Overland. John William De Forest
a magazine where Garcia stored his merchandise, and a caravansary where he parked his wagons. As Coronado lounged into the main doorway he was run against by a short, pursy old gentleman who was rushing out.
"Ah! there you are!" exclaimed the old gentleman, in Spanish. "O you pig! you dog! you never are here. O Madre de Dios! how I have needed you! There is no time to lose. Enter at once."
A dyspeptic, worn with work and anxieties, his nervous system shattered, Garcia was subject to fits of petulance which were ludicrous. In these rages he called everybody who would bear it pigs, dogs, and other more unsavory nicknames. Coronado bore it because thus he got his living, and got it without much labor.
"I want you," gasped Garcia, seizing the young man by the arm and dragging him into a private room. "I want to speak to you in confidence—in confidence, mind you, in confidence—about Muñoz."
"I have heard of it," said Coronado, as the old man stopped to catch his breath.
"Heard of it!" exclaimed Garcia, in such consternation that he turned yellow, which was his way of turning pale. "Has the news got here? O Madre de Dios!"
"Yes, I was at our little cousin's this evening. It is an ugly affair."
"And she knows it?" groaned the old man. "O Madre de Dios!"
"She told me of it. She is going there. I did the best I could. She was about to go overland, in charge of the American, Thurstane. I broke that up. I persuaded her to go by the isthmus."
"It is of little use," said Garcia, his eyes filmy with despair, as if he were dying. "She will get there. The property will be hers."
"Not necessarily. He has simply invited her to live with him. She may not suit."
"How?" demanded Garcia, open-eyed and open-mouthed with anxiety.
"He has simply invited her to live with him," repeated Coronado. "I saw the letter."
"What! you don't know, then?"
"Know what?"
"Muñoz is dead."
Coronado threw out, first a stare of surprise, and then a shout of laughter.
"And here they have just got a letter from him," he said presently; "and I have been persuading her to go to him by the isthmus!"
"May the journey take her to him!" muttered Garcia. "How old was this letter?"
"Nearly three months. It came by sea, first to New York, and then here."
"My news is a month later. It came overland by special messenger. Listen to me, Carlos. This affair is worse than you know. Do you know what Muñoz has done? Oh, the pig! the dog! the villainous pig! He has left everything to his granddaughter."
Coronado, dumb with astonishment and dismay, mechanically slapped his boot with his cane and stared at Garcia.
"I am ruined," cried the old man. "The pig of hell has ruined me. He has left me, his cousin, his only male relative, to ruin. Not a doubloon to save me.'
"Is there no chance?" asked Coronado, after a long silence.
"None! Oh—yes—one. A little one, a miserable little one. If she dies without issue and without a will, I am heir. And you, Carlos" (changing here to a wheedling tone), "you are mine."
The look which accompanied these last words was a terrible mingling of cunning, cruelty, hope, and despair.
Coronado glanced at Garcia with a shocking comprehension, and immediately dropped his dusky eyes upon the floor.
"You know I have made my will," resumed the old man, "and left you everything."
"Which is nothing," returned Coronado, aware that his uncle was insolvent in reality, and that his estate when settled would not show the residuum of a dollar.
"If the fortune of Muñoz comes to me, I shall be very rich."
"When you get it."
"Listen to me, Carlos. Is there no way of getting it?"
As the two men stared at each other they were horrible. The uncle was always horrible; he was one of the very ugliest of Spaniards; he was a brutal caricature of the national type. He had a low forehead, round face, bulbous nose, shaking fat cheeks, insignificant chin, and only one eye, a black and sleepy orb, which seemed to crawl like a snake. His exceedingly dark skin was made darker by a singular bluish tinge which resulted from heavy doses of nitrate of silver, taken as a remedy for epilepsy. His face was, moreover, mottled with dusky spots, so that he reminded the spectator of a frog or a toad. Just now he looked nothing less than poisonous; the hungriest of cannibals would not have dared eat him.
"I am ruined," he went on groaning. "The war, the Yankees, the Apaches, the devil—I am completely ruined. In another year I shall be sold out. Then, my dear Carlos, you will have no home."
"Sangre de Dios!" growled Coronado. "Do you want to drive me to the devil?
"O God! to force an old man to such an extremity!" continued Garcia. "It is more than an old man is fitted to strive with. An old man—an old, sick, worn-out man!"
"You are sure about the will?" demanded the nephew.
"I have a copy of it," said Garcia, eagerly. "Here it is. Read it. O Madre de Dios! there is no doubt about it. I can trust my lawyer. It all goes to her. It only comes to me if she dies childless and intestate."
"This is a horrible dilemma to force us into," observed Coronado, after he had read the paper.
"So it is," assented Garcia, looking at him with indescribable anxiety. "So it is; so it is. What is to be done?"
"Suppose I should marry her?"
The old man's countenance fell; he wanted to call his nephew a pig, a dog, and everything else that is villainous; but he restrained himself and merely whimpered, "It would be better than nothing. You could help me."
"There is little chance of it," said Coronado, seeing that the proposition was not approved. "She likes the American lieutenant much, and does not like me at all."
"Then—" began Garcia, and stopped there, trembling all over.
"Then what?"
The venomous old toad made a supreme effort and whispered, "Suppose she should die?"
Coronado wheeled about, walked two or three times up and down the room, returned to where Garcia sat quivering, and murmured, "It must be done quickly."
"Yes, yes," gasped the old man. "She must—it must be childless and intestate."
"She must go off in some natural way," continued the nephew.
The uncle looked up with a vague hope in his one dusky and filmy eye.
"Perhaps the isthmus will do it for her."
Again the old man turned to an image of despair, as he mumbled, "O Madre de Dios! no, no. The isthmus is nothing."
"Is the overland route more dangerous?" asked Coronado.
"It might be made more dangerous. One gets lost in the desert. There are Apaches."
"It is a horrible business," growled Coronado, shaking his head and biting his lips.
"Oh, horrible, horrible!" groaned Garcia. "Muñoz was a pig, and a dog, and a toad, and a snake."
"You old coward! can't you speak out?" hissed Coronado, losing his patience. "Do you want me both to devise and execute, while you take the purses? Tell me at once what your plan is."
"The overland route," whispered Garcia, shaking from head to foot. "You go with her. I pay—I pay everything. You shall have men, horses, mules, wagons, all you want."
"I shall want money, too. I shall need, perhaps, two thousand dollars. Apaches."
"Yes,