Overland Part 27

"This was not taken," decided the Lieutenant, after a tactical meditation.

"This must have been abandoned by its inhabitants. Pestilence, or starvation, or migration."

"We can beat off all the Apaches in New Mexico," observed Coronado, with something like cheerfulness.

"We can whip everything but our own stomachs," replied Thurstane.

"We have as much food as those devils."

"But water?" suggested the forethoughted West Pointer.

It was a horrible doubt, for if there was no water in the enclosure, they were doomed to speedy and cruel death, unless they could beat the Indians in the field and drive them away from the rivulet.

CHAPTER XX.

When Thurstane came out of the Casa Grande he would have given some years of his life to know that there was water in the enclosure.

Yet so well disciplined was the soul of this veteran of twenty-three, and so thoroughly had he acquired the wise soldierly habit of wearing a mask of cheer over trouble, that he met Clara and Mrs. Stanley with a smile and a bit of small talk.

"Ladies, can you keep house?" he said. "There are sixteen rooms ready for you. The people who moved out haven't left any trumpery. Nothing wanted but a little sweeping and dusting and a stair carpet."

"We will keep house," replied Clara with a laugh, the girlish gayety of which delighted him.

a.s.suming a woman's rightful empire over household matters, she began to direct concerning storage, lodgment, cooking, etc. Sharp as the climbing was, she went through all the stories and inspected every room, selecting the chamber in the tower for herself and Mrs. Stanley.

"I never can get up in this world," declared Aunt Maria, staring in dismay at the rude ladder. "So this is what Mr. Thurstane meant by talking about a stair carpet! It was just like him to joke on such a matter. I tell you I never can go up."

"Av coorse ye can get up," broke in little Sweeny impatiently. "All ye've got to do is to put wan fut above another an' howld on wid yer ten fingers."

"I should like to see _you_ do it," returned Aunt Maria, looking indignantly at the interfering Paddy.

Sweeny immediately shinned up the stepped beam, uttered a neigh of triumphant laughter from the top, and then skylarked down again.

"Well, _you_ are a man," observed the strong-minded lady, somewhat discomfited. "Av coorse I'm a man," yelped Sweeny. "Who said I wasn't?

He's a lying informer. Ha ha, hoo hoo, ho ho!"

Thus incited, pulled at moreover from above and boosted from below, Aunt Maria mounted ladder after ladder until she stood on the roof of the Casa Grande.

"If I ever go down again, I shall have to drop," she gasped. "I never expected when I came on this journey to be a sailor and climb maintops."

"Lieutenant Thurstane is waving his hand to us," said Clara, with a smile like sunlight.

"Let him wave," returned Mrs. Stanley, weary, disconsolate, and out of patience with everything. "I must say it's a poor place to be waving hands."

Meantime Thurstane had beckoned a couple of muleteers to follow him, and set off to beat the enclosure for a spring, or for a spot where it would be possible to sink a well with good result. Although the search seemed absurd on such an isolated hill, he had some hopes; for in the first place, the old inhabitants must have had a large supply of water, and they could not have brought it up a steep slope of two hundred feet without great difficulty; in the second place, the b.u.t.te was of limestone, and in a limestone region water makes for itself strange reservoirs and outlets.

His trust was well-grounded. In a sharply indented hollow, twenty feet below the general surface of the enclosure, and not more than thirty yards from the Casa Grande, he found a copious spring. About it were traces of stone work, forming a sort of ruinous semicircle, as though a well had been dug, the neighboring earth scooped out, and the sides of the opening fenced up with masonry. By the way, he was not the first to discover the treasure, for the acute senses of the mules had been beforehand with him, and a number of them were already there drinking.

Calling Meyer, he said, "Sergeant, get a fatigue party to work here. I want a transverse trench cut below the spring for the animals, and a guard at the spring itself to keep it clear for the people."

Next he hurried away to the spot where he had posted Kelly to watch the Apaches.

Climbing the wall, he looked about for the Apaches, and discovered them about half a mile distant, bivouacked on the bank of the rivulet.

"They have been reinforced, sir," said Kelly. "Stragglers are coming up every few minutes."

"So I perceive. Have you seen anything of the girl Pepita?"

"There's a figure there, sir, against that sapling, that hasn't moved for half an hour. I've an idea it's the girl, sir, tied to the sapling."

Thurstane adjusted his gla.s.s, took a long steady look, and said sombrely, "It's the girl. Keep an eye on her. If they start to do anything with her, let me know. Signal with your cap."

As he hurried back to the Casa Grande he tried to devise some method of saving this unfortunate. A rescue was impossible, for the savages were numerous, watchful, and merciless, and in case they were likely to lose her they would brain her. But she might be ransomed: blankets, clothing, and perhaps a beast or two could be spared for that purpose; the gold pieces that he had in his waist-belt should all go of course. The great fear was lest the brutes should find all bribes poor compared with the joys of a torture dance. Querying how he could hide this horrible affair from Clara, and shuddering at the thought that but for favoring chances she might have shared the fate of Pepita he ran on toward the Casa, waving his hand cheerfully to the two women on the roof Meantime Clara had been attending to her housekeeping and Mrs. Stanley had been attending to her feelings. The elder lady (we dare not yet call her an old lady) was in the lowest spirits. She tried to brace herself; she crossed her hands behind her back, man-fashion; she marched up and down the roof man-fashion. All useless; the transformation didn't work; or, if she was a man, she was a scared one.

She could not help feeling like one of the spirits in prison as she glanced at the awful solitude around her. Notwithstanding the river, there still was the desert. The little plain was but an oasis. Two miles to the east the San Juan burst out of a defile of sandstone, and a mile to the west it disappeared in a similar chasm. The walls of these gorges rose abruptly two thousand feet above the hurrying waters. All around were the monstrous, arid, herbless, savage, cruel ramparts of the plateau. No outlook anywhere; the longest reach of the eye was not five miles; then came towering precipices. The travellers were like ants gathered on an inch of earth at the bottom of a fissure in a quarry. The horizon was elevated and limited, resting everywhere on harsh lines of rock which were at once near the spectator and far above him. The overhanging plateaux strove to shut him out from the sight of heaven.

What variety there was in the grim monotony appeared in shapes that were horrible to the weary and sorrowful. On the other side of the San Juan towered an a.s.semblage of pinnacles which looked like statues; but these statues were a thousand feet above the stream, and the smallest of them was at least four hundred feet high. To a lost wanderer, and especially to a dispirited woman, such magnitude was not sublime, but terrifying. It seemed as if these shapes were G.o.ds who had no mercy, or demons who were full of malevolence. Still higher, on a jutting crag which overhung the black river, was a castle a hundred fold huger than man ever built, with ramparts that were dizzy precipices and towers such as no daring could scale. It faced the horrible group of stony deities as if it were their pandemonium.

The whole landscape was a hideous Walhalla, a fit abode for the savage giant G.o.ds of the old Scandinavians. Thor and Woden would have been at home in it. The Cyclops and t.i.tans would have been too little for it. The Olympian deities could not be conceived of as able or willing to exist in such a hideous chaos. No creature of the Greek imagination would have been a suitable inhabitant for it except Prometheus alone. Here his eternal agony and boundless despair might not have been out of place.

There was no comfort in the river. It came out of unknown and inhospitable mystery, and went into a mystery equally unknown and inhospitable. To what fate it might lead was as uncertain as whence it arrived. A sombre flood, reddish brown in certain lights, studded with rocks which raised ghosts of unmoving foam, flowing with a speed which perpetually boiled and eddied, promising nothing to the voyager but thousand-fold shipwreck, a breathless messenger from the mountains to the ocean, it wheeled incessantly from stony portal to stony portal, a brief gleam of power and cruelty. The impression which it produced was in unison with the sublime malignity and horror of the landscape.

Depressed by fatigue, the desperate situation of the party, and the menace of the frightful scene around her, Mrs. Stanley could not and would not speak to Thurstane when he mounted the roof, and turned away to hide the tears in her eyes.

"You see I am housekeeping," said Clara with a smile. "Look how clean the room in the tower has been swept. I had some brooms made of tufted gra.s.s.

There are our beds in the corners. These hard-finished walls are really handsome."

She stopped, hesitated a moment, looked at him anxiously, and then added, "Have you seen Pepita?"

"Yes," he replied, deciding to be frank. "I think I have discovered her tied to a tree."

"Oh! to be tortured!" exclaimed Clara, wringing her hands and beginning to cry.

"We will ransom her," he hurried on. "I am going down to hold a parley with the Apaches."

"_You_!" exclaimed the girl, catching his arm. "Oh no! Oh, why did we come here!"

Fearing lest he should be persuaded to evade what he considered his duty, he pressed her hand fervently and hurried away. Yes, he repeated, it was _his_ duty; to parley with the Apaches was a most dangerous enterprise; he did not feel at liberty to order any other to undertake it.

Finding Coronado, he said to him, "I am going down to ransom Pepita. You know the Indians better than I do. How many people shall I take?"

A gleam of satisfaction shot across the dark face of the Mexican as he replied, "Go alone."

"Certainly," he insisted, in response to the officer's stare of surprise.

"If you take a party, they'll doubt you. If you go alone, they'll parley.

But, my dear Lieutenant, you are magnificent. This is the finest moment of your life. Ah! only you Americans are capable of such impulses. We Spaniards haven't the nerve."