Overland Part 51

You have forgotten me. I am Major Robinson."

"I remember," said Clara, who had not recollected him at first because she was looking solely for Thurstane. "You pa.s.sed us in the desert."

"Yes, I took your soldiers away from you, and you declined my escort. I was anxious about you afterwards. Well, it has ended right in spite of me.

Of course you have heard of Thurstane's escape."

"Escape!" exclaimed Clara, her face turning scarlet and then pale. "Oh!

tell me!"

The major stared. He had guessed a love affair between these two; he had inferred it in the desert from the girl's anxiety about the young man.

How came it that she knew nothing of the escape?

"So I have heard," he went on. "I think there can be no mistake about it.

I learned it from a civilian who left Fort Yuma some weeks ago. I don't think he could have been mistaken. He told me that the lieutenant was there then. Not well, I am sorry to say; rather broken down by his hardships. Oh, nothing serious, you know. But he was a trifle under the weather, which may account for his not letting his friends hear from him."

At the story that Thurstane was alive, all Clara's love had arisen as if from a grave, and the mightier because of its resurrection. She was full of self-reproaches. It seemed to her that she had neglected him; that she had cruelly left him to die. Why had she not guessed that he was sick there, and flown to nurse him to health? What had he thought of her conduct? She must go to him at once.

"I am sorry to say that I can tell you no more," continued the major in response to her eager gaze.

"I am so obliged to you!" gasped Clara. "If you hear anything more, will you please let me know? Will you please come and see me?"

The major promised and took down her address, but added that he was just starting on an inspecting tour, and that for a fortnight to come he should be able to give her no further information.

They had scarcely parted ere Clara had resolved to go at once to Fort Yuma. The moment was favorable, for she had with her an intelligent and trustworthy servant, and Coronado had been summoned to a distance by business, so that he could make no opposition. She hastened to her lawyer's, finished her affairs there, drew what money she needed for her journey, learned that a brig was about to start for the Gulf, and sent her man to secure a pa.s.sage. When he returned with news that the Lolotte would sail next day at noon, she decided not to go back to the hacienda, and took rooms at a hotel.

What would people say? She did not care; she was going. She had been womanish and timorous too long; this was the great crisis which would decide her future; she must be worthy of it and of _him_. But remembering Aunt Maria, she sent a letter by messenger to the hacienda, explaining that pressing business called her to be absent for some weeks, and confessing in a postscript that her business referred to Lieutenant Thurstane. This letter brought Coronado down upon her next morning.

Returning home unexpectedly, he learned the news from his friend Mrs.

Stanley, and was hammering at Clara's door not more than an hour later, all in a tremble with anxiety and rage.

"This must not be," he stormed. "Such a journey! Twenty-five hundred miles! And for a man who has not deigned to write to you! It is degrading.

I will not have it. I forbid it."

"Coronado, stop!" ordered Clara; and it is to be feared that she stamped her little foot at him; at all events she quelled him instantly.

He sat down, glared like a mad dog, sprang up and rushed to the door, halted there to stare at her imploringly, and finally muttered in a hoa.r.s.e voice, "Well--let it be so--since you are crazed. But I shall go with you."

"You can go," replied Clara haughtily, after meditating for some seconds, during which he looked the picture of despair. "You can go, if you wish it."

An hour later she said, in her usually gentle tone, "Coronado, pardon me for having spoken to you angrily. You are kinder than I deserve."

The reader can infer from this speech how humble, helpful, and courteous the man had been in the mean time. Coronado was no half-way character; if he did not like you, he was the fellow to murder you; if he decided to be sweet, he was all honey. Perhaps we ought to ask excuse for Clara's tartness by explaining that she was in a state of extreme anxiety, remembering that Robinson had hesitated when he said Thurstane was not so very ill, and fearing lest he knew worse things than he had told.

Meanwhile, let no one suppose that the Mexican meant to let his lady love go to Fort Yuma. He had his plan for stopping her, and we may put confidence enough in him to believe that it was a good one; only at the last moment circ.u.mstances turned up which decided him to drop it. Yes, at the last moment, just as he was about to pull his leading strings, he saw good reason for wishing her far away from San Francisco.

A face appeared to him; at the first glimpse of it Coronado slipped into the nearest doorway, and from that moment his chief anxiety was to cause the girl to vanish. Yes, he must get her started on her voyage, even at the risk of her continuing it.

"What the devil is he here for?" he muttered. "Has he found out that she is living?"

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

At noon the Lolotte, a broad-beamed, flat-floored brig of light draught and good sailing qualities, hove up her anchor and began beating out of the Bay of San Francisco, with Coronado and Clara on her quarter-deck.

"You have no other pa.s.sengers, I understood you to say, captain," observed Coronado, who was anxious on that point, preferring there should be none.

The master, a Dane by birth named Jansen, who had grown up in the American mercantile service, was a middle-sized, broad-shouldered man, with a red complexion, red whiskers, and a look which was at once grave and fiery. He paused in his heavy lurching to and fro, looked at the Mexican with an air which was civil but very stiff, and answered in that discouraging tone with which skippers are apt to smother conversation when they have business on hand, "Yes, sir, one other."

Coronado presently slipped down the companionway, found the colored steward, c.h.i.n.ked five dollars into his h.o.r.n.y palm, and said, "My good fellow, you must look out for me; I shall want a good deal of help during the pa.s.sage."

"Yes, sah, very good, sah," was the answer, uttered in a greasy chuckle, as though it were the speech of a slab of bacon fat. "Make you up any little thing, sah. Have a sup now, sah? Little gruel? Little brof?"

"No, thank you," returned Coronado, turning half sick at the mention of those delicacies. "Nothing at present. By the way, one of the staterooms is occupied I see. Who is the other pa.s.senger?"

"Dunno, sah; keeps hisself shut up, an' says nothin' to n.o.body. 'Pears like he is sailin' under secret orders. Cur'ous' lookin' old gent; got only one eye."

One eye! Coronado thought of the face which had frightened him out of San Francisco, and wondered whether he were shut up in the Lolotte with it.

"One eye?" he asked. "Short, stout, dark old gentleman? Indeed! I think I know him."

Stepping to the door of a stateroom which he had already noticed as being kept closed, he tapped lightly. There was a muttering inside, a shuffling as of some one getting out of a berth, and then a low inquiry in Spanish, "Who is there?"

"Me, sah," returned Coronado, imitating, and imitating perfectly, the accent of the steward, who meantime had gone forward, talking and sn.i.g.g.e.ring to himself, after an idiotic way that he had.

The door opened a trifle, and Coronado instantly slipped the toe of his little boot into the crack, at the same time saying in his natural tone, "My dear uncle!"

Seeing that he was discovered, Garcia gave his nephew entrance, closed the door after him, locked it, and sat down trembling on the edge of the lower berth, groaning and almost whimpering, "Ah, my son! Ah, my dear Carlos!

Oh, what a life I have to lead! Madre de Dios, what a life! I thought you were one of my creditors. I did indeed, my dear Carlos, my son."

"I thought you went back to Santa Fe" was Coronado's reply.

"No, I did not go; I started, but I came back," mumbled Garcia. Then, plucking up a little spirit, he turned his one eye for a moment on his nephew's face, and added, "Why should I go to Santa Fe? I had no business there. My business is here."

"But after your attempt at the hacienda?"

"My attempt! I made no attempt. All that was a mistake. Because I was sick, I was frightened and did not know what to do. I ran away because you told me to run. I had given her nothing. Yes, I did put something in her chocolate, but it was my medicine. I meant to put in sugar, but I made a mistake and went to the wrong pocket, the pocket of my medicine. That was it, Carlos. I give you my word, word of a hidalgo, word of a Christian."

It was the same explanation which Coronado had invented to forestall suspicions at the hacienda. It was surely a wonderful coincidence of lying, and shows how great minds work alike. Vexed and angry as the nephew was, he could scarcely help smiling.

"My dear uncle!" he exclaimed, grasping Garcia's pudgy hand melodramatically. "The very thing that occurred to me! I told them so."

"Did you?" replied the old man, not much believing it. "Then all is well."

He wanted to ask how it was that Clara had survived her dose; but of course curiosity on that subject must not find vent; it would be equivalent to a confession.

"Where is she going?" were his next words.