Overland Part 46

He thought he remembered the spring where Glover had broken down, and felt pretty sure that it could not be less than twenty miles from the camp.

Mounted as he was, he could put himself ahead of Thurstane and ambush him in some ravine. Of a sudden he laughed. It was not a burst of merriment, but a grim wrinkling of his dark, haggard cheeks, followed by a hissing chuckle. Texas seldom laughed, and with good reason, for it was enough to scare people.

"Mought be done," he muttered. "Mought git the better of 'em all that way.

Shute, 'an then yell. The greasers'ud think it was Injuns, an' they'd travel for camp. Then I'd stop the spare mules an' start for Californy."

For Texas this plan was a stroke of inspiration. He was not an intelligent scoundrel. All his ac.u.men, though bent to the one point of roguery, had barely sufficed hitherto to commit murders and escape hanging. He had never prospered financially, because he lacked financial ability. He was a beast, with all a tiger's ferocity, but with hardly more than a tiger's intelligence. He was a savage numskull. An Apache Tonto would have been more than his match in the arts of murder, and very nearly his match in the arts of civilization.

Instead of following Thurstane directly, he made a circuit of several miles through a ravine, galloped across a wide gra.s.sy plain, and pulled up among some rounded hillocks. Here, as he calculated, he was fifteen miles from camp, and five from the spot where lay Glover and Sweeny. The moon had already gone down and left the desert to the starlight. Posting himself behind a thicket, he waited for half an hour or more, listening with indefatigable attention.

He had no scruples, but he had some fears. If he should miss, the lieutenant would fire back, and he was cool enough to fire with effect.

Well, he wouldn't miss; what should he miss for? As for the greasers, they would run at the first shot. Nevertheless, he did occasionally muddle over the idea of going off to California with his gold, and without doing this particular job. What kept him to his agreement was the hope of stealing the spare mules, and the fear that the draft might not be paid if he shirked his work.

"I s'pose I must show his skelp," thought Texas, "or they won't hand over the dust."

At last there was a sound; he had set his ambush just right; there were voices in the distance; then hoofs in the gra.s.s. Next he saw something; it was a man on a mule; yes, and it was the right man.

He raised his c.o.c.ked rifle and aimed, sighting the head, three rods away.

Suddenly his horse whinnied, and then the mule of the other reared; but the bullet had already sped. Down went Thurstane in the darkness, while, with an Apache yell, Texas Smith burst from his ambush and charged upon the greasers.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

The chase after the spare mules carried Texas Smith several miles from the scene of the ambush, so that when he at last caught the frightened beasts, he decided not to go back and cut Thurstane's throat, but to set off at once westward and put himself by morning well on the road to California.

Meanwhile, the two muleteers continued their flight at full gallop, and eventually plunged into camp with a breathless story to the effect that Apaches had attacked them, captured the spare mules, and killed the lieutenant. Coronado, no more able to sleep than Satan, was the first to hear their tale.

"Apaches!" he said, surprised and incredulous. Then, guessing at what had happened, he immediately added, "Those devils again! We must push on, the moment we can see."

Apaches! It was a capital idea. He had an excuse now for hurrying away from a spot which he had stained with murder. If any one demanded that Thurstane's body should be sought for, or that those inc.u.mbrances Glover and Sweeny should be rescued, he could respond, Apaches! Apaches! He gave orders to commence preparations for moving at the first dawn.

He expected and feared that Clara would oppose the advance in some trying way. But one of the fugitives relieved him by blurting out the death of Thurstane, and sending her into spasms of alternate hysterics and fainting which lasted for hours. Lying in a wagon, her head in the lap of Mrs.

Stanley, a sick, very sick, dangerously sick girl, she was jolted along as easily as a corpse.

Coronado rode almost constantly beside her wagon, inquiring about her every few minutes, his face changing with contradictory emotions, wishing she would die and hoping she would live, loving and hating her in the same breath. Whenever she came to herself and recognized him, she put out her hands and implored, "Oh, Coronado, take me back there!"

"Apaches!" growled Coronado, and spurred away repeating his lie to himself, "Apaches! Apaches!"

Then he checked his horse and rode anew to her side, hoping that he might be able to reason with her.

"Oh, take me back!" was all the response he could obtain. "Take me back and let me die there."

"Would you have us all die?" he shouted--"like Pepita!"

"Don't scold her," begged Aunt Maria, who was sobbing like a child. "She doesn't know what she is asking."

But Clara knew too much; at the word _Pepita_ she guessed the torture scene; and then it came into her mind that Thurstane might be even now at the stake. She immediately broke into screams, which ended in convulsions and a long fit of insensibility.

"It is killing her," wailed Aunt Maria. "Oh, my child! my child!"

Coronado spurred at full speed for a mile, muttering to the desert, "Let it kill her! let it!"

At last he halted for the train to overtake him, glanced anxiously at Clara's wagon, saw that Mrs. Stanley was still bending over her, guessed that she was still alive, drew a sigh of relief, and rode on alone.

"Oh, this love-making!" sighed Aunt Maria scores of times, for she had at last learned of the engagement. "When will my s.e.x get over the weakness?

It kills them, and they like it."

That night Clara could not sleep, and kept Coronado awake with her moanings. All the next day she lay in a semi-unconsciousness which was partly lethargy and partly fever. It was well; at all events he could bear it so--bear it better than when she was crying and praying for death. The next night she fell into such a long silence of slumber that he came repeatedly to her wagon to hearken if she still breathed. Youth and a strong const.i.tution were waging a doubtful battle to rescue her from the despair which threatened to rob her of either life or reason.

So the journey continued. Henceforward the trail followed Bill Williams's river to the Colorado, tracked that stream northward to the Mohave valley, and, crossing there, took the line of the Mohave river toward California.

It was a prodigious pilgrimage still, and far from being a safe one. The Mohaves, one of the tallest and bravest races known, from six feet to six and a half in height, fighting hand to hand with short clubs, were not perfectly sure to be friendly. Coronado felt that, if ever he got his wife and his fortune, he should have earned them. He was resolute, however; there was no flinching yet in this versatile, yet obstinate nature; he was as wicked and as enduring as a Pizarro.

We will not make the journey; we must suppose it. Weeks after the desert had for a second time engulfed Thurstane, a coasting schooner from Santa Barbara entered the Bay of San Francisco, having on board Clara, Mrs.

Stanley, and Coronado.

The latter is on deck now, smoking his eternal cigarito without knowing it, and looking at the superb scenery without seeing it. A landscape mirrored in the eye of a horse has about as much effect on the brain within as a landscape mirrored in the eye of Coronado. He is a Latin; he has a fine ear for music, and he would delight in museums of painting and sculpture; but he has none of the pa.s.sion of the sad, grave, imaginative Anglican race for nature. Mountains, deserts, seas, and storms are to him obstacles and hardships. He has no more taste for them than had Ulysses.

He has agonized with sea-sickness during the voyage, and this is the first day that he has found tolerable. Once more he is able to eat and stand up; able to think, devise, resolve, and execute; able, in short, to be Coronado. Look at the little, sunburnt, sinewy, earnest, enduring man; study his diplomatic countenance, serious and yet courteous, full of gravity and yet ready for gayety; notice his ready smile and gracious wave of the hand as he salutes the skipper. He has been through horrors; he has fought a tremendous fight of pa.s.sion, crime, and peril; yet he scarcely shows a sign of it. There is some such lasting stuff in him as goes to make the Bolivars, Francias, and Lopez, the restless and indefatigable agitators of the Spanish-American communities. You cannot help sympathizing with him somewhat, because of his energy and bottom. You are tempted to say that he deserves to win.

He has made some progress in his conspiracy to entrap love and a fortune.

It must be understood that the two muleteers persisted in their story concerning Apaches, and that consequently Clara has come to think of Thurstane as dead. Meantime Coronado, after the first two days of wild excitement, has conducted himself with rare intelligence, never alarming her with talk of love, always courteous, kind, and useful. Little by little he has worn away her suspicions that he planned murder, and her only remaining anger against him is because he did not attempt to search for Thurstane; but even for that she is obliged to see some excuse in the terrible word "Apaches."

"I have had no thought but for _her_ safety," Coronado often said to Mrs.

Stanley, who as often repeated the words to Clara. "I have made mistakes,"

he would go on. "The San Juan journey was one. I will not even plead Garcia's instructions to excuse it. But our circ.u.mstances have been terrible. Who could always take the right step amid such trials? All I ask is charity. If humility deserves mercy, I deserve it."

Coronado even schooled himself into expressing sympathy with Clara for the loss of Thurstane. He spoke of him as her affianced, eulogized his character, admitted that he had not formerly done him justice, hinting that this blindness had sprung from jealousy, and so alluded to his own affection. These things he said at first to Aunt Maria, and she, his steady partisan, repeated them to Clara, until at last the girl could bear to hear them from Coronado. Sympathy! the bleeding heart must have it; it will accept this balm from almost any hand, and it will pay for it in grat.i.tude and trust.

Thus in two months from the disappearance of Thurstane his rival had begun to hope that he was supplanting him. Of course he had given up all thought of carrying out the horrible plan with which he had started from Santa Fe.

Indeed, he began to have a horror of Garcia, as a man who had set him on a wrong track and nearly brought him into folly and ruin. One might say that Satan was in a state of mind to rebuke sin.

Let us now glance at Clara. She is seated beside Aunt Maria on the quarter-deck of the schooner. Her troubles have changed her; only eighteen years old, she has the air of twenty-four; her once rounded face is thin, and her childlike sweetness has become tender gravity. When she entered on this journey she resembled the girl faces of Greuze; now she is sometimes a _mater amabilis_, and sometimes a _mater dolorosa_; for her grief has been to her as a maternity. The great change, so far from diminishing her beauty, has made her seem more fascinating and n.o.bler. Her countenance has had a new birth, and exhibits a more perfect soul.

We have hitherto had little more than a superficial view of the characters of our people. Events, incidents, adventures, and even landscapes have been the leading personages of the story, and have been to its human individualities what the Olympian G.o.ds are to Greek and Trojan heroes in the Iliad. Just as Jove or Neptune rules or thwarts Agamemnon and Achilles, so the monstrous circ.u.mstances of the desert have overborne, dwarfed, and blurred these travellers. It is only now, when they have escaped from the _dii majores_, and have become for a brief period tranquil free agents, that we can see them as they are. Even yet they are not altogether untrammelled. Man is never quite himself; he is always under some external influence, past or present; he is always being governed, if not being created.

Clara, born anew of trouble, is admirable. There is a sweet, sedate, and almost solemn womanliness about her, which even overawes Mrs. Stanley, conscious of aunthood and strongmindedness, and insisting upon it that her niece is "a mere child." It is a great victory to gain over a lady who has that sort of self-confidence that if she had been a sunflower and obliged to turn toward the sun for life, she would yet have believed that it was she who made him shine. When Clara decides a matter Mrs. Stanley, while still mentally saying "Young thing," feels nevertheless that her own decision has been uttered. And in every successive resistance she is overcome the easier, for habit is a conqueror.

They have just had a discussion. Aunt Maria wants Clara to stand on her dignity in a hotel until old Munoz goes down on his marrow-bones, makes her a handsome allowance, and agrees to leave her at least half his fortune. Clara's reply is substantially, "He is my grandfather and the proper head of my family. I think I ought to go straight to him and say, Grandfather, here I am."

Beaten by this gentle conscientiousness, Aunt Maria endeavored to appeal the matter to Coronado.

"I am so glad to see you enjoying your cigarito once more," she called to him with as sweet a smile as if she didn't hate tobacco.

He left his smoking retreat amidships, took off his hat with a sort of airy gravity, and approached them.

"Mr. Coronado, where do you propose to take us when we reach land?" asked Aunt Maria.