canon."
"An' where will we come out, Liftinant? Is it in Ameriky? Bedad, we ought
to be close to the Chaynees by this time. Liftinant, what sort o' paple
lives up atop of us, annyway?"

"I don't suppose anybody lives up there," replied the officer, raising his
eyes to the dizzy precipices above. "This whole region is said to be a
desert."

"Be gorry, an' it 'll stay a desert till the ind o' the worrld afore I'll
poppylate it. It wasn't made for Sweenys. I haven't seen sile enough in
tin days to raise wan pataty. As for livin' on dried grizzly, I'd like
betther for the grizzlies to live on me. Liftinant, I niver see sich harrd
atin'. It tires the top av me head off to chew it."

About noon of the twelfth day in the Great Canon this perilous and sublime
navigation came to a close. The walls of the chasm suddenly spread out
into a considerable opening, which absolutely seemed level ground to the
voyagers, although it was encumbered with mounds or buttes of granite and
sandstone. This opening was produced by the entrance into the main channel
of a subsidiary one, coming from the south. At first they did not observe
further particulars, for they were in extreme danger of shipwreck, the
river being studded with rocks and running like a mill-race. But on
reaching the quieter water below the rapid, they saw that the branch canon
contained a rivulet, and that where the two streams united there was a
triangular basin, offering a safe harbor.

"Paddle!" shouted Thurstane, pointing to the creek. "Don't let her go by.
This is our place."

A desperate struggle dragged the boat out of the rushing Colorado into the
tranquillity of the basin. Everything was landed; the boat itself was
hoisted on to the rocks; the voyage was over.

"Think ye know yer way, Capm?" queried Glover, squinting doubtfully up the
arid recesses of the smaller canon.

"Of course I may be mistaken. But even if it is not Diamond Creek, it will
take us in our direction. We have made westing enough to have the Cactus
Pass very nearly south of us."

As there was still a chance of returning to the river, the boat was taken
to pieces, rolled up, and hidden under a pile of stones and driftwood. The
small remnant of jerked meat was divided into three portions. Glover, on
account of his inferior muscle and his rheumatism, was relieved of his
gun, which was given to Sweeny. Canteens were filled, blankets slung,
ammunition belts buckled, and the march commenced.

Arrived at a rocky knoll which looked up both waterways, the three men
halted to take a last glance at the Great Canon, the scene of a pilgrimage
that had been a poem, though a terrible one. The Colorado here was not
more than fifty yards wide, and only a few hundred yards of its course
were visible either way, for the confluence was at the apex of a bend. The
dark, sullen, hopeless, cruel current rushed out of one mountain-built
mystery into another. The walls of the abyss rose straight from the water
into dizzy abutments, conical peaks, and rounded masses, beyond and above
which gleamed the distant sunlit walls of a higher terrace of the plateau.

"Come along wid ye," said Sweeny to Glover, "It's enough to give ye the
rheumatiz in the oyes to luk at the nasty black hole. I'm thinkin' it's
the divil's own place, wid the fires out."

The Diamond Creek Canon, although far inferior to its giant neighbor, was
nevertheless a wonderful excavation, striking audaciously into sombre
mountain recesses, sublime with precipices, peaks, and grotesque masses.
The footing was of the ruggedest, a _debris_ of confused and eroded rocks,
the pathway of an extinct river. One thing was beautiful: the creek was a
perfect contrast to the turbid Colorado; its waters were as clear and
bright as crystal. Sweeny halted over and over to look at it, his mouth
open and eyes twinkling like a pleased dog.

"An' there's nothing nagurish about that, now," he chuckled. "A pataty ud
laugh to be biled in it."

After slowly ascending for a quarter of a mile, they turned a bend and
came upon a scene which seemed to them like a garden. They were in a broad
opening, made by the confluence of two canons. Into this gigantic rocky
nest had been dropped an oasis of turf and of thickets of green willows.
Through the centre of the verdure the Diamond Creek flowed dimpling over a
pebbly bed, or shot in sparkles between barring bowlders, or plunged over
shelves in toy cascades. The travellers had seen nothing so hospitable in
nature since leaving the country of the Moquis weeks before.

Sweeny screamed like a delighted child. "Oh! an' that's just like ould
Oirland. Oh, luk at the turrf! D'ye iver see the loikes o'that, now? The
blessed turrf! Here ye be, right in the divil's own garden. Liftinant, if
ye'll let me build a fort here, I'll garrison it. I'll stay here me whole
term of sarvice."

"Halt," said Thurstane. "We'll eat, refill canteens, and inspect arms. If
this is Diamond Canon, and I think there is no doubt of it, we may expect
to find Indians soon."

"I'll fight 'em," declared Sweeny. "An' if they've got anythin' betther
nor dried grizzly, I'll have it."

"Wait for orders," cautioned Thurstane. "No firing without orders."

After cleaning their guns and chewing their tough and stale rations, they
resumed their march, leaving the rivulet and following the canon, which
led toward the southwest. As they were now regaining the level of the
plateau, their advance was a constant and difficult ascent, sometimes
struggling through labyrinths of detached rocks, and sometimes climbing
steep shelves which had once been the leaping-places of cataracts. The
sides of the chasm were two thousand feet high, and it was entered by
branch ravines of equal grandeur.

The sun had set for them, although he was still high above the horizon of
upper earth, when Thurstane halted and whispered, "Wigwams!"

Perched among the rocks, some under projecting strata and others in
shadowy niches between huge buttresses, they discovered at first three or
four, then a dozen, and finally twenty wretched cabins. They scarcely saw
before they were seen; a hideous old squaw dropped a bundle of fuel and
ran off screeching; in a moment the whole den was in an uproar. Startling
yells burst from lofty nooks in the mountain flanks, and scarecrow figures
dodged from ambush to ambush of the sombre gully. It was as if they had
invaded the haunts of the brownies.

The Hualpais, a species of Digger Indians, dwarfish, miserable, and
degraded, living mostly on roots, lizards, and the like, were nevertheless
conscious of scalps to save. In five minutes from the discovery of the
strangers they had formed a straggling line of battle, squatting along a
ledge which crossed the canon. There were not twenty warriors, and they
were no doubt wretchedly armed, but their position was formidable.

Sweeny, looking like an angry rat, his nose twitching and eyes sparkling
with rage, offered to storm the rampart alone, shouting, "Oh, the nasty,
lousy nagurs! Let 'em get out of our way."

"Guess we'd better talk to the cusses," observed Glover. "Tain't the
handiest place I ever see for fightin'; an' I don't keer 'bout havin' my
ears 'n' nose bored any more at present."

"Stay where you are," said Thurstane. "I'll go forward and parley with
them."




CHAPTER XXX.


Thurstane had no great difficulty in making a sort of
let-me-alone-and-I'll-let-you-alone treaty with the embattled Hualpais.

After some minutes of dumb show they came down from their stronghold and
dispersed to their dwellings. They seemed to be utterly without curiosity;
the warriors put aside their bows and lay down to sleep; the old squaw
hurried off to pick up her bundle of fuel; even the papooses were silent
and stupid. It was a race lower than the Hottentots or the Australians.
Short, meagre, badly built, excessively ugly, they were nearly naked, and
their slight clothing was rags of skins. Thurstane tried to buy food of
them, but either they had none to spare or his buttons seemed to them of
no value. Nor could he induce any one to accompany him as a guide.

"Do ye think Godamighty made thim paple?" inquired Sweeny.

"Reckon so," replied Glover.

"I don't belave it," said Sweeny. "He'd be in more rispactable bizniss.
It's me opinyin the divil made um for a joke on the rest av us. An' it's
me opinyin he made this whole counthry for the same rayson."

"The priest'll tell ye God made all men, Sweeny."

"They ain't min at all. Thim crachurs ain't min. They're nagurs, an' a
mighty poor kind at that. I hate um. I wish they was all dead. I've kilt
some av um, an' I'm goin' to kill slathers more, God willin'. I belave
it's part av the bizniss av white min to finish off the nagurs."

Profound and potent sentiment of race antipathy! The contempt and hatred
of white men for yellow, red, brown, and black men has worked all over
earth, is working yet, and will work for ages. It is a motive of that
tremendous tragedy which Spencer has entitled "the survival of the
fittest," and Darwin, "natural selection."

The party continued to ascend the canon. At short intervals branch canons
exhibited arid and precipitous gorges, more and more gloomy with twilight.
It was impossible to choose between one and another. The travellers could
never see three hundred yards in advance. To right and left they were
hemmed in by walls fifteen hundred feet in height. Only one thing was
certain: these altitudes were gradually diminishing; and hence they knew
that they were mounting the plateau. At last, four hours after leaving
Diamond Creek, wearied to the marrow with incessant toil, they halted by a
little spring, stretched themselves on a scrap of starveling grass, and
chewed their meagre, musty supper.

The scenery here was unearthly. Barring the bit of turf and a few willows
which had got lost in the desert, there was not a tint of verdure. To
right and left rose two huge and steep slopes of eroded and ragged rocks,
tortured into every conceivable form of jag, spire, pinnacle, and imagery.
In general the figures were grotesque; it seemed as if the misshapen gods
of India and of China and of barbarous lands had gathered there; as if
this were a place of banishment and punishment for the fallen idols of all
idolatries. Above this coliseum of monstrosities rose a long line of
sharp, jagged needles, like a vast _chevaux-de-frise_, forbidding escape.
Still higher, lighted even yet by the setting sun, towered five cones of
vast proportions. Then came cliffs capped by shatters of tableland, and
then the long, even, gleaming ledge of the final plateau.

Locked in this bedlam of crazed strata, unable to see or guess a way out
of it, the wanderers fell asleep. There was no setting of guards; they
trusted to the desert as a sentinel.

At daylight the blind and wearisome climbing recommenced. Occasionally
they found patches of thin turf and clumps of dwarf cedars struggling with
the rocky waste. These bits of greenery were not the harbingers of a new
empire of vegetation, but the remnants of one whose glory had vanished
ages ago, swept away by a vandalism of waters. Gradually the canon
dwindled to a ravine, narrow, sinuous, walled in by stony steeps or
slopes, and interlocking continually with other similar chasms. A creek,
which followed the chasm, appeared and disappeared at intervals of a mile
or so, as if horrified at the face of nature and anxious to hide from it
in subterranean recesses.

The travellers stumbled on until the ravine became a gully and the gully a
fissure. They stepped out of it; they were on the rolling surface of the
tableland; they were half a mile above the Colorado.

Here they halted, gave three cheers, and then looked back upon the
northern desert as men look who have escaped an enemy. A gigantic panorama
of the country which they had traversed was unrolled to their vision. In
the foreground stretched declining tablelands, intersected by numberless
ravines, and beyond these a lofty line of bluffs marked the edge of the
Great Canon of the Colorado. Through one wide gap in these heights came a
vision of endless plateaux, their terraces towering one above another
until they were thousands of feet in the air, the horizontal azure bands
extending hundreds of miles northward, until the deep blue faded into a
lighter blue, and that into the sapphire of the heavens.

"It looks a darned sight finer than it is," observed Glover.

"Bedad, ye may say that," added Sweeny. "It's a big hippycrit av a
counthry. Ye'd think, to luk at it, ye could ate it wid a spoon."

Now came a rolling region, covered with blue grass and dotted with groves
of cedars, the earth generally hard and smooth and the marching easy.
Striking southward, they reached a point where the plateau culminated in a
low ridge, and saw before them a long gentle slope of ten miles, then a
system of rounded hills, and then mountains.

"Halt here," said Thurstane. "We must study our topography and fix on our
line of march."

"You'll hev to figger it," replied Glover. "I don't know nothin' in this
part o' the world."

"Ye ain't called on to know," put in Sweeny. "The liftinant'll tell ye."

"I think," hesitated Thurstane, "that we are about fifty miles north of
Cactus Pass, where we want to strike the trail."

"And I'm putty nigh played out," groaned Glover.

"Och! _you_ howld up yer crazy head," exhorted Sweeny. "It'll do ye iver
so much good."

"It's easy talkin'," sighed the jaded and rheumatic skipper.

"It's as aisy talkin' right as talkin' wrong," retorted Sweeny. "Ye've no
call to grunt the curritch out av yer betthers. Wait till the liftinant
says die."

Thurstane was studying the landscape. Which of those ranges was the
Cerbat, which the Aztec, and which the Pinaleva? He knew that, after
leaving Cactus Pass, the overland trail turns southward and runs toward
the mouth of the Gila, crossing the Colorado hundreds of miles away. To
the west of the pass, therefore, he must not strike, under peril of
starving amid untracked plains and ranges. On the whole, it seemed
probable that the snow-capped line of summits directly ahead of him was
the Cerbat range, and that he must follow it southward along the base of
its eastern slope.

"We will move on," he said. "Mr. Glover, we must reach those broken hills
before night in order to find water. Can you do it?"

"Reckon I kin jest about do it, 's the feller said when he walked to his
own hangin'," returned the suffering skipper.

The failing man marched so slowly and needed so many halts that they were
five hours in reaching the hills. It was now nightfall; they found a
bright little spring in a grassy ravine; and after a meagre supper, they
tried to stifle their hunger with sleep. Thurstane and Sweeny took turns
in watching, for smoke of fires had been seen on the mountains, and, poor
as they were, they could not afford to be robbed. In the morning Glover
seemed refreshed, and started out with some vigor.

"Och! ye'll go round the worrld," said Sweeny, encouragingly. "Bones can
march furder than fat anny day. Yer as tough as me rations. Dried grizzly
is nothin' to ye."

After threading hills for hours they came out upon a wide, rolling basin
prettily diversified by low spurs of the encircling mountains and bluish
green with the long grasses known as _pin_ and _grama_. A few deer and
antelopes, bounding across the rockier places, were an aggravation to
starving men who could not follow them.

"Why don't we catch some o' thim flyin' crachurs?" demanded Sweeny.

"We hain't got no salt to put on their tails," explained Glover, grinning
more with pain than with his joke.

"I'd ate 'em widout salt," said Sweeny. "If the tails was feathers, I'd
ate 'em."

"We must camp early, and try our luck at hunting," observed Thurstane.

"I go for campin' airly," groaned the limping and tottering Glover.

"Och! yees ud like to shlape an shnore an' grunt and rowl over an' shnore
agin the whole blissid time," snapped Sweeny, always angered by a word of
discouragement. "Yees ought to have a dozen o' thim nagurs wid their long
poles to make a fither bed for yees an' tuck up the blankets an' spat the
pilly. Why didn't ye shlape all ye wanted to whin yees was in the boat?"

"Quietly, Sweeny," remonstrated Thurstane. "Mr. Glover marches with great
pain."

"I've no objiction to his marchin' wid great pain or annyway Godamighty
lets him, if he won't grunt about it."

"But you must be civil, my man."

"I ax yer pardon, Liftinant. I don't mane no harrum by blatherin'. It's a
way we have in th' ould counthry. Mebbe it's no good in th' arrmy."

"Let him yawp, Capm," interposed Glover. "It's a way they hev, as he says.
Never see two Paddies together but what they got to fightin' or pokin' fun
at each other. Me an' Sweeny won't quarrel. I take his clickatyclack for
what it's worth by the cart-load. 'Twon't hurt me. Dunno but what it's
good for me."

"Bedad, it's betther for ye nor yer own gruntin'," added the irrepressible
Irishman.

By two in the afternoon they had made perhaps fifteen miles, and reached
the foot of the mountain which they proposed to skirt. As Glover was now
fagged out, Thurstane decided to halt for the night and try deer-stalking.
A muddy water-hole, surrounded by thickets of willows, indicated their
camping ground. The sick man was _cached_ in the dense foliage; his
canteen was filled for him and placed by his side; there could be no other
nursing.

"If the nagurs kill ye, I'll revenge ye," was Sweeny's parting
encouragement. "I'll git ye back yer scallup, if I have to cut it out of
um."

Late in the evening the two hunters returned empty. Sweeny, in spite of
his hunger and fatigue, boiled over with stories of the hairbreadth
escapes of the "antyloops" that he had fired at. Thurstane also had seen
game, but not near enough for a shot.

"I didn't look for such bad luck," said the weary and half-starved young
fellow, soberly. "No supper for any of us. We must save our last ration to
make to-morrow's march on."

"It's a poor way of atin' two males in wan," remarked Sweeny. "I niver
thought I'd come to wish I had me haversack full o' dried bear."

The next day was a terrible one. Already half famished, their only food
for the twenty-four hours was about four ounces apiece of bear meat,
tough, ill-scented, and innutritious. Glover was so weak with hunger and
his ailments that he had to be supported most of the way by his two
comrades. His temper, and Sweeny's also, gave out, and they snarled at
each other in good earnest, as men are apt to do under protracted
hardships. Thurstane stalked on in silence, sustained by his youth and
health, and not less by his sense of responsibility. These men were here
through his doing; he must support them and save them if possible; if not,
he must show them how to die bravely; for it had come to be a problem of
life and death. They could not expect to travel two days longer without
food. The time was approaching when they would fall down with faintness,
not to rise again in this world.

In the morning their only provision was one small bit of meat which
Thurstane had saved from his ration of the day before. This he handed to
Glover, saying with a firm eye and a cheerful smile, "My dear fellow, here
is your breakfast."

The starving invalid looked at it wistfully, and stammered, with a voice
full of tears, "I can't eat when the rest of ye don't."

Sweeny, who had stared at the morsel with hungry eyes, now broke out, "I
tell ye, ate it. The liftinant wants ye to."

"Divide it fair," answered Glover, who could hardly restrain himself from
sobbing.

"I won't touch a bit av it," declared Sweeny. "It's the liftinant's own
grub."

"We won't divide it," said Thurstane. "I'll put it in your pocket, Glover.
When you can't take another step without it, you must go at it."

"Bedad, if ye don't, we'll lave yees," added Sweeny, digging his fists
into his empty stomach to relieve its gnawing.

Very slowly, the well men sustaining the sick one, they marched over
rolling hills until about noon, accomplishing perhaps ten miles. They were
now on a slope looking southward; above them the wind sighed through a
large grove of cedars; a little below was a copious spring of clear, sweet
water. There they halted, drinking and filling their canteens, but not
eating. The square inch of bear meat was still in Glover's pocket, but he
could not be got to taste it unless the others would share.

"Capm, I feel's though Heaven'd strike me if I should eat your victuals,"
he whispered, his voice having failed him. "I feel a sort o' superstitious
'bout it. I want to die with a clear conscience."

But when they rose his strength gave out entirely, and he dropped down
fainting.

"Now ate yer mate," said Sweeny, in a passion of pity and anxiety. "Ate
yer mate an' stand up to yer marchin'."

Glover, however, could not eat, for the fever of hunger had at last
produced nausea, and he pushed away the unsavory morsel when it was put to
his lips.

"Go ahead," he whispered. "No use all dyin'. Go ahead." And then he
fainted outright.

"I think the trail can't be more than fifteen miles off," said Thurstane,
when he had found that his comrade still breathed. "One of us must push on
to it and the other stay with Glover. Sweeny, I can track the country
best. You must stay."

For the first time in this long and suffering and perilous journey
Sweeny's courage failed him, and he looked as if he would like to shirk
his duty.

"My lad, it is necessary," continued the officer. "We can't leave this man
so. You have your gun. You can try to hunt. When he comes to, you must get
him along, following the course you see me take. If I find help, I'll save
you. If not, I'll come back and die with you."

Sitting down by the side of the insensible Glover, Sweeny covered his face
with two grimy hands which trembled a little. It was not till his officer
had got some thirty feet away that he raised his head and looked after
him. Then he called, in his usual quick, sharp, chattering way,
"Liftinant, is this soldierin'?"

"Yes, my lad," replied Thurstane with a sad, weary smile, thinking
meantime of hardships past, "this is soldiering."

"Thin I'll do me dooty if I rot jest here," declared the simple hero.

Thurstane came back, grasped Sweeny's hand in silence, turned away to hide
his shaken face, and commenced his anxious journey.

There were both terrible and beautiful thoughts in his soul as he pushed
on into the desert. Would he find the trail? Would he encounter the rare
chance of traders or emigrants? Would there be food and rest for him and
rescue for his comrades? Would he meet Clara? This last idea gave him
great courage; he struggled to keep it constantly in his mind; he needed
to lean upon it.

By the time that he had marched ten miles he found that he was weaker than
he had supposed. Weeks of wretched food and three days of almost complete
starvation had taken the strength pretty much out of his stalwart frame.
His breath was short; he stumbled over the slightest obstacles;
occasionally he could not see clear. From time to time it struck him that
he had been dreaming or else that his mind was beginning to wander. Things
that he remembered and things that he hoped for seemed strangely present.
He spoke to people who were hundreds of miles away; and, for the most
part, he spoke to them pettishly or with downright anger; for in the main
he felt more like a wretched, baited animal than a human being.

It was only when he called Clara to mind that this evil spirit was
exorcised, and he ceased for a moment to resemble a hungry, jaded wolf.
Then he would be for a while all sweetness, because he was for the while
perfectly happy. In the next instant, by some hateful and irresistible
magic, happiness and sweetness would be gone, and he could not even
remember them nor remember _her_.

Meantime he struggled to command himself and pay attention to his route.
He must do this, because his starving comrades lay behind him, and he must
know how to lead men back to their rescue. Well, here he was; there were
hills to the left; there was a mountain to the right; he would stop and
fix it all in his memory.

He sat down beside a rock, leaned his back against it to steady his dizzy
head, had a sensation of struggling with something invincible, and was
gone.




CHAPTER XXXI.


Leaving Thurstane in the desert, we return to Clara in the desert. It will
be remembered that she stood on the roof of the Casa Grande when her lover
was swept oarless down the San Juan.

She was watching him; of course she was watching him; at the moment of the
catastrophe she saw him; she felt sure also that he was looking at her.
The boat began to fly down the current; then the two oarsmen fell to
paddling violently; what did it mean? Far from guessing that the towline
had snapped, she was not aware that there was one.

On went the boat; presently it whirled around helplessly; it was nearing
the rocks of the rapid; there was evidently danger. Running to the edge of
the roof, Clara saw a Mexican cattle-driver standing on the wall of the
enclosure, and called to him, "What is the matter?"

"The lariats have broken," he replied. "They are drifting."

Clara uttered a little gasp of a shriek, and then did not seem to breathe
again for a minute. She saw Thurstane led away in captivity by the savage
torrent; she saw him rise up in the boat and wave her a farewell; she
could not lift her hand to respond; she could only stand and stare. She
had a look, and there was within her a sensation, as if her soul were
starting out of her eyes. The whole calamity revealed itself to her at
once and without mercy. There was no saving him and no going after him; he
was being taken out of her sight; he was disappearing; he was gone. She
leaned forward, trying to look around the bend of the river, and was
balked by a monstrous, cruel advance of precipices. Then, when she
realized that he had vanished, there was a long scream ending in
unconsciousness.

When she came to herself everybody was talking of the calamity. Coronado,
Aunt Maria, and others overflowed with babblings of regret, astonishment,
explanations, and consolation. The lariats had broken. How could it have
happened! How dreadful! etc.

"But he will land," cried Clara, looking eagerly from face to face.

"Oh, certainly," said Coronado. "Landings can be made. There are none
visible, but doubtless they exist."

"And then he will march back here?" she demanded.

"Not easily. I am afraid, my dear cousin, not very easily. There would be
canons to turn, and long ones. Probably he would strike for the Moqui
country."

"Across the desert? No water!"

Coronado shrugged his shoulders as if to say that he could not help it.

"If we go back to-morrow," she began again, "do you think we shall
overtake them?"

"I think it very probable," lied Coronado.

"And if we don't overtake them, will they join us at the Moqui pueblos?"

"Yes, yes. I have little doubt of it."

"When do you think we ought to start?"

"To-morrow morning."

"Won't that be too early?"

"Day after to-morrow then."

"Won't that be too late?"

Coronado nearly boiled over with rage. This girl was going to demand
impossibilities of him, and impossibilities that he would not perform if
he could. He must be here and he must be there; he must be quick enough
and not a minute too quick; and all to save his rival from the pit which
he had just dug for him. Turning his back on Clara, he paced the roof of
the Casa in an excitement which he could not conceal, muttering, "I will
do the best I can--the best I can."

Presently the remembrance that he had at least gained one great triumph
enabled him to recover his self-possession and his foxy cunning.

"My dear cousin," he said gently, "you must not suppose that I am not
greatly afflicted by this accident. I appreciate the high merit of
Lieutenant Thurstane, and I grieve sincerely at his misfortune. What can I
do? I will do the best I can for all. Trusting to your good sense, I will
do whatever you say. But if you want my advice, here it is. We ought for
our own sakes to leave here to-morrow; but for his sake we will wait a
day. In that time he may rejoin us, or he may regain the Moqui trail. So
we will set out, if you have no objection, on the morning of day after
to-morrow, and push for the pueblos. When we do start, we must march, as
you know, at our best speed."

"Thank you, Coronado," said Clara. "It is the best you can do."

There were not five minutes during that day and the next that the girl did
not look across the plain to the gorge of the dry canon, in the hope that
she might see Thurstane approaching. At other times she gazed eagerly down
the San Juan, although she knew that he could not stem the current. Her
love and her sorrow were ready to believe in miracles. How is it possible,
she often thought, that such a brief sweep of water should carry him so
utterly away? In spite of her fear of vexing Coronado, she questioned him
over and over as to the course of the stream and the nature of its banks,
only to find that he knew next to nothing.

"It will be hard for him to return to us," the man finally suggested, with
an air of being driven unwillingly to admit it. "He may have to go on a
long way down the river."

The truth is that, not knowing whether the lost men could return easily or
not, he was anxious to get away from their neighborhood.

Before the second day of this suspense was over, Aunt Maria had begun to
make herself obnoxious. She hinted that Thurstane knew what he was about;
that the river was his easiest road to his station; that, in short, he had
deserted. Clara flamed up indignantly and replied, "I know him better."

"Why, what has he got to do with us?" reasoned Aunt Maria. "He doesn't
belong to our party."

"He has his men here. He wouldn't leave his soldiers."

"His men! They can take care of themselves. If they can't, I should like
to know what they are good for. I think it highly probable he went off of
his own choice."

"I think it highly probable you know nothing about it," snapped Clara.
"You are incapable of judging him."

The girl was not just now herself. Her whole soul was concentrated in
justifying, loving, and saving Thurstane; and her manner, instead of being
serenely and almost lazily gentle, was unpleasantly excited. It was as if
some charming alluvial valley should suddenly give forth the steam and
lava of a volcano.

Finding no sympathy in Aunt Maria, and having little confidence in the
good-will of Coronado, she looked about her for help. There was Sergeant
Meyer; he had been Thurstane's right-hand man; moreover, he looked
trustworthy. She seized the first opportunity to beckon him up to her
eerie on the roof of the Casa.

"Sergeant, I must speak with you privately," she said at once, with the
frankness of necessity.

The sergeant, a well-bred soldier, respectful to ladies, and especially to
ladies who were the friends of officers, raised his forefinger to his cap
and stood at attention.

"How came Lieutenant Thurstane to go down the river?" she asked.

"It was the lariat proke," replied Meyer, in a whispering, flute-like
voice which he had when addressing his superiors.

"Did it break, or was it cut?"

The sergeant raised his small, narrow, and rather piggish gray eyes to
hers with a momentary expression of anxiety.

"I must pe gareful what I zay," he answered, sinking his voice still
lower. "We must poth pe gareful. I examined the lariat. I fear it was
sawed. But we must not zay this."