Overland Part 12

"You might manage it somehow, if you had the pluck."

"Had the pluck!" repeated Texas Smith. His sallow, haggard face turned dusky with rage, and his singularly black eyes flamed as if with h.e.l.l-fire. A Malay, crazed with opium and ready to run _amok_, could not present a more savage spectacle than this man did as he swayed in his saddle, grinding his teeth, clutching his rifle, and glaring at Coronado.

What chiefly infuriated him was that the insult should come from one whom he considered a "greaser," a man of inferior race. He, Texas Smith, an American, a _white man_, was treated as if he were an "Injun" or a "n.i.g.g.e.r." Coronado was thoroughly alarmed, and smoothed his ruffled feathers at once.

"I beg your pardon," he said, promptly. "My dear Mr. Smith, I was entirely wrong. Of course I know that you have courage. Everybody knows it.

Besides, I am under the greatest obligations to you. You saved my life. By heavens, I am horribly ashamed of my injustice."

A minute or so of this fluent apologizing calmed the bushwhacker's rage and soothed his injured feelings.

"But you oughter be keerful how you talk that way to a white man," he said. "No white man, if he's a gentleman, can stan' being told he hain't got no pluck."

"Certainly," a.s.sented Coronado. "Well, I have apologized. What more can I do?"

"Square, you're all right now," said the forgiving Texan, stretching out his bony, dirty hand and grasping Coronado's. "But don't say it agin.

White men can't stan' sech talk. Well, about this feller--I'll see, I'll see. Square, I'll try to do what's right."

As Coronado rode away from this interview, he ground his teeth with rage and mortification, muttering, "A _white_ man! a _white_ man! So I am a black man. Yes, I am a greaser. Curse this whole race of English-speaking people!"

After a while he began to think to the purpose. He too must work; he must not trust altogether to Texas Smith; the scoundrel might flinch, or might fail. Something must be done to separate Clara and Thurstane. What should it be? Here we are almost ashamed of Coronado. The trick that he hit upon was the stalest, the most threadbare, the most commonplace and vulgar that one can imagine. It was altogether unworthy of such a clever and experienced conspirator. His idea was this: to get lost with Clara for one night; in the morning to rejoin the train. Thurstane would be disgusted, and would unquestionably give up the girl entirely when Coronado should say to him, "It was a very unlucky accident, but I have done what a gentleman should, and we are engaged."

This coa.r.s.e, dastardly, and rather stupid stratagem he put into execution as quickly as possible. There were some dangers to be guarded against, as for instance Apaches, and the chance of getting lost in reality.

"Have an eye upon me to-day," he suggested to Texas. "If I leave the train with any one, follow me and keep a lookout for Indians. Only stay out of sight."

Now for an opportunity to lead Clara astray. The region was favorable; they were in an arid land of ragged sandstone spurs and b.u.t.tes; it would be necessary to march until near sunset, in order to find water and pasturage. Consequently there was both time and scenery for his project.

Late in the afternoon the train crossed a narrow _mesa_ or plateau, and approached a sublime terrace of rock which was the face of a second table-land. This terrace was cleft by several of those wonderful grooves which are known as canons, and which were wrought by that mighty water-force, the sculpturer of the American desert. In one place two of these openings were neighbors: the larger was the route and the smaller led nowhere.

"Let the train pa.s.s on," suggested Coronado to Clara. "If you will ride with me up this little canon, you will find some of the most exquisite scenery imaginable. It rejoins the large one further on. There is no danger."

Clara would have preferred not to go, or would have preferred to go with Thurstane.

"My dear child, what do you mean?" urged Aunt Maria, looking out of her wagon. "Mr. Coronado, I'll ride there with you myself."

The result of the dialogue which ensued was that, after the train had entered the gorge of the larger canon, Coronado and Clara turned back and wandered up the smaller one, followed at a distance by Texas Smith. In twenty minutes they were separated from the wagons by a barrier of sandstone several hundred feet high, and culminating in a sharp ridge or frill of rocky points, not unlike the spiny back of a John Dory. The scenery, although nothing new to Clara, was such as would be considered in any other land amazing. Vast walls on either side, consisting mainly of yellow sandstone, were variegated with white, bluish, and green shales, with layers of gypsum of the party-colored marl series, with long lines of white limestone so soft as to be nearly earth, and with red and green foliated limestone mixed with blood-red shales. The two wanderers seemed to be amid the landscapes of a Christmas drama as they rode between these painted precipices toward a crimson, sunset.

It was a perfect solitude. There was not a breath of life besides their own in this gorgeous valley of desolation. The ragged, crumbling battlements, and the loftier points of harder rock, would not have furnished subsistence for a goat or a mouse. Color was everywhere and life nowhere: it was such a region as one might look for in the moon; it did not seem to belong to an inhabited planet.

Before they had ridden half an hour the sun went down suddenly behind serrated steeps, and almost immediately night hastened in with his obscurities. Texas Smith, riding hundreds of yards in the rear and concealing himself behind the turning points of the canon, was obliged to diminish his distance in order to keep them under his guard. Clara had repeatedly expressed her doubts as to the road, and Coronado had as often a.s.serted that they would soon see the train. At last the ravine became a gully, winding up a breast of shadowy mountain c.u.mbered with loose rocks, and impa.s.sable to horses.

"We are lost," confessed Coronado, and then proceeded to console her. The train could not be far off; their friends would undoubtedly seek them; at all events, would not go on without them. They must bivouac there as well as might be, and in the morning rejoin the caravan.

He had been forethoughted enough to bring two blankets on his saddle, and he now spread them out for her, insisting that she should try to sleep.

Clara cried frankly and heartily, and begged him to lead her back through the canon. No; it could not be traversed by night, he a.s.serted; they would certainly break their necks among the bowlders. At last the girl suffered herself to be wrapped in the blankets, and made an endeavor to forget her wretchedness and vexation in slumber.

Meantime, a few hundred yards down the ravine, a tragedy was on the verge of action. Thurstane, missing Coronado and Clara, and learning what direction they had taken, started with two of his soldiers to find them, and was now picking his way on foot along the canon. Behind a detached rock at the base of one of the sandstone walls Texas Smith lay in ambush, aiming his rifle first at one and then at another of this stumbling trio, and cursing the starlight because it was so dim that he could not positively distinguish which was the officer.

CHAPTER IX.

For the second time within a week, Texas Smith found himself upon the brink of opportunity, without being able (as he had phrased it to Coronado) to do what was right.

He levelled at Thurstane, and then it did not seem to be Thurstane; he had a dead sure sight at Kelly, and then perceived that that was an error; he drew a bead on Shubert, and still he hesitated. He could distinguish the Lieutenant's voice, but he could not fix upon the figure which uttered it.

It was exasperating. Never had an a.s.sa.s.sin been better ambuscaded. He was kneeling behind a little ridge of sandstone; about a foot below its edge was an orifice made by the rains and winds of bygone centuries; through this, as through an embrasure, he had thrust his rifle. Not a chance of being hit by a return shot, while after the enemy's fire had been drawn he could fly down the ravine, probably without discovery and certainly without recognition. His horse was tethered below, behind another rock; and he felt positive that these men had not come upon it. He could mount, drive their beasts before him into the plain, and then return to camp. No need of explaining his absence; he was the head hunter of the expedition; it was his business to wander.

All this was so easy to do, if he could only take the first step. But he dared not fire lest he should merely kill a soldier, and so make an uproar and rouse suspicions without the slightest profit. It was not probable that Coronado would pay him for shooting the wrong man, and setting on foot a dangerous investigation. So the desperado continued to peer through the dim night, cursing his stars and everybody's stars for not s.h.i.+ning better, and seeing his opportunity slip rapidly away. After Thurstane and the others had pa.s.sed, after the chance of murder had stalked by him like a ghost and vanished, he left his ambush, glided down the ravine to his horse, waked him up with a vindictive kick, leaped into the saddle, and hastened to camp. To inquiries about the lost couple he replied in his sullen, brief way that he had not seen them; and when urged to go to their rescue, he of course set off in the wrong direction and travelled but a short distance.

Meantime Ralph had found the captives of the canon. Clara, wrapped in her blankets, was lying at the foot of a rock, and crying while she pretended to sleep. Coronado, unable to make her talk, irritated by the faint sobs which he overheard, but stubbornly resolved on carrying out his stupid plot, had retired in a state of ill-humor unusual with him to another rock, and was consoling himself by smoking cigarito after cigarito. The two horses, tied together neck and crupper, were fasting near by. As Coronado had forgotten to bring food with him, Clara was also fasting.

Think of Apaches, and imagine the terror with which she caught the sounds of approach, the heavy, stumbling steps through the darkness. Then imagine the joy with which she recognized Thurstane's call and groped to meet him.

In the dizziness of her delight, and amid the hiding veils of the obscurity, it did not seem wrong nor unnatural to fall against his arm and be supported by it for a moment. Ralph received this touch, this shock, as if it had been a ball; and his nature bore the impress of it as long as if it had made a scar. In his whole previous life he had not felt such a thrill of emotion; it was almost too powerful to be adequately described as a pleasure.

Next came Coronado, as happy as a disappointed burglar whose cue it is to congratulate the rescuing policeman. "My dear Lieutenant! You are heaven's own messenger. You have saved us from a horrible night. But it is prodigious; it is incredible. You must have come here by enchantment. How in G.o.d's name could you find your way up this fearful canon?"

"The canon is perfectly pa.s.sable on foot," replied the young officer, stiffly and angrily. "By Jove, sir! I don't see why you didn't make a start to get out. This is a pretty place to lodge Miss Van Diemen."

Coronado took off his hat and made a bow of submission and regret, which was lost in the darkness.

"I must say," Thurstane went on grumbling, "that, for a man who claims to know this country, your management has been very singular."

Clara, fearful of a quarrel, slightly pressed his arm and checked this volcano with the weight of a feather.

"We are not all like you, my dear Lieutenant," said Coronado, in a tone which might have been either apologetical or ironical. "You must make allowance for ordinary human nature."

"I beg pardon," returned Thurstane, who was thinking now chiefly of that pressure on his arm. "The truth is, I was alarmed for your safety. I can't help feeling responsibility on this expedition, although it is your train.

My military education runs me into it, I suppose. Well, excuse my excitement. Miss Van Diemen, may I help you back through the gully?"

In leaning on him, being guided by him, being saved by him, trusting in him, the girl found a pleasure which was irresistible, although it seemed audacious and almost sinful. Before the canon was half traversed she felt as if she could go on with him through the great dark valley of life, confiding in his strength and wisdom to lead her aright and make her happy. It was a temporary wave of emotion, but she remembered it long after it had pa.s.sed.

Around the fires, after a cup of hot coffee, amid the odors of a plentiful supper, recounting the evening's adventure to Mrs. Stanley, Coronado was at his best. How he rolled out the English language! Our mother tongue hardly knew itself, it ran so fluently and sounded so magniloquently and lied so naturally. He praised everybody but himself; he praised Clara, Thurstane, and the two soldiers and the horses; he even said a flattering word or two for Divine Providence. Clara especially, and the whole of her heroic, more than human s.e.x, demanded his enthusiastic admiration. How she had borne the terrors of the night and the desert! "Ah, Mrs. Stanley! only you women are capable of such efforts."

Aunt Maria's Olympian head nodded, and her cheerful face, glowing with tea and the camp fires, confessed "Certainly!"

"What nonsense, Coronado!" said Clara. "I was horribly frightened, and you know it."

Aunt Maria frowned with surprise and denial. "Absurd, child! You were not frightened at all. Of course you were not. Why, even if you had been slightly timorous, you had your cousin to protect you."

"Ah, Mrs. Stanley, I am a poor knight-errant," said Coronado. "We Mexicans are no longer formidable. One man of your Anglo-Saxon blood is supposed to be a better defence than a dozen of us. We have been subdued; we must submit to depreciation. I must confess, in fact, that I had my fears. I was greatly relieved on my cousin's account when I heard the voice of our military chieftain here."

Then came more flattery for Ralph, with proper rations for the two privates. Those faithful soldiers--he must show his grat.i.tude to them; he had forgotten them in the basest manner. "Here, Pedronillo, take these cigaritos to privates Kelly and Shubert, with my compliments. Begging _your_ permission, Lieutenant. _Thank_ you."

"Pooty tonguey man, that Seenor," observed Captain Phineas Glover to Mrs.

Stanley, when the Mexican went off to his blankets.

"Yes; a very agreeable and eloquent gentleman," replied the lady, wis.h.i.+ng to correct the skipper's statement while seeming to a.s.sent to it.