Overland Part 17

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

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

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

"Felt's though I'd got the dreadfullest influenzee thet ever snorted.

Twitched 'n' tickled like all possessed."

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

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

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

"So you are hurt?" said Thurstane to Texas Smith, noticing his torn and b.l.o.o.d.y shirt.

"It's jest a sc.r.a.pe," grunted the bushwhacker. "Mought'a'been worse."

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

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

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

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

"So be you."

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

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

"It's about time for him to flop round," replied Texas indifferently.

"Reckon you'll find him in the off hind wagon. I shoved him in thar."

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

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

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

"No, Senor."

"Do you think they knew?"

"Senor, I think not."

"Whose band was this?"

"Manga Colorada's."

"Where is Delgadito?"

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

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

"I think so, Senor."

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

"Thanks, Senor. Many thanks."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ask fur whiskey."

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

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

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

"Cap, that's so," returned Texas grimly. "When I fight Injuns, I never empty my revolver. I keep one barl for myself. You'd better do the same.