Overland. John William De Forest
hundred yards of Clara, and raging because he could not find her. Suddenly Coronado's cooking fires flickered through the gloom; in five minutes the two parties were together.
It was a joyous meeting to Thurstane and a disgusting one to Coronado. Nevertheless the latter rushed at the officer, grasped him by both hands, and shouted, "All hail, Lieutenant! So, there you are at last! My dear fellow, what a pleasure!"
"Yes, indeed, by Jove!" returned the young fellow, unusually boisterous in his joy, and shaking hands with everybody, not rejecting even muleteers. And then what throbbing, what adoration, what supernal delight, in the moment when he faced Clara.
In the morning the journey recommenced. As neither Thurstane nor Coronado had now any cause for hurry, the pace was moderate. The soldiers marched on foot, in order to leave the government mules no other load than the rations and ammunition, and so enable them to recover from their sharp push of over eighty miles. The party now consisted of twenty-five men, for the most part pretty well armed. Of the other sex there were, besides Mrs. Stanley and Clara, a half-breed girl named Pepita, who served as lady's maid, and two Indian women from Garcia's hacienda, whose specialties were cooking and washing. In all thirty persons, a nomadic village.
At the first halt Sergeant Weber approached Thurstane with a timorous air, saluted, and asked, "Leftenant, can we leafe our knabsacks in the vagons? The gentleman has gifen us bermission."
"The men ought to learn to carry their knapsacks," said Thurstane. "They will have to do it in serious service."
"It is drue, Leftenant," replied Weber, saluting again and moving off without a sign of disappointment.
"Let that man come back here," called Aunt Maria, who had overheard the dialogue. "Certainly they can put their loads in the wagons. I told Mr. Coronado to tell them so."
Weber looked at her without moving a muscle, and without showing either wonder or amusement. Thurstane could not help grinning good-naturedly as he said, "I receive your orders, Mrs. Stanley. Weber, you can put the knapsacks in the wagons."
Weber saluted anew, gave Mrs. Stanley a glance of gratitude, and went about his pleasant business. An old soldier is not in general so strict a disciplinarian as a young one.
"What a brute that Lieutenant is!" thought Aunt Maria. "Make those poor fellows carry those monstrous packs? Nonsense and tyranny! How different from Mr. Coronado! He fairly jumped at my idea."
Thurstane stepped over to Coronado and said, "You are very kind to relieve my men at the expense of your animals. I am much obliged to you."
"It is nothing," replied the Mexican, waving his hand graciously. "I am delighted to be of service, and to show myself a good citizen."
In fact, he had been quite willing to favor the soldiers; why not, so long as he could not get rid of them? If the Apaches would lance them all, including Thurstane, he would rejoice; but while that could not be, he might as well show himself civil and gain popularity. It was not Coronado's style to bark when there was no chance of biting.
He was in serious thought the while. How should he rid himself of this rival, this obstacle in the way of his well-laid plans, this interloper into his caravan? Must he call upon Texas Smith to assassinate the fellow? It was a disagreeably brutal solution of the difficulty, and moreover it might lead to loud suspicion and scandal, and finally it might be downright dangerous. There was such a thing as trial for murder and for conspiracy to effect murder. As to causing a United States officer to vanish quietly, as might perhaps be done with an ordinary American emigrant, that was too good a thing to be hoped. He must wait; he must have patience; he must trust to the future; perhaps some precipice would favor him; perhaps the wild Indians. He offered his cigaritos to Thurstane, and they smoked tranquilly in company.
"What route do you take from here?" asked the officer.
"Pass Washington, as you call it. Then the Moqui country. Then the San Juan."
"There is no possible road down the San Juan and the Colorado."
"If we find that to be so, we will sweep southward. I am, in a measure, exploring. Garcia wants a route to Middle California."
"I also have a sort of exploring leave. I shall take the liberty to keep along with you. It may be best for both."
The announcement sounded like a threat of surveillance, and Coronado's dark cheek turned darker with angry blood. This stolid and intrusive brute was absolutely demanding his own death. After saying, with a forced smile, "You will be invaluable to us, Lieutenant," the Mexican lounged away to where Texas Smith was examining his firearms, and whispered, "Well, will you do it?"
"I ain't afeared of him," muttered the borderer. "It's his clothes. I don't like to shute at jackets with them buttons. I mought git into big trouble. The army is a big thing."
"Two hundred dollars," whispered Coronado.
"You said that befo'," croaked Texas. "Go it some better."
"Four hundred."
"Stranger," said Texas, after debating his chances, "it's a big thing. But I'll do it for that."
Coronado walked away, hurried up his muleteers, exchanged a word with Mrs. Stanley, and finally returned to Thurstane. His thin, dry, dusky fingers trembled a little, but he looked his man steadily in the face, while he tendered him another cigarito.
"Who is your hunter?" asked the officer. "I must say he is a devilish bad-looking fellow."
"He is one of the best hunters Garcia ever had," replied the Mexican. "He is one of your own people. You ought to like him."
Further journeying brought with it topographical adventures. The country into which they were penetrating is one of the most remarkable in the world for its physical peculiarities. Its scenery bears about the same relation to the scenery of earth in general, that a skeleton's head or a grotesque mask bears to the countenance of living humanity. In no other portion of our planet is nature so unnatural, so fanciful and extravagant, and seemingly the production of caprice, as on the great central plateau of North America.
They had left far behind the fertile valley of the Rio Grande, and had placed between it and them the barren, sullen piles of the Jemez mountains. No more long sweeps of grassy plain or slope; they were amid the débris of rocks which hedge in the upper heights of the great plateau; they were struggling through it like a forlorn hope through chevaux-de-frise. The morning sun came upon them over treeless ridges of sandstone, and disappeared at evening behind ridges equally naked and arid. The sides of these barren masses, seamed by the action of water in remote geologic ages, and never softened or smoothed by the gentle attrition of rain, were infinitely more wild and jagged in their details than ruins. It seemed as if the Titans had built here, and their works had been shattered by thunderbolts.
Many heights were truncated mounds of rock, resembling gigantic platforms with ruinous sides, such as are known in this Western land as mesas or buttes. They were Nature's enormous mockery of the most ambitious architecture of man, the pyramids of Egypt and the platform of Baalbek. Terrace above terrace of shattered wall; escarpments which had been displaced as if by the explosion of some incredible mine; ramparts which were here high and regular, and there gaping in mighty fissures, or suddenly altogether lacking; long sweeps of stairway, winding dizzily upwards, only to close in an impossible leap: there was no end to the fantastic outlines and the suggestions of destruction.
Nor were the open spaces between these rocky mounds less remarkable. In one valley, the course of a river which vanished ages ago, the power of fire had left its monuments amid those of the power of water. The sedimentary rock of sandstone, shales, and marl, not only showed veins of ignitible lignite, but it was pierced by the trap which had been shot up from earth's flaming recesses. Dikes of this volcanic stone crossed each other or ran in long parallels, presenting forms of fortifications, walls of buildings, ruined lines of aqueducts. The sandstone and marl had been worn away by the departed river, and by the delicately sweeping, incessant, tireless wings of the afreets of the air, leaving the iron-like trap in bold projection.