"Who sawed it?" demanded Clara with a gasp.
"It was no one in the poat," replied Meyer diplomatically.

"Was it that man--that hunter--Smith?"

Another furtive glance between the sandy eyelashes expressed an uneasy
astonishment; the sergeant evidently had a secret on his mind which he
must not run any risk of disclosing.

"I do not zee how it was Schmidt" he fluted almost inaudibly. "He was
watching the peasts at their basture."

"Then who did saw it?"

"I do not know. I do not feel sure that it was sawed."

Perceiving that, either from ignorance or caution, he would not say more
on this point, Clara changed the subject and asked, "Can Lieutenant
Thurstane go down the river safely?"

"I would like noting petter than to make the exbedition myself," replied
Meyer, once more diplomatic.

Now came a silence, the soldier waiting respectfully, the girl not knowing
how much she might dare to say. Not that she doubted Meyer; on the
contrary, she had a perfect confidence in him; how could she fail to trust
one who had been trusted by Thurstane?

"Sergeant," she at last whispered, "we must find him."

"Yes, miss," touching his cap as if he were taking an oath by it.

"And you," she hesitated, "must protect _me_."

"Yes, miss," and the sergeant repeated his gesture of solemn affirmation.

"Perhaps I will say more some time."

He saluted again, and seeing that she had nothing to add, retired quietly.

For two nights there was little sleep for Clara. She passed them in
pondering Thurstane's chances, or in listening for his returning
footsteps. Yet when the train set out for the Moqui pueblos, she seemed as
vigorous and more vivacious than usual. What supported her now and for
days afterward was what is called the strength of fever.

The return across the desert was even more terrible than the advance, for
the two scant water-holes had been nearly exhausted by the Apaches, so
that both beasts and human beings suffered horribly with thirst. There was
just this one good thing about the parched and famished wilderness, that
it relieved the emigrants from all fear of ambushing enemies. Supernatural
beings alone could have, bushwhacked here. The Apaches had gone.

Meanwhile Sergeant Meyer had a sore conscience. From the moment the boat
went down the San Juan he had more or less lain awake with the idea that,
according to the spirit of his instructions from Thurstane, he ought to
have Texas Smith tied up and shot. Orders were orders; there was no
question about that, as a general principle; the sergeant had never heard
the statement disputed. But when he came to consider the case now before
him, he was out-generalled by a doubt. This, drifting of a boat down a
strange river, was it murder in the sense intended by Thurstane? And,
supposing it to be murder, could it be charged in any way upon Smith? In
the whole course of his military experience Sergeant Meyer had never been
more perplexed. On the evening of the first day's march he could bear his
sense of responsibility no longer, and decided to call a council of war.
Beckoning his sole remaining comrade aside from the bivouac, he entered
upon business.

"Kelly, we are unter insdructions," he began in his flute-like tone.

"I know it, sergeant," replied Kelly, decorously squirting his
tobacco-juice out of the corner of his mouth furthest from his superior.

"The question is, Kelly, whether Schmidt should pe shot."

"The responsibility lies upon you, sergeant. I will shoot him if so be
such is orders."

"Kelly, the insdructions were to shoot him if murder should habben in this
barty. The instructions were loose."

"They were so, sergeant--not defining murder."

"The question is, Kelly, whether what has habbened to the leftenant is
murder. If it is murder, then Schmidt must go."

The two men were sitting on a bowlder side by side, their hands on their
knees and their muskets leaning against their shoulders. They did not look
at each other at all, but kept their grave eyes on the ground. Kelly
squirted his tobacco-juice sidelong two or three times before he replied.

"Sergeant," he finally said, "my opinion is we can't set this down for
murder until we know somebody is dead."

"Shust so, Kelly. That is my obinion myself."

"Consequently it follows, sergeant, if you don't see to the contrary, that
until we know that to be a fact, it would be uncalled for to shoot Smith."

"What you zay, Kelly, is shust what I zay."

"Furthermore, however, sergeant, it might be right and is the way of duty,
to call up Smith and make him testify as to what he knows of this
business, whether it be murder, or meant for murder."

"Cock your beece, Kelly."

Both men cocked their pieces.

"Now I will gall Schmidt out and question him," continued Meyer, "You will
stand on one side and pe ready to opey my orders."

"Very good, sergeant," said Kelly, and dropped back a little into the
nearly complete darkness.

Meyer sang out sharply, "Schmidt! Texas Schmidt!"

The desperado heard the summons, hesitated a moment, cocked the revolver
in his belt, loosened his knife in its sheath, rose from his blanket, and
walked slowly in the direction of the voice. Passing Kelly without seeing
him, he confronted Meyer, his hand on his pistol. There was not the
slightest tremor in the hoarse, low croak with which he asked, "What's the
game, sergeant?"

"Schmidt, stand berfectly still," said Meyer in his softest fluting.
"Kelly has his beece aimed at your head. If you stir hant or foot, you are
a kawn koose."




CHAPTER XXXII.


Texas Smith was too old a borderer to attempt to draw his weapons while
such a man as Kelly was sighting him at ten feet distance.

"Play yer hand, sergeant," he said; "you've got the keerds."

"You know, Schmidt, that our leftenant has been garried down the river,"
continued Meyer.

The bushwhacker responded with a grunt which expressed neither pleasure
nor sorrow, but merely assent.

"You know," went on the sergeant, "that such things cannot habben to
officers without investigations."

"He war a squar man, an' a white man," said Texas. "I didn't have nothin'
to do with cuttin' him loose, if he war cut loose."

"You didn't saw the lariat yourself, Schmidt, I know that. But do you know
who did saw it?"

"I dunno the first thing about it."

"Bray to pe struck tead if you do."

"I dunno how to pray."

"Then holt up your hants and gurse yourself to hell if you do."

Lifting his hands over his head, the ignorant savage blasphemed copiously.

"Do you think you can guess how it was pusted?" persisted the soldier.

"Look a hyer!" remonstrated Smith, "ain't you pannin' me out a leetle too
fine? It mought 'a' been this way, an' it mought 'a' been that. But I've
no business to point if I can't find. When a man's got to the bottom of
his pile, you can't fo'ce him to borrow. 'Sposin' I set you barkin' up the
wrong tree; what good's that gwine to do?"

"Vell, Schmidt, I don't zay but what you zay right. You mustn't zay
anyting you don't know someting apout."

After another silence, during which Texas continued to hold his hands
above his head, Meyer added, "Kelly, you may come to an order. Schmidt,
you may put down your hants. Will you haf a jew of topacco?"

The three men now approached each other, took alternate bites of the
sergeant's last plug of pigtail, and masticated amicably.

"You army fellers run me pootty close," said Texas, after a while, in a
tone of complaint and humiliation. "I don't want to fight brass buttons.
They're too many for me. The Capm he lassoed me, an' choked me some; an'
now you're on it."

"When things habben to officers, they must pe looked into," replied Meyer.

"I dunno how in thunder the lariat got busted," repeated Texas. "An' if I
should go for to guess, I mought guess wrong."

"All right, Schmidt; I pelieve you. If there is no more drubble, you will
not pe called up again."

"Ask him what he thinks of the leftenant's chances," suggested Kelly to
his superior.

"Reckon he'll hev to run the river a spell," returned the borderer.
"Reckon he'll hev to run it a hell of a ways befo' he'll be able to git
across the dam country."

"Ask him what the chances be of running the river safely," added Kelly.

"Dam slim," answered Texas; and there the talk ended. There was some
meditative chewing, after which the three returned to the bivouac, and
either lay down to sleep or took their tours at guard duty.

At dawn the party recommenced its flight toward the Moqui country. There
were sixty hours more of hard riding, insufficient sleep, short rations,
thirst, and anxiety. Once the suffering animals stampeded after water, and
ran for several miles over plateaux of rock, dashing off burdens and
riders, and only halting when they were plunged knee-deep in the
water-hole which they had scented. One of the wounded rancheros expired on
the mule to which he was strapped, and was carried dead for several hours,
his ashy-brown face swinging to and fro, until Coronado had him thrown
into a crevice.

Amid these hardships and horrors Clara showed no sign of flagging or
flinching. She was very thin; bad food, excessive fatigue, and anxiety had
reduced her; her face was pinched, narrowed, and somewhat lined; her
expression was painfully set and eager. But she never asked for repose,
and never complained. Her mind was solely fixed upon finding Thurstane,
and her feverish bright eyes continually searched the horizon for him. She
seemed to have lost her power of sympathizing with any other creature. To
Mrs. Stanley's groanings and murmurings she vouchsafed rare and brief
condolences. The dead muleteer and the tortured, bellowing animals
attracted little of her notice. She was not hard-hearted; she was simply
almost insane. In this state of abnormal exaltation she continued until
the party reached the quiet and safety of the Moqui pueblos.

Then there was a change; exhausted nature required either apathy or death;
and for two days she lay in a sort of stupor, sleeping a great deal, and
crying often when awake. The only person capable of rousing her was
Sergeant Meyer, who made expeditions to the other pueblos for news of
Thurstane, and brought her news of his hopes and his failures.

After a three days' rest Coronado decided to resume his journey by moving
southward toward the Bernalillo trail. Freed from Thurstane, he no longer
contemplated losing Clara in the desert, but meant to marry her, and
trusted that he could do it. Two of his wagons he presented to the Moquis,
who were, of course, delighted with the acquisition, although they had no
more use for wheeled vehicles than for gunboats. With only four wagons,
his animals were more than sufficient, and the train made tolerably rapid
progress, in spite of the roughness of the country.

The land was still a wonder. The water wizards of old had done their
grotesque utmost here. What with sculpturing and frescoing, they had made
that most fantastic wilderness the Painted Desert. It looked like a
mirage. The travellers had an impression that here was some atmospheric
illusion. It seemed as if it could not last five minutes if the sun should
shine upon it. There were crowding hills so variegated and gay as to put
one in mind of masses of soap-bubbles. But the coloring was laid on
fifteen hundred feet deep. It consisted of sandstone marls, red, blue,
green, orange, purple, white, brown, lilac, and yellow, interstratified
with magnesian limestone in bands of purple, bluish-white, and mottled,
with here and there shining flecks or great glares of gypsum.

Among the more delicate wonders of the scene were the petrified trunks
which had once been pines and cedars, but which were now flint or jasper.
The washings of geologic aeons have exposed to view immense quantities of
these enchanted forests. Fragments of silicified trees are not only strewn
over the lowlands, but are piled by the hundred cords at the bases of
slopes, seeming like so much drift-wood from wonder-lands far up the
stream of time. Generally they are in short bits, broken square across the
grain, as if sawed. Some are jasper, and look like masses of red
sealing-wax; others are agate, or opalescent chalcedony, beautifully lined
and variegated; many retain the graining, layers, knots, and other details
of their woody structure.

In places where the marls had been washed away gently, the emigrants found
trunks complete, from root to summit, fifty feet in length and three in
diameter. All the branches, however, were gone; the tree had been
uprooted, transported, whirled and worn by deluges; then to commemorate
the victory of the water sprites, it had been changed into stone. The
sight of these remnants of antediluvian woodlands made history seem the
reminiscence of a child. They were already petrifactions when the human
race was born.

The Painted Desert has other marvels. Throughout vast stretches you pass
between tinted _mesas_, or tables, which face each other across flat
valleys like painted palaces across the streets of Genova la Superba. They
are giant splendors, hundreds of feet in height, built of blood-red
sandstone capped with variegated marls. The torrents, which scooped out
the intersecting levels, amused their monstrous leisure with carving the
points and abutments of the _mesa_ into fantastic forms, so that the
traveller sees towers, minarets, and spires loftier than the pinnacles of
cathedrals.

The emigrants were often deceived by these freaks of nature. Beheld from a
distance, it seemed impossible that they should not be ruins, the
monuments of some Cyclopean race. Aunt Maria, in particular, discovered
casas grandes and casas de Montezuma very frequently.

"There is another casa," she would say, staring through her spectacles
(broken) at a butte three hundred feet high. "What a people it must have
been which raised such edifices!"

And she would stick to it, too, until she was close up to the solid rock,
and then would renew the transforming miracle five or ten miles further
on.

During this long and marvellous journey Coronado renewed his courtship. He
was cautious, however; he made a confidant of his friend Aunt Maria;
begged her favorable intercession.

"Clara," said Mrs. Stanley, as the two women jolted along in one of the
lumbering wagons, "there is one thing in your life which perhaps you don't
suspect."

The girl, who wanted to hear about Thurstane all the time, and expected to
hear about him, asked eagerly, "What is it?"

"You have made Mr. Coronado fall in love with you," said Aunt Maria,
thinking it wise to be clear and straightforward, as men are reputed to
be.

The young lady, instantly revolting from the subject, made no reply.

"I think, Clara, that if you take a husband--and most women do--he would
be just the person for you."

Clara, once the gentlest of the gentle, was perfectly angelic no longer.
She gave her relative a stare which was partly intense misery, but which
had much the look of pure anger, as indeed it was in a measure.

The expressions of violent emotion are alarming to most people. Aunt
Maria, beholding this tortured soul glaring at her out of its prison
windows, recoiled in surprise and awe. There was not another word spoken
at the time concerning the obnoxious match-making. A single stare of
Marius had put to flight the executioner.

In one way and another Clara continued to baffle her suitor and her
advocate. The days dragged on; the expedition steadily traversed the
desert; the Santa Anna region was crossed, and the Bernalillo trail
reached; one hundred, two hundred, three hundred miles and more were left
behind; and still Coronado, though without a rival, was not accepted.

Then came an adventure which partly helped and partly hindered his plans.
The train was overtaken by a detachment of the Fifth United States
Cavalry, commanded by Major John Robinson, pushing for California. Of
course Sergeant Meyer reported himself and Kelly to the Major, and of
course the Major ordered them to join his party as far as Fort Yuma. This
deprived Clara of her trusted protectors; but on the other hand, she
threatened to take advantage of the escort of Robinson for the rest of her
journey; and the mere mention of this at once brought Coronado on his
soul's marrow-bones. He swore by the heaven above, by all the saints and
angels, by the throne of the Virgin Mary, by every sacred object he could
think of, that not another word of love should pass his lips during the
journey, that he would live the life of a dead man, etc. Overcome by his
pleadings, and by the remonstrances of Aunt Maria, who did not want to
have her favorite driven to commit suicide, Clara agreed to continue with
the train.

After this scene followed days of hot travelling over hard, gravelly
plains, thinly coated with grass and dotted with cacti, mezquit trees, the
leafless palo verde, and the greasewood bush. Here and there towered that
giant cactus, the saguarra, a fluted shaft, thirty, forty, and even sixty
feet high, with a coronet of richly-colored flowers, the whole fabric as
splendid as a Corinthian column. Prickly pears, each one large enough to
make a thicket, abounded. Through the scorching sunshine ran scorpions and
lizards, pursued by enormous rattlesnakes. During the days the heat ranged
from 100 to 115 deg. in the shade, while the nights were swept by winds as
parching as the breath of an oven. The distant mountains glared at the eye
like metals brought to a white heat. Not seldom they passed horses, mules,
cattle, and sheep, which had perished in this terrible transit and been
turned to mummies by the dry air and baking sun. Some of these carcasses,
having been set on their legs by passing travellers, stood upright,
staring with blind eyeballs, grinning through dried lips, mockeries of
life, statues of death.

In spite of these hardships and horrors, Clara kept up her courage and was
almost cheerful; for in the first place Coronado had ceased his terrifying
attentions, and in the second place they were nearing Cactus Pass, where
she hoped to meet Thurstane. When love has not a foot of certainty to
stand upon, it can take wing and soar through the incredible. The idea
that they two, divided hundreds of miles back, should come together at a
given point by pure accident, was obviously absurd. Yet Clara could trust
to the chance and live for it.

The scenery changed to mountains. There were barren, sublime, awful peaks
to the right and left. To the girl's eyes they were beautiful, for she
trusted that Thurstane beheld them. She was always on horseback now,
scanning every feature of the landscape, searching of course for him. She
did not pass a cactus, or a thicket of mezquit, or a bowlder without
anxious examination. She imagined herself finding him helpless with
hunger, or passing him unseen and leaving him to die. She was so pale and
thin with constant anxiety that you might have thought her half starved,
or recovering from some acute malady.

About five one afternoon, as the train was approaching its halting-place
at a spring on the western side of the pass, Clara's feverish mind fixed
on a group of rocks half a mile from the trail as the spot where she would
find Thurstane. In obedience to similar impressions she had already made
many expeditions of this nature. Constant failure, and a consciousness
that all this searching was folly, could not shake her wild hopes. She set
off at a canter alone; but after going some four hundred yards she heard a
gallop behind her, and, looking over her shoulder, she saw Coronado. She
did not want to be away from the train with him; but she must at all
hazards reach that group of rocks; something within impelled her. Better
mounted than she, he was soon by her side, and after a while struck out in
advance, saying, "I will look out for an ambush."

When Coronado reached the rocks he was fifty yards ahead of Clara. He made
the circuit of them at a slow canter; in so doing he discovered the
starving and fainted Thurstane lying in the high grass beneath a low shelf
of stone; he saw him, he recognized him, and in an instant he trembled
from head to foot. But such was his power of self-control that he did not
check his horse, nor cast a second look to see whether the man was alive
or dead. He turned the last stone in the group, met Clara with a forced
smile, and said gently, "There is nothing."

She reined up, drew a long sigh, thought that here was another foolish
hope crushed, and turned her horse's head toward the train.




CHAPTER XXXIII.


The tread of Coronado's horse passing within fifteen feet of Thurstane
roused him from the troubled sleep into which he had sunk after his long
fainting fit.

Slowly he opened his eyes, to see nothing but long grasses close to his
face, and through them a haze of mountains and sky. His first moments of
wakening were so far from being a full consciousness that he did not
comprehend where he was. He felt very, very weak, and he continued to lie
still.

But presently he became aware of sounds; there was a trampling, and then
there were words; the voices of life summoned him to live. Instantly he
remembered two things: the starving comrades whom it was his duty to save,
and the loved girl whom he longed to find. Slowly and with effort,
grasping at the rock to aid his trembling knees, he rose to his feet just
as Clara turned her horse's head toward the plain.

Coronado threw a last anxious glance in the direction of the wretch whom
he meant to abandon to the desert. To his horror he saw a lean, smirched,
ghostly face looking at him in a dazed way, as if out of the blinding
shades of death. The quickness of this villain was so wonderful that one
is almost tempted to call it praiseworthy. He perceived at once that
Thurstane would be discovered, and that he, Coronado, must make the
discovery, or he might be charged with attempting to leave him to die.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed loudly, "there he is!"

Clara turned: there was a scream of joy: she was on the ground, running:
she was in Thurstane's arms. During that unearthly moment there was no
thought in those two of Coronado, or of any being but each other. It is
impossible fully to describe such a meeting; its exterior signs are beyond
language; its emotion is a lifetime. If words are feeble in presence of
the heights and depths of the Colorado, they are impotent in presence of
the altitudes and abysses of great passion. Human speech has never yet
completely expressed human intellect, and it certainly never will
completely express human sentiments. These lovers, who had been wandering
in chasms impenetrable to hope, were all of a sudden on mountain summits
dizzy with joy. What could they say for themselves, or what can another
say for them?

Clara only uttered inarticulate murmurs, while her hands crawled up
Thurstane's arms, pressing and clutching him to make sure that he was
alive. There was an indescribable pathos in this eagerness which could not
trust to sight, but must touch also, as if she were blind. Thurstane held
her firmly, kissing hair, forehead, and temples, and whispering, "Clara!
Clara!" Her face, which had turned white at the first glimpse of him, was
now roseate all over and damp with a sweet dew. It became smirched with
the dust of his face; but she would only have rejoiced, had she known it;
his very squalor was precious to her.

At last she fell back from him, held him at arm's length with ease, and
stared at him. "Oh, how sick!" she gasped. "How thin! You are starving."

She ran to her horse, drew from her saddle-bags some remnants of food, and
brought them to him. He had sunk down faint upon a stone, and he was too
weak to speak aloud; but he gave her a smile of encouragement which was at
once pathetic and sublime. It said, "I can bear all alone; you must not
suffer for me." But it said this out of such visible exhaustion, that,
instead of being comforted, she was terrified.

"Oh, you must not die," she whispered with quivering mouth. "If you die, I
will die."

Then she checked her emotion and added, "There! Don't mind me. I am silly.
Eat."

Meanwhile Coronado looked on with such a face as Iago might have worn had
he felt the jealousy of Othello. For the first time he positively knew
that the woman he loved was violently in love with another. He suffered so
horribly that we should be bound to pity him, only that he suffered after
the fashion of devils, his malignity equalling his agony. While he was in
such pain that his heart ceased beating, his fingers curled like snakes
around the handle of his revolver. Nothing kept him from shooting that
man, yes, and that woman also, but the certainty that the deed would make
him a fugitive for life, subject everywhere to the summons of the hangman.

Once, almost overcome by the temptation, he looked around for the train.
It was within hearing; he thought he saw Mrs. Stanley watching him; two of
his Mexicans were approaching at full speed. He dismounted, sat down upon
a stone, partially covered his face with his hand, and tried to bring
himself to look at the two lovers. At last, when he perceived that
Thurstane was eating and Clara merely kneeling by, he walked tremulously
toward them, scarcely conscious of his feet.

"Welcome to life, lieutenant," he said. "I did not wish to interrupt. Now
I congratulate."

Thurstane looked at him steadily, seemed to hesitate for a moment, and
then put out his hand.

"It was I who discovered you," went on Coronado, as he took the lean,
grimy fingers in his buckskin gauntlet.

"I know it," mumbled the young fellow; then with a visible effort he
added, "Thanks."

Presently the two Mexicans pulled up with loud exclamations of joy and
wonder. One of them took out of his haversack a quantity of provisions and
a flask of aguardiente; and Coronado handed them to Thurstane with a
smile, hoping that he would surfeit himself and die.

"No," said Clara, seizing the food. "You have eaten enough. You may
drink."

"Where are the others?" she presently asked.

"In the hills," he answered. "Starving. I must go and find them."

"No, no!" she cried. "You must go to the train. Some one else will look
for them."

One of the rancheros now dismounted and helped Thurstane into his saddle.
Then, the Mexican steadying him on one side and Clara riding near him on
the other, he was conducted to the train, which was at that moment going
into park near a thicket of willows.

In an amazingly short time he was very like himself. Healthy and plucky,
he had scarcely swallowed his food and brandy before he began to draw
strength from them; and he had scarcely begun to breathe freely before he
began to talk of his duties.

"I must go back," he insisted. "Glover and Sweeny are starving. I must
look them up."

"Certainly," answered Coronado.

"No!" protested Clara. "You are not strong enough."

"Of course not," chimed in Aunt Maria with real feeling, for she was
shocked by the youth's haggard and ghastly face.

"Who else can find them?" he argued. "I shall want two spare animals.
Glover can't march, and I doubt whether Sweeny can."

"You shall have all you need," declared Coronado.

"He mustn't go," cried Clara. Then, seeing in his face that he _would_ go,
she added, "I will go with him."

"No, no," answered several voices. "You would only be in the way."

"Give me my horse," continued Thurstane. "Where are Meyer and Kelly?"

He was told how they had gone on to Fort Yuma with Major Robinson, taking
his horse, the government mules, stores, etc.

"Ah! unfortunate," he said. "However, that was right. Well, give me a mule
for myself, two mounted muleteers, and two spare animals; some provisions
also, and a flask of brandy. Let me start as soon as the men and beasts
have eaten. It is forty miles there and back."

"But you can't find your way in the night," persisted Clara.

"There is a moon," answered Thurstane, looking at her gratefully; while
Coronado added encouragingly, "Twenty miles are easily done."

"Oh yes!" hoped Clara. "You can almost get there before dark. Do start at
once."

But Coronado did not mean that Thurstane should set out immediately. He
dropped various obstacles in the way: for instance, the animals and men
must be thoroughly refreshed; in short, it was dusk before all was ready.

Meantime Clara had found an opportunity of whispering to Thurstane.
"_Must_ you?" And he had answered, looking at her as the Huguenot looks at
his wife in Millais's picture, "My dear love, you know that I must."

"You _will_ be careful of yourself?" she begged. "For your sake."

"But remember that man," she whispered, looking about for Texas Smith.

"He is not going. Come, my own darling, don't frighten yourself. Think of
my poor comrades."

"I will pray for them and for you all the time you are gone. But oh,
Ralph, there is one thing. I must tell you. I am so afraid. I did wrong to
let Coronado see how much I care for you. I am afraid--"

He seemed to understand her. "It isn't possible," he murmured. Then, after
eyeing her gravely for a moment, he asked, "I may be always sure of you?
Oh yes! I knew it. But Coronado? Well, it isn't possible that he would try
to commit a treble murder. Nobody abandons starving men in a desert. Well,
I must go. I must save these men. After that we will think of these other
things. Good-by, my darling."

The sultry glow of sunset had died out of the west, and the radiance of a
full moon was climbing up the heavens in the east when Thurstane set off
on his pilgrimage of mercy. Clara watched him as long as the twilight
would let her see him, and then sat down with drooped face, like a flower
which has lost the sun. If any one spoke to her, she answered tardily and
not always to the purpose. She was fulfilling her promise; she was praying
for Thurstane and the men whom he had gone to save; that is, she was
praying when her mind did not wander into reveries of terror. After a time
she started up with the thought, "Where is Texas Smith?" He was not
visible, and neither was Coronado. Suspicious of some evil intrigue, she
set out in search of them, made the circuit of the fires, and then
wandered into the willow thickets. Amid the underwood, hastening toward
the wagons, she met Coronado.

"Ah!" he started. "Is that you, my little cousin? You are as terrible in
the dark as an Apache."

"Coronado, where is your hunter?" she asked with a beating heart.

"I don't know. I have been looking for him. My dear cousin, what do you
want?"

"Coronado, I will tell you the truth. That man is a murderer. I know it."

Coronado just took the time to draw one long breath, and then replied with
sublime effrontery, "I fear so. I learn that he has told horrible stories
about himself. Well, to tell the truth, I have discharged him."

"Oh, Coronado!" gasped Clara, not knowing whether to believe him or not.

"Shall I confess to you," he continued, "that I suspect him of having
weakened that towline so as to send our friend down the San Juan?"

"He never went near the boat," heroically answered Clara, at the same time
wishing she could see Coronado's face.

"Of course not. He probably hired some one. I fear our rancheros are none
too good to be bribed. I will confess to you, my cousin, that ever since
that day I have been watching Smith."