Overland Part 33

"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 a.s.sault 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-gla.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e; perhaps swing it clear across the river in that way--with some paddling, you know."

"It is an excellent plan," said Coronado.

The day pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l 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 sh.o.r.e."

"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 sh.o.r.e 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. Pa.s.sing 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-sh.e.l.l as it was. Moreover, the loose line almost instantly took the direction of the stream, and swept so rapidly sh.o.r.eward 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 c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l 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 sh.o.r.e! 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 ma.s.sacred by the Apaches; she would starve in the desert, etc.