can they be Romans?"
reasoned Aunt Maria, beginning to doubt Prince Madoc.

"The vestal virgins here are old men," replied Ralph, wickedly pleased to
get a joke on the lady.

"Oh! The Moquis are not Romans," decided Mrs Stanley. "Well, what do these
old men do?"

"Keep the fire burning."

"What if it should go out? What would happen?"

"I don't know," responded the sub-acid Thurstane.

"I didn't suppose you did," said Aunt Maria pettishly. "Captain Glover, I
want you to come with me."

Followed by the subservient skipper, she marched to the other end of the
pueblo. There was the mysterious apartment; it was not really a temple,
but a sort of public hall and general lounging place; such rooms exist in
the Spanish-speaking pueblos of Zuni and Laguna, and are there called
_estufas_. The explorers soon discovered that the only entrance into the
estufa was by a trapdoor and a ladder. Now Aunt Maria hated ladders: they
were awkward for skirts, and moreover they made her giddy; so she simply
got on her knees and peeped through the trap-door. But there was a fire
directly below, and there was also a pretty strong smell of pipes of
tobacco, so that she saw nothing and was stifled and disgusted. She sent
Glover down, as people lower a dog into a mine where gases are suspected.
After a brief absence the skipper returned and reported.

"Pooty sizable room. Dark's a pocket 'n' hot's a footstove. Three or four
Injuns talkin' 'n' smokin'. Scrap 'f a fire smoulder'in a kind 'f standee
fireplace without any top."

"That's the sacred fire," said Aunt Maria. "How many old men were watching
it?"

"Didn't see _any_."

"They must have been there. Did you put the fire out?"

"No water handy," explained the prudent Glover.

"You might have--expectorated on it."

"Reckon I didn't miss it," said the skipper, who was a chewer of tobacco
and a dead shot with his juice.

"Of course nothing happened."

"Nary."

"I knew there wouldn't," declared the lady triumphantly. "Well, now let us
go back. We know something about the religion of these people. It is
certainly a very interesting study."

"Didn't appear to me much l'k a temple," ventured Glover. "Sh'd say t'was
a kind 'f gineral smokin' room 'n' jawin' place. Git together there 'n'
talk crops 'n' 'lections 'n' the like."

"You must be mistaken," decided Aunt Maria. "There was the sacred fire."

She now led the willing captain (for he was as inquisitive as a monkey) on
a round of visits to the houses of the Moquis. She poked smiling through
their kitchens and bedrooms, and gained more information than might have
been expected concerning their spinning and weaving, cheerfully spending
ten minutes in signs to obtain a single idea.

"Never shear their sheep till they are dead!" she exclaimed when that fact
had been gestured into her understanding. "Absurd! There's another
specimen of masculine stupidity. I'll warrant you, if the women had the
management of things, the good-for-nothing brutes would be sheared every
day."

"Jest as they be to hum," slily suggested Glover, who knew better.

"Certainly," said Aunt Maria, aware that cows were milked daily.

The Moquis were very hospitable; they absolutely petted the strangers. At
nearly every house presents were offered, such as gourds full of corn,
strings of dried peaches, guavas as big as pomegranates, or bundles of the
edible wrapping paper, all of which Aunt Maria declined with magnanimous
waves of the hand and copious smiles. Curious and amiable faces peeped at
the visitors from the landings and doorways.

"How mild and good they all look!" said Aunt Maria. "They put me in mind
somehow of Shenstone's pastorals. How humanizing a pastoral life is, to be
sure! On the whole, I admire their way of not shearing their sheep alive.
It isn't stupidity, but goodness of heart. A most amiable people!"

"Jest so," assented Glover. "How it must go ag'in the grain with 'em to
take a skelp when it comes in the way of dooty! A man oughter feel willin'
to be skelped by sech tender-hearted critters."

"Pshaw!" said Aunt Maria. "I don't believe they ever scalp anybody--unless
it is in self-defence."

"Dessay. Them fellers that went down to fight the Apaches was painted up's
savage's meat-axes. Probably though 'twas to use up some 'f their paint
that was a wastin'. Equinomical, I sh'd say."

Mrs. Stanley did not see her way clear to comment either upon the fact or
the inference. There were times when she did not understand Glover, and
this was one of the times. He had queer twistical ways of reasoning which
often proved the contrary of what he seemed to want to prove; and she had
concluded that he was a dark-minded man who did not always know what he
was driving at; at all events, a man not invariably comprehensible by
clear intellects.

Her attention was presently engaged by a stir in the pueblo. Great things
were evidently at hand; some spectacle was on the point of presentation;
what was it? Aunt Maria guessed marriage, and Captain Glover guessed a
war-dance; but they had no argument, for the skipper gave in. Meantime the
Moquis, men, women, and children, all dressed in their gayest raiment,
were gathering in groups on the landings and in the square. Presently
there was a crowd, a thousand or fifteen hundred strong; at last appeared
the victims, the performers, or whatever they were.

"Dear me!" murmured Aunt Maria. "Twenty weddings at once! I hope divorce
is frequent."

Twenty men and twenty women advanced to the centre of the plaza in double
file and faced each other.

The dance began; the performers furnished their own music; each rolled out
a deep _aw aw aw_ under his visor.

"Sounds like a swarm of the biggest kind of blue-bottle flies inside the
biggest kind 'f a sugar hogset," was Glover's description.

The movement was as monotonous as the melody. The men and women faced each
other without changing positions; there was an alternate lifting of the
feet, in time with the _aw aw_ and the rattling of the gourds; now and
then there was a simultaneous about face.

After a while, open ranks; then rugs and blankets were brought; the
maidens sat down and the men danced at them; trot trot, aw aw, and rattle
rattle.

Every third girl now received a large empty gourd, a grooved board, and
the dry shoulder-bone of a sheep. Laying the board on the gourd, she drew
the bone sharply across the edges of the wood, thus producing a sound like
a watchman's rattle.

They danced once on each side of the square; then retired to a house and
rested fifteen minutes; then recommenced their trot. Meanwhile maidens
with large baskets ran about among the spectators, distributing meat,
roasted ears of corn, sheets of bread, and guavas.

So the gayety went on until the sun and the visitors alike withdrew.

"After all, I think it is more interesting than our marriages," declared
Aunt Maria. "I wonder if we ought to make presents to the wedded couples.
There are a good many of them."

She was quite amazed when she learned that this was not a wedding, but a
rain-dance, and that the maidens whom she had admired were boys dressed up
in female raiment, the customs of the Moquis not allowing women to take
part in public spectacles.

"What exquisite delicacy!" was her consolatory comment. "Well, well, this
is the golden age, truly."

When further informed that in marriage among the Moquis it is woman who
takes the initiative, the girl pointing out the young man of her heart and
the girl's father making the offer, which is never refused, Mrs. Stanley
almost shed tears of gratification. Here was something like woman's
rights; here was a flash of the glorious dawn of equality between the
sexes; for when she talked of equality she meant female preeminence.

"And divorces?" she eagerly asked.

"They are at the pleasure of the parties," explained Thurstane, who had
been catechising the chief at great length through his Navajo.

"And who, in case of a divorce, cares for the children?"

"The grandparents."

Aunt Maria came near clapping her hands. This was better than Connecticut
or Indiana. A woman here might successively marry all the men whom she
might successively fancy, and thus enjoy a perpetual gush of the
affections and an unruffled current of happiness.

To such extreme views had this excellent creature been led by brooding
over what she called the wrongs of her sex and the legal tyranny of the
other.

But we must return to Coronado and Clara. The man had come up to the
pueblo on purpose to have a plain talk with the girl and learn exactly
what she meant to do with him. It was now more than a week since he had
offered himself, and in that time she had made no sign which indicated her
purpose. He had looked at her and sighed at her without getting a response
of any sort. This could not go on; he must know how she felt towards him;
he must know how much, she cared for Thurstane. How else could he decide
what to do with her and with _him_?

Thus, while the other members of the party were watching the Moqui dances,
Coronado and Clara were talking matters of the heart, and were deciding,
unawares to her, questions of life and death.




CHAPTER XVI.


It must be remembered that when Mrs. Stanley carried off skipper Glover to
help her investigate the religion of the Moquis, she left Coronado alone
with Clara in one of the interior rooms of the chief's house.

Thurstane, to be sure, was in the next room and in sight; but he had with
him the chief, two other leading Moquis, and his chance Navajo
interpreter; they were making a map of the San Juan country by scratching
with an arrow-point on the clay floor; everybody was interested in the
matter, and there was a pretty smart jabbering. Thus Coronado could say
his say without being overheard or interrupted.

For a little while he babbled commonplaces. The truth is that the sight of
the girl had unsettled his resolutions a little. While he was away from
her, he could figure to himself how he would push her into taking him at
once, or how, if she refused him, he would let loose upon her the dogs of
fate. But once face to face with her, he found that his resolutions had
dispersed like a globule of mercury under a hammer, and that he needed a
few moments to scrape them together again. So he prattled nothings while
he meditated; and you would have thought that he cared for the nothings.
He had that faculty; he could mentally ride two horses at once; he would
have made a good diplomatist.

His mind glanced at the past while it peered into the future. What a
sinuous underground plot the superficial incidents of this journey
covered! To his fellow-travellers it was a straight line; to him it was a
complicated and endless labyrinth. How much more he had to think of than
they! Only he knew that Pedro Munoz was dead, that Clara Van Diemen was an
heiress, that she was in danger of being abandoned to the desert, that
Thurstane was in danger of assassination. Nothing that he had set out to
do was yet done, and some of it he must absolutely accomplish, and that
shortly. How much? That depended upon this girl. If she accepted him, his
course would be simple, and he would be spared the perils of crime.

Meantime, he looked at Clara even more frankly and calmly than she looked
at him. He showed no guilt or remorse in his face, because he felt none in
his heart. It must be understood distinctly that the man was almost as
destitute of a conscience as it is possible for a member of civilized
society to be. He knew what the world called right and wrong; but the mere
opinion of the world had no weight with him; that is, none as against his
own opinion. His rule of life was to do what he wanted to do, providing he
could accomplish it without receiving a damage. You can hardly imagine a
being whose interior existence was more devoid of complexity and of mixed
motives than was Coronado's. Thus he was quite able to contemplate the
possible death of Clara, and still look her calmly in the face and tell
her that he loved her.

The girl returned his gaze tranquilly, because she had no suspicions of
his profound wickedness. By nature confiding and reverential, she trusted
those who professed friendship, and respected those who were her elders,
especially if they belonged in any manner to her own family. Considering
herself under obligations to Coronado, and not guessing that he was
capable of doing her a harm, she was truly grateful to him and wished him
well with all her heart. If her eye now and then dropped under his, it was
because she feared a repetition of his offer of marriage, and hated to
pain him with a refusal.

The commonplaces lasted longer than the man had meant, for he could not
bring himself promptly to take the leap of fate. But at last came the
dance; the chief and his comrades led Thurstane away to look at it; now
was the time to talk of this fateful betrothal.

"Something is passing outside," observed Clara. "Shall we go to see?"

"I am entirely at your command," replied Coronado, with his charming air
of gentle respect. "But if you can give me a few minutes of your time, I
shall be very grateful."

Clara's heart beat violently, and her cheeks and neck flushed with spots
of red, as she sank back upon her seat. She guessed what was coming; she
had been a good deal afraid of it all the time; it was her only cause of
dreading Coronado.

"I venture to hope that you have been good enough to think of what I said
to you a week ago," he went on. "Yes, it was a week ago. It seems to me a
year."

"It seems a long time," stammered Clara. So it did, for the days since had
been crammed with emotions and events, and they gave her young mind an
impression of a long period passed.

"I have been so full of anxiety!" continued Coronado. "Not about our
dangers," he asserted with a little bravado. "Or, rather, not about mine.
For you I have been fearful. The possibility that you might fall into the
hands of the Apaches was a horror to me. But, after all, my chief anxiety
was to know what would be your final answer to me. Yes, my beautiful and
very dear cousin, strange as it may seem under our circumstances, this
thought has always outweighed with me all our dangers."

Coronado, as we have already declared, was really in love with Clara. It
seems incredible, at first glance, that a man who had no conscience could
have a heart. But the assertion is not a fairy story; it is founded in
solid philosophy. It is true that Coronado's moral education had been
neglected or misdirected; that he was either born indifferent to the idea
of duty, or had become indifferent to it; and that he was an egotist of
the first water, bent solely upon favoring and gratifying himself. But
while his nature was somewhat chilled by these things, he had the hottest
of blood in his veins, he possessed a keen perception of the beautiful,
and so he could desire with fury. His love could not be otherwise than
selfish; but it was none the less capable of ruling him tyrannically.

Just at this moment his intensity of feeling made him physically imposing
and almost fascinating. It seemed to remove a veil from his usually filmy
black eyes, and give him power for once to throw out all of truth that
there was in his soul. It communicated to his voice a tremor which made it
eloquent. He exhaled, as it were, an aroma of puissant emotion which was
intoxicating, and which could hardly fail to act upon the sensitive nature
of woman. Clara was so agitated by this influence, that for the moment she
seemed to herself to know no man in the world but Coronado. Even while she
tried to remember Thurstane, he vanished as if expelled by some
enchantment, and left her alone in life with her tempter. Still she could
not or would not answer; though she trembled, she remained speechless.

"I have asked you to be my wife," resumed Coronado, seeing that he must
urge her. "I venture now to ask you again. I implore you not to refuse me.
I cannot be refused. It would make me utterly wretched. It might perhaps
bring wretchedness upon you. I hope not. I could not wish you a pain,
though you should give me many. My very dear Clara, I offer you the only
love of my life, and the only love that I shall ever offer to any one.
Will you take it?"

Clara was greatly moved. She could not doubt his sincerity; no one who
heard him could have doubted it; he _was_ sincere. To her, young,
tender-hearted, capable of loving earnestly, beginning already to know
what love is, it seemed a horrible thing to spurn affection. If it had not
been for Thurstane, she would have taken Coronado for pity.

"Oh, my cousin!" she sighed, and stopped there.

Coronado drew courage from the kindly title of relationship, and, leaning
gently towards her, attempted to take her hand. It was a mistake; she was
strangely shocked by his touch; she perceived that she did not like him,
and she drew away from him.

"Thank you for that word," he whispered. "Is it the kindest that you can
give me? Is there--?"

"Coronado!" she interrupted. "This is all an error. See here. I am not an
independent creature. I am a young girl. I owe some duty somewhere. My
father and mother are gone, but I have a grandfather. Coronado, he is the
head of my family, and I ought not to marry without his permission. Why
can you not wait until we are with Munoz?"

There she suddenly dropped her head between the palms of her hands. It
struck her that she was hypocritical; that even with the consent of Munoz
she would not marry Coronado; that it was her duty to tell him so.

"My cousin, I have not told the whole truth," she added, after a terrible
struggle. "I would not marry any one without first laying the case before
my grandfather. But that is not all. Coronado, I cannot--no, I cannot
marry you."