At the noise of the Apache charge Thurstane sprang in two bounds to
Coronado's entrance, and threw himself inside of it with a shout of
"Indians!"

It must be remembered that, while a doorway of the Casa was five feet in
depth, it was only four feet wide at the base and less than thirty inches
at the top, so that it was something in the way of a defile and easily
defensible. The moment Thurstane was inside, he placed himself behind one
of the solid jambs of the opening, and presented both sabre and revolver.

Immediately after him a dozen running Indians reached the portal, some of
them plunging into it and the others pushing and howling close around it.
Three successive shots and as many quick thrusts, all delivered in the
darkness, but telling at close quarters on naked chests and faces, cleared
the passage in half a minute. By this time Texas Smith, Coronado, and
Shubert had leaped up, got their senses about them, and commenced a fire
of rifle shot, pistol shot, and buck-and-ball. In another half minute
nothing remained in the doorway but two or three corpses, while outside
there were howls as of wounded. The attack here was repulsed, at least for
the present.

But at the other door matters had gone differently, and, as it seemed,
fatally ill. There had been no one fully awakened to keep the assailants
at bay until the other defenders could rouse themselves and use their
weapons. Half a dozen Apaches, holding their lances before them like
pikes, rushed over the sleeping Sweeny and burst clean into the room
before Meyer and his men were fairly on their feet. In the profound
darkness not a figure could be distinguished; and there was a brief
trampling and yelling, during which no one was hurt. Lances and bows were
useless in a room fifteen feet by ten, without a ray of light. The Indians
threw down their long weapons, drew their knives, groped hither and
thither, struck out at random, and cut each other. Nevertheless, they were
masters of the ground. Meyer and his people, crouching in corners, could
not see and dared not fire. Sweeny, awakened by a kneading of Apache
boots, was so scared that he lay perfectly still, and either was not
noticed or was neglected as dead. His Mexican comrade had rushed along
with the assailants, got ahead of them, gained the inner rooms, and
hastened up to the roof. In short, it was a completely paralyzed defence.

Had the mass of the Apaches promptly followed their daring leaders, the
garrison would have been destroyed. But, as so often happens in night
attacks, there was a pause of caution and investigation. Fifty warriors
halted around the doorway, some whooping or calling, and others listening,
while the five or six within, probably fearful of being hit if they spoke,
made no answer. The sentinel on the roof fired down without seeing any
one, and had arrows sent back at him by men who were as blinded as
himself. The darkness and mystery crippled the attack almost as completely
as the defence.

Sweeny was the first to break the charm. A warrior who attempted to enter
the doorway struck his boot against a pair of legs, and stooped down to
feel if they were alive. By a lucky intuition of scared self-defence, the
little Paddy made a furious kick into the air with both his solid army
shoes, and sent the invader reeling into the outer darkness. Then he fired
his gun just as it lay, and brought down one of the braves inside with a
broken ankle. The blaze of the discharge faintly lighted up the room, and
Meyer let fly instantly, killing another of the intruders. But the Indians
also had been able to see. Those who survived uttered their yell and
plunged into the corners, stabbing with their knives. There was a wild,
blind, eager scuffling, mixed with another shot or two, oaths, whooping,
screams, tramplings, and aimless blows with musket-butts.

Reinforcements arrived for both parties, four or five more Apaches
stealing into the room, while Thurstane and Shubert came through from
Coronado's side. Hitherto, it did not seem that the garrison had lost any
killed except the sentry who had fallen outside; but presently the
lieutenant heard Shubert cry out in that tone of surprise, pain, and
anger, which announces a severe wound.

The scream was followed by a fall, a short scuffle, repeated stabbings,
and violent breathing mixed with low groans. Thurstane groped to the scene
of combat, put out his left hand, felt a naked back, and drove his sabre
strongly and cleanly into it. There was a hideous yell, another fall, and
then silence.

After that he stood still, not knowing whither to move. The trampling of
feet, the hasty breathing of struggling men, the dull sound of blows upon
living bodies, the yells and exclamations and calls, had all ceased at
once. It seemed to him as if everybody in the room had been killed except
himself. He could not hear a sound in the darkness besides the beating of
his own heart, and an occasional feeble moan rising from the floor. In all
his soldierly life he had never known a moment that was anything like so
horrible.

At last, after what seemed minutes, remembering that it was his duty as an
officer to be a rallying point, he staked his life on his very next breath
and called out firmly, "Meyer!"

"Here!" answered the sergeant, as if he were at roll-call.

"Where are you?"

"I am near the toorway, Leftenant. Sweeny is with me."

"'Yis I be," interjected Sweeny.

Thurstane, feeling his way cautiously, advanced to the entrance and found
the two men standing on one side of it.

"Where are the Indians?" he whispered.

"I think they are all out, except the tead ones, Leftenant."

Thurstane gave an order: "All forward to the door."

Steps of men stealing from the inner room responded to this command.

"Call the roll, Sergeant," said Thurstane.

In a low voice Meyer recited the names of the six men who belonged to his
squad, and of Shubert. All responded except the last.

"I am avraid Shupert is gone, Leftenant," muttered the sergeant; and the
officer replied, "I am afraid so."

All this time there had been perfect silence outside, as if the Indians
also were in a state of suspense and anxiety. But immediately after the
roll-call had ceased, a few arrows whistled through the entrance and
struck with short sharp spats into the hard-finished partition within.

"Yes, they are all out," said Thurstane. "But we must keep quiet till
daybreak."

There followed a half hour which seemed like a month. Once Thurstane stole
softly through the Casa to Coronado's room, found all safe there, and
returned, stumbling over bodies both going and coming. At last the slow
dawn came and sent a faint, faint radiance through the door, enabling the
benighted eyes within to discover one dolorous object after another. In
the centre of the room lay the boy Shubert, perfectly motionless and no
doubt dead. Here and there, slowly revealing themselves through the
diminishing darkness, like horrible waifs left uncovered by a falling
river, appeared the bodies of four Apaches, naked to the breechcloth and
painted black, all quiet except one which twitched convulsively. The clay
floor was marked by black pools and stains which were undoubtedly blood.
Other fearful blotches were scattered along the entrance, as if grievously
wounded men had tottered through it, or slain warriors had been dragged
out by their comrades.

While the battle is still in suspense a soldier looks with but faint
emotion, and almost without pity, upon the dead and wounded. They are
natural; they belong to the scene; what else should he see? Moreover, the
essential sentiments of the time and place are, first, a hard egoism which
thinks mainly of self-preservation, and second, a stern sense of duty
which regulates it. In the fiercer moments of the conflict even these
feelings are drowned in a wild excitement which may lie either exultation
or terror. Thus it is that the ordinary sympathies of humanity for the
suffering and for the dead are suspended.

Looking at Shubert, our lieutenant simply said to himself, "I have lost a
man. My command is weakened by so much." Then his mind turned with
promptness to the still living and urgent incidents of the situation.
Could he peep out of the doorway without getting an arrow through the
head? Was the roof of the Casa safe from escalade? Were any of his people
wounded?

This last question he at once put in English and Spanish. Kelly replied,
"Slightly, sir," and pointed to his left shoulder, pretty smartly laid
open by the thrust of a knife. One of the Indian muleteers, who was
sitting propped up in a corner, faintly raised his head and showed a
horrible gash in his thigh. At a sign from Thurstane another muleteer
bound up the wound with the sleeve of Shubert's shirt, which he slashed
off for the purpose. Kelly said, "Never mind me, sir; it's no great
affair, sir."

"Two killed and two wounded," thought the lieutenant. "We are losing more
than our proportion."

As soon as it was light enough to distinguish objects clearly, a lively
fire opened from the roof of the Casa. Judging that the attention of the
assailants would be distracted by this, Thurstane cautiously edged his
head forward and peeped through the doorway. The Apaches were still in the
plaza; he discovered something like fifty of them; they were jumping about
and firing arrows at the roof. He inferred that this could not last long;
that they would soon be driven away by the musketry from above; that, in
short, things were going well.

After a time, becoming anxious lest Clara should expose herself to the
missiles, he went to Coronado's room, sent one of the Mexicans to
reinforce Meyer, and then climbed rapidly to the tower, taking along
sabre, rifle, and revolver. He was ascending the last of the stepped
sticks, and had the trap-door of the isolated room just above him, when he
heard a shout, "Come up here, somebody!"

It was the snuffling utterance of Phineas Glover, who slept on the roof as
permanent guard of the ladies. Tumbling into the room, Thurstane found the
skipper and two muleteers defending the doorway against five Apaches, who
had reached the roof, three of them already on their feet and plying their
arrows, while the two others were clambering over the ledge. Clara and
Mrs. Stanley were crouched on their beds behind the shelter of the wall.

The young man's first desperate impulse was to rush out and fight hand to
hand. But remembering the dexterity of Indians in single combat, he halted
just in time to escape a flight of missiles, placed himself behind the
jamb of the doorway, and fired his rifle. At that short distance Sweeny
would hardly have missed; and the nearest Apache, leaning forward with
outspread arms, fell dead. Then the revolver came into play, and another
warrior dropped his bow, his shoulder shattered. Glover and the muleteers,
steadied by this opportune reinforcement, reloaded and resumed their
file-firing. Guns were too much for archery; three Indians were soon
stretched on the roof; the others slung themselves over the eaves and
vanished.

"Darned if they didn't reeve a tackle to git up," exclaimed Glover in
amazement.

It appeared that the savages had twisted lariats into long cords, fastened
rude grapples to the end of them, flung them from the wall below the Casa,
and so made their daring escalade.

"Look out!" called Thurstane to the investigating Yankee. But the warning
came too late; Glover uttered a yell of surprise, pain, and rage; this
time it was not his nose, but his left ear.

"Reckon they'll jest chip off all my feeturs 'fore they git done with me,"
he grinned, feeling of the wounded part. "Git my figgerhead smooth all
round."

To favor the escalade, the Apaches in the plaza had renewed their
war-whoop, sent flights of arrows at the Casa, and made a spirited but
useless charge on the doorways. Its repulse was the signal for a general
and hasty flight. Just as the rising sun spread his haze of ruddy gold
over the east, there was a despairing yell which marked the termination of
the conflict, and then a rush for the gaps in the wall of the enclosure.
In one minute from the signal for retreat the top of the hill did not
contain a single painted combatant. No vigorous pursuit; the garrison had
had enough of fighting; besides, ammunition was becoming precious. Texas
Smith alone, insatiably bloodthirsty and an independent fighter, skulked
hastily across the plaza, ambushed himself in a crevice of the ruin, and
took a couple of shots at the savages as they mounted their ponies at the
foot of the hill and skedaddled loosely across the plain.

When he returned he croaked out, with an unusual air of excitement, "Big
thing!"

"What is a pig ding?" inquired Sergeant Meyer.

"Never see Injuns make such a fight afore."

"Nor I," assented Meyer.

"Stranger, they fowt first-rate," affirmed Smith, half admiring the
Apaches. "How many did we save?"

"Here are vour in our room, und the leftenant says there are three on the
roof, und berhabs we killed vour or vive outside."

"A dozen!" chuckled Texas, "besides the wounded. Let's hev a look at the
dead uns."

Going into Meyer's room, he found one of the Apaches still twitching, and
immediately cut his throat. Then he climbed to the roof, gloated over the
three bodies there, dragged them one by one to the ledge, and pitched them
into the plaza.

"That'll settle 'em," he remarked with a sigh of intense satisfaction,
like that of a baby when it has broken its rattle. Coming down again, he
looked all the corpses over again, and said with an air of disappointment
which was almost sentimental, "On'y a dozen!"

"I kin keer for the Injuns," he volunteered when the question came up of
burying the dead. "I'd rather keer for 'em than not."

Before Thurstane knew what was going on, Texas had finished his labor of
love. A crevice in the northern wall of the enclosure looked out upon a
steep slope of marl, almost a precipice, which slanted sheer into the
boiling flood of the San Juan. To this crevice Texas dragged one naked
carcass after another, bundled it through, launched it with a vigorous
shove, and then watched it with a pantherish grin, licking his chops as it
were, as it rolled down the steep, splashed into the river, and set out on
its swift voyage toward the Pacific.

"I s'pose you'll want to dig a hole for _him_" he said, coming into the
Casa and looking wistfully at the body of poor young Shubert.

Sergeant Meyer motioned him to go away. Thurstane was entering in his
journal an inventory of the deceased soldier's effects having already made
a minute of the date and cause of his death. These with other facts, such
as name, age, physical description, birthplace, time of service, amount of
pay due, balance of clothing-account and stoppages, must be more or less
repeated on various records, such as the descriptive book of the company,
the daily return, the monthly return, the quarterly return, the
muster-roll from which the name would be dropped, and the final statements
which were to go to the Adjutant-General and the Paymaster-General. Even
in the desert the monstrous accountability system of the army lived and
burgeoned.

Nothing of importance happened until about noon, when the sentinel on the
outer wall announced that the Apaches were approaching in force, and
Thurstane gave orders to barricade one of the doors of the Casa with some
large blocks of adobe, saying to himself, "I ought to have done it
before."

This work well under way, he hastened to the brow of the hill and
reconnoitred the enemy.

"They are not going to attack," said Coronado. "They are going to torture
the girl Pepita."

Thurstane turned away sick at heart, observing, "I must keep the women in
the Casa."




CHAPTER XXIV.


When Thurstane, turning his back on the torture scene, had ascended to the
roof of the Casa, he found the ladies excited and anxious.

"What is the matter?" asked Clara at once, taking hold of his sleeve with
the tips of her fingers, in a caressing, appealing way, which was common
with her when talking to those she liked.

Ordinarily our officer was a truth-teller; indeed, there was nothing which
came more awkwardly to him than deception; he hated and despised it as if
it were a personage, a criminal, an Indian. But here was a case where he
must stoop to falsification, or at least to concealment.

"The Apaches are just below," he mumbled. "Not one of you women must
venture out. I will see to everything. Be good now."

She gave his sleeve a little twitch, smiled confidingly in his face, and
sat down to do some much-needed mending.

Having posted Sweeny at the foot of the ladders, with instructions to let
none of the women descend, Thurstane hastened back to the exterior wall,
drawn by a horrible fascination. With his field-glass he could distinguish
every action of the tragedy which was being enacted on the plain. Pepita,
entirely stripped of her clothing, was already bound to the sapling which
stood by the side of the rivulet, and twenty or thirty of the Apaches were
dancing around her in a circle, each one approaching her in turn, howling
in her ears and spitting in her face. The young man had read and heard
much of the horrors of that torture-dance, which stamps the American
Indian as the most ferocious of savages; but be had not understood at all
how large a part insult plays in this ceremony of deliberate cruelty; and,
insulting a woman! he had not once dream'ed it. Now, when he saw it done,
his blood rushed into his head and he burst forth in choked incoherent
curses.

"I can't stand this," he shouted, advancing upon Coronado with clenched
fists. "We must charge."

The Mexican shook his head in a sickly, scared way, and pointed to the
left. There was a covering party of fifty or sixty warriors; it was not
more than a quarter of a mile from the eastern end of the enclosure; it
was in position to charge either upon that, or upon the flank of any
rescuing sally.

"We can do it," insisted the lieutenant, who felt as if he could fight
twenty men.

"We can't," replied Coronado. "I won't go, and my men shan't go."

Thurstane thought of Clara, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed
aloud. Texas Smith stared at him with a kind of contemptuous pity, and
offered such consolation as it was in his nature to give.

"Capm, when they've got through this job they'll travel."

The hideous prelude continued for half an hour. The Apaches in the dance
were relieved by their comrades in the covering party, who came one by one
to take their turns in the round of prancing, hooting, and spitting. Then
came a few minutes of rest; then insult was followed by outrage.

The girl was loosed from the sapling and lifted until her head was even
with the lower branches, three warriors holding her while two others
extended her arms and fixed them to two stout limbs. What the fastenings
were Thurstane could guess from the fact that he saw blows given, and
heard the long shrill scream of a woman in uttermost agony. Then there was
more hammering around the sufferer's feet, and more shrill wailing. She
was spiked through the palms and the ankles to the tree. It was a
crucifixion.

"By ----!" groaned Thurstane, "I never will spare an Indian as long as I
live."

"Capm, I'm with you," said Texas Smith. "I seen my mother fixed like that.
I seen it from the bush whar I was a hidin'. I was a boy then. I've killed
every Injun I could sence."

Now the dance was resumed. The Apaches pranced about their victim to the
music of her screams. The movement quickened; at last they ran around the
tree in a maddened crowd; at every shriek they stamped, gestured, and
yelled demoniacally. Now and then one of them climbed the girl's body and
appeared to stuff something into her mouth. Then the lamentable outcries
sank to a gasping and sobbing which could only be imagined by the
spectators on the hill.

"Can't you hit some of them?" Thurstane asked Texas Smith.

"Better let 'em finish," muttered the borderer. "The gal can't be helped.
She's as good as dead, Capm."

After another rest came a fresh scene of horror. Several of the Apaches,
no doubt chiefs or leading braves, caught up their bows and renewed the
dance. Running in a circle at full speed about the tree, each one in turn
let fly an arrow at the victim, the object being to send the missile clear
through her.

"That's the wind-up," muttered Texas Smith. "It's my turn now."

He leaped from the wall to the ground, ran sixty or eighty yards down the
hill, halted, aimed, and fired. One of the warriors, a fellow in a red
shirt who had been conspicuous in the torture scene, rolled over and lay
quiet. The Apaches, who had been completely absorbed by their frantic
ceremony, and who had not looked for an attack at the moment, nor expected
death at such a distance, uttered a cry of surprise and dismay. There was
a scramble of ten or fifteen screaming horsemen after the audacious
borderer. But immediately on firing he had commenced a rapid retreat, at
the same time reloading. He turned and presented his rifle; just then,
too, a protecting volley burst from the rampart; another Apache fell, and
the rest retreated.

"Capm, it's all right," said Texas, as he reascended the ruin. "We're
squar with 'em."

"We might have broken it up," returned Thurstane sullenly.

"No, Capm. You don't know 'em. They'd got thar noses p'inted to torture
that gal. If they didn't do it thar, they'd a done it a little furder off.
They was bound to do it. Now it's done, they'll travel."

Warned by their last misadventure, the Indians presently retired to their
usual camping ground, leaving their victim attached to the sapling.

"I'll fotch her up," volunteered Texas, who had a hyena's hankering after
dead bodies. "Reckon you'd like to bury her."

He mounted, rode slowly, and with prudent glances to right and left, down
the hill, halted under the tree, stood up in his saddle and worked there
for some minutes. The Apaches looked on from a distance, uttering yells of
exultation and making opprobrious gestures. Presently Texas resumed his
seat and cantered gently back to the ruins, bearing across his saddle-bow
a fearful burden, the naked body of a girl of eighteen, pierced with more
than fifty arrows, stained and streaked all over with blood, the limbs
shockingly mangled, and the mouth stuffed with rags.

While nearly every other spectator turned away in horror, he glared
steadily and calmly at the corpse, repeating, "That's Injin fun, that is.
That's what they brag on, that is."

"Bury her outside the wall," ordered Thurstane with averted face. "And
listen, all you people, not a word of this to the women."

"We shall be catechised," said Coronado.

"You must do the lying," replied the officer. He was so shaken by what he
had witnessed that he did not dare to face Clara for an hour afterward,
lest his discomposure should arouse her suspicions. When he did at last
visit the tower, she was quiet and smiling, for Coronado had done his
lying, and done it well.

"So there was no attack," she said. "I am so glad!"

"Only a little skirmish. You heard the firing, of course."

"Yes. Coronado told us about it. What a horrible howling the Indians made!
There were some screams that were really frightful."

"It was their last demonstration. They will probably be gone in the
morning."

"Poor Pepita! She will be carried off," said Clara, a tear or two stealing
down her cheek.

"Yes, poor Pepita!" sighed Thurstane.

The muleteer who had been killed in the assault was already buried. At
sundown came the funeral of the soldier Shubert. The body, wrapped in a
blanket, was borne by four Mexicans to the grave which had been prepared
for it, followed by his three comrades with loaded muskets, and then
by all the other members of the party, except Mrs. Stanley, who looked
down from her roof upon the spectacle. Thurstane acted as chaplain, and
read the funeral service from Clara's prayer-book, amidst the weeping
of women and the silence of men. The dead young hero was lowered into
his last resting-place. Sergeant Meyer gave the order: "Shoulder
arms--ready--present--aim--fire!" The ceremony was ended; the muleteers
filled the grave; a stone was placed to mark it; so slept a good soldier.

Now came another night of anxiety, but also of quiet. In the morning, when
eager eyes looked through the yellow haze of dawn over the plain, not an
Apache was to be seen.

"They are gone," said Coronado to Thurstane, after the two had made the
tour of the ruins and scrutinized every feature of the landscape. "What
next?"

Thurstane swept his field-glass around once more, searching for some
outlet besides the horrible canon, and searching in vain.

"We must wait a day or so for our wounded," he said. "Then we must start
back on our old trail. I don't see anything else before us."

"It is a gloomy prospect," muttered Coronado, thinking of the hundred
miles of rocky desert, and of the possibility that Apaches might be
ambushed at the end of it.

He had been so anxious about himself for a few days that he had cared for
little else. He had been humble, submissive to Thurstane, and almost
entirely indifferent about Clara.

"We ought at least to try something in the way of explorations," continued
the lieutenant. "To begin with, I shall sound the river. I shall be
thought a devil of a failure if I don't carry back some information about
the topography of this region."

"Can you paddle your boat against the current?" asked Coronado.

"I doubt it. But we can make a towing cord of lariats and let it out from
the shore; perhaps swing it clear across the river in that way--with some
paddling, you know."

"It is an excellent plan," said Coronado.

The day passed without movement, excepting that Texas Smith and two
Mexicans explored the canon for several miles, returning with a couple of
lame ponies and a report that the Apaches had undoubtedly gone southward.
At night, however, the animals were housed and sentries posted as usual,
for Thurstane feared lest the enemy might yet return and attempt a
surprise.

The next morning, all being quiet, the Buchanan boat was launched. A
couple of fairish paddles were chipped out of bits of driftwood, and a
towline a hundred feet long was made of lariats. Thurstane further
provisioned the cockle-shell with fishing tackle, a sounding line, his own
rifle, Shubert's musket and accoutrements, a bag of hard bread, and a few
pounds of jerked beef.

"You are not going to make a voyage!" stared Coronado.

"I am preparing for accidents. We may get carried down the river."

"I thought you proposed to keep fast to the shore."

"I do. But the lariats may break."

Coronado said no more. He lighted a cigarito and looked on with an air of
dreamy indifference. He had hit upon a plan for getting rid of Thurstane.

The next question was, who could handle a boat? The lieutenant wanted two
men to keep it out in the current while he used the sounding line and
recorded results.

"Guess I'll do 's well 's the nex' hand," volunteered Captain Glover. "Got
a sore ear, 'n' a hole in my nose, but reckon I'm 'n able-bodied seaman
for all that. _Hev_ rowed some in my time. Rowed forty mile after a whale
onct, 'n' caught the critter--fairly rowed him down. Current's putty
lively. Sh'd say 't was tearin' off 'bout five knots an hour. But guess
I'll try it. Sh'd kinder like to feel water under me agin."

"Captain, you shall handle the ship," smiled Thurstane. "I'll mention you
by name in my report. Who next?"

"Me," yelped Sweeny.

"Can you row, Sweeny?"

"I can, Liftinant."

"You may try it."

"Can I take me gun, Liftinant?" demanded Sweeny, who was extravagantly
fond and proud of his piece, all the more perhaps because he held it in
awe.

"Yes, you can take it, and Glover can have Shubert's. Though, 'pon my
honor, I don't know why we should carry firearms. It's old habit, I
suppose. It's a way we have in the army."

The lieutenant had no sort of anxiety on the score of his enterprise. His
plan was to swing out into the current, and, if the boat proved perfectly
manageable, to cut loose from the towline and paddle across, sounding the
whole breadth of the channel. It seemed easy enough and safe enough. When
he left the Casa Grande after breakfast he contrived to kiss Clara's hand,
but it did not once occur to him that it would be proper to bid her
farewell. He was very far indeed from guessing that in the knot of the
lariat which was fast to the bow of his coracle there was a fatal gash. It
was not suspicion of evil, but merely a habit of precaution, a prudential
tone of mind which he had acquired in service, that led him at the last
moment to say (making Coronado tremble in his boots), "Mr. Glover, have
you thoroughly overhauled the cord?"

"Give her a look jest before we went up to breakfast," replied the
skipper. "She'll hold."

Coronado, who stood three feet distant, blew a quiet little whiff of smoke
through his thin purple lips, meanwhile dreamily contemplating the
speaker.

"Git in, you paddywhack," said Glover to Sweeny. "Grab yer paddle. T'other
end; that's the talk. Now then. All aboard that's goin'. Shove off."

In a few seconds, impelled from the shore by the paddles, the boat was at
the full length of the towline and in the middle of the boiling current.

"Will it never break?" thought Coronado, smoking a little faster than
usual, but not moving a muscle.

Yes. It had already broken. At the first pause in the paddling the mangled
lariat had given way.

In spite of the renewed efforts of the oarsmen, the boat was flying down
the San Juan.




CHAPTER XXV.


When Thurstane perceived that the towline had parted and that the boat was
gliding down the San Juan, he called sharply, "Paddle!"

He was in no alarm as yet. The line, although of rawhide, was switching on
the surface of the rapid current; it seemed easy enough to recover it and
make a new fastening. Passing from the stern to the bow, he knelt down and
dipped one hand in the water, ready to clutch the end of the lariat.

But a boat five feet long and twelve feet broad, especially when made of
canvas on a frame of light sticks, is not handily paddled against swift
water; and the Buchanan (as the voyagers afterward named it) not only
sagged awkwardly, but showed a strong tendency to whirl around like an
egg-shell as it was. Moreover, the loose line almost instantly took the
direction of the stream, and swept so rapidly shoreward that by the time
Thurstane was in position to seize it, it was rods away.

"Row for the bank," he ordered. But just as he spoke there came a little
noise which was to these three men the crack of doom. The paddle of that
most unskilful navigator, Sweeny, snapped in two, and the broad blade of
it was instantly out of reach. Next the cockle-shell of a boat was
spinning on its keel-less bottom, and whirling broadside on, bow foremost,
stern foremost, any way, down the San Juan.

"Paddle away!" shouted Thurstane to Glover. "Drive her in shore! Pitch her
in!"

The old coaster sent a quick, anxious look down the river, and saw at once
that there was no chance of reaching the bank. Below them, not three
hundred yards distant, was an archipelago of rocks, the _debris_ of fallen
precipices and pinnacles, through which, for half a mile or more, the
water flew in whirlpools and foam. They were drifting at great speed
toward this frightful rapid, and, if they entered it, destruction was sure
and instant. Only the middle of the stream showed a smooth current; and
there was less than half a minute in which to reach it. Without a word
Glover commenced paddling as well as he could away from the bank.

"What are you about?" yelled Thurstane, who saw Clara on the roof of the
Casa Grande, and was crazed at the thought of leaving her there. She would
suspect that he had abandoned her; she would be massacred by the Apaches;
she would starve in the desert, etc.

Glover made no reply. His whole being was engaged in the struggle of
evading immediate death.