Overland Part 44

"All right, Schmidt; I pelieve you. If there is no more drubble, you will not pe called up again."

"Ask him what he thinks of the leftenant's chances," suggested Kelly to his superior.

"Reckon he'll hev to run the river a spell," returned the borderer.

"Reckon he'll hev to run it a h.e.l.l of a ways befo' he'll be able to git across the dam country."

"Ask him what the chances be of running the river safely," added Kelly.

"Dam slim," answered Texas; and there the talk ended. There was some meditative chewing, after which the three returned to the bivouac, and either lay down to sleep or took their tours at guard duty.

At dawn the party recommenced its flight toward the Moqui country. There were sixty hours more of hard riding, insufficient sleep, short rations, thirst, and anxiety. Once the suffering animals stampeded after water, and ran for several miles over plateaux of rock, das.h.i.+ng off burdens and riders, and only halting when they were plunged knee-deep in the water-hole which they had scented. One of the wounded rancheros expired on the mule to which he was strapped, and was carried dead for several hours, his ashy-brown face swinging to and fro, until Coronado had him thrown into a crevice.

Amid these hards.h.i.+ps and horrors Clara showed no sign of flagging or flinching. She was very thin; bad food, excessive fatigue, and anxiety had reduced her; her face was pinched, narrowed, and somewhat lined; her expression was painfully set and eager. But she never asked for repose, and never complained. Her mind was solely fixed upon finding Thurstane, and her feverish bright eyes continually searched the horizon for him. She seemed to have lost her power of sympathizing with any other creature. To Mrs. Stanley's groanings and murmurings she vouchsafed rare and brief condolences. The dead muleteer and the tortured, bellowing animals attracted little of her notice. She was not hard-hearted; she was simply almost insane. In this state of abnormal exaltation she continued until the party reached the quiet and safety of the Moqui pueblos.

Then there was a change; exhausted nature required either apathy or death; and for two days she lay in a sort of stupor, sleeping a great deal, and crying often when awake. The only person capable of rousing her was Sergeant Meyer, who made expeditions to the other pueblos for news of Thurstane, and brought her news of his hopes and his failures.

After a three days' rest Coronado decided to resume his journey by moving southward toward the Bernalillo trail. Freed from Thurstane, he no longer contemplated losing Clara in the desert, but meant to marry her, and trusted that he could do it. Two of his wagons he presented to the Moquis, who were, of course, delighted with the acquisition, although they had no more use for wheeled vehicles than for gunboats. With only four wagons, his animals were more than sufficient, and the train made tolerably rapid progress, in spite of the roughness of the country.

The land was still a wonder. The water wizards of old had done their grotesque utmost here. What with sculpturing and frescoing, they had made that most fantastic wilderness the Painted Desert. It looked like a mirage. The travellers had an impression that here was some atmospheric illusion. It seemed as if it could not last five minutes if the sun should s.h.i.+ne upon it. There were crowding hills so variegated and gay as to put one in mind of ma.s.ses of soap-bubbles. But the coloring was laid on fifteen hundred feet deep. It consisted of sandstone marls, red, blue, green, orange, purple, white, brown, lilac, and yellow, interstratified with magnesian limestone in bands of purple, bluish-white, and mottled, with here and there s.h.i.+ning flecks or great glares of gypsum.

Among the more delicate wonders of the scene were the petrified trunks which had once been pines and cedars, but which were now flint or jasper.

The was.h.i.+ngs of geologic aeons have exposed to view immense quant.i.ties of these enchanted forests. Fragments of silicified trees are not only strewn over the lowlands, but are piled by the hundred cords at the bases of slopes, seeming like so much drift-wood from wonder-lands far up the stream of time. Generally they are in short bits, broken square across the grain, as if sawed. Some are jasper, and look like ma.s.ses of red sealing-wax; others are agate, or opalescent chalcedony, beautifully lined and variegated; many retain the graining, layers, knots, and other details of their woody structure.

In places where the marls had been washed away gently, the emigrants found trunks complete, from root to summit, fifty feet in length and three in diameter. All the branches, however, were gone; the tree had been uprooted, transported, whirled and worn by deluges; then to commemorate the victory of the water sprites, it had been changed into stone. The sight of these remnants of antediluvian woodlands made history seem the reminiscence of a child. They were already petrifactions when the human race was born.

The Painted Desert has other marvels. Throughout vast stretches you pa.s.s between tinted _mesas_, or tables, which face each other across flat valleys like painted palaces across the streets of Genova la Superba. They are giant splendors, hundreds of feet in height, built of blood-red sandstone capped with variegated marls. The torrents, which scooped out the intersecting levels, amused their monstrous leisure with carving the points and abutments of the _mesa_ into fantastic forms, so that the traveller sees towers, minarets, and spires loftier than the pinnacles of cathedrals.

The emigrants were often deceived by these freaks of nature. Beheld from a distance, it seemed impossible that they should not be ruins, the monuments of some Cyclopean race. Aunt Maria, in particular, discovered casas grandes and casas de Montezuma very frequently.

"There is another casa," she would say, staring through her spectacles (broken) at a b.u.t.te three hundred feet high. "What a people it must have been which raised such edifices!"

And she would stick to it, too, until she was close up to the solid rock, and then would renew the transforming miracle five or ten miles further on.

During this long and marvellous journey Coronado renewed his courts.h.i.+p. He was cautious, however; he made a confidant of his friend Aunt Maria; begged her favorable intercession.

"Clara," said Mrs. Stanley, as the two women jolted along in one of the lumbering wagons, "there is one thing in your life which perhaps you don't suspect."

The girl, who wanted to hear about Thurstane all the time, and expected to hear about him, asked eagerly, "What is it?"

"You have made Mr. Coronado fall in love with you," said Aunt Maria, thinking it wise to be clear and straightforward, as men are reputed to be.

The young lady, instantly revolting from the subject, made no reply.

"I think, Clara, that if you take a husband--and most women do--he would be just the person for you."

Clara, once the gentlest of the gentle, was perfectly angelic no longer.

She gave her relative a stare which was partly intense misery, but which had much the look of pure anger, as indeed it was in a measure.

The expressions of violent emotion are alarming to most people. Aunt Maria, beholding this tortured soul glaring at her out of its prison windows, recoiled in surprise and awe. There was not another word spoken at the time concerning the obnoxious match-making. A single stare of Marius had put to flight the executioner.

In one way and another Clara continued to baffle her suitor and her advocate. The days dragged on; the expedition steadily traversed the desert; the Santa Anna region was crossed, and the Bernalillo trail reached; one hundred, two hundred, three hundred miles and more were left behind; and still Coronado, though without a rival, was not accepted.

Then came an adventure which partly helped and partly hindered his plans.

The train was overtaken by a detachment of the Fifth United States Cavalry, commanded by Major John Robinson, pus.h.i.+ng for California. Of course Sergeant Meyer reported himself and Kelly to the Major, and of course the Major ordered them to join his party as far as Fort Yuma. This deprived Clara of her trusted protectors; but on the other hand, she threatened to take advantage of the escort of Robinson for the rest of her journey; and the mere mention of this at once brought Coronado on his soul's marrow-bones. He swore by the heaven above, by all the saints and angels, by the throne of the Virgin Mary, by every sacred object he could think of, that not another word of love should pa.s.s his lips during the journey, that he would live the life of a dead man, etc. Overcome by his pleadings, and by the remonstrances of Aunt Maria, who did not want to have her favorite driven to commit suicide, Clara agreed to continue with the train.

After this scene followed days of hot travelling over hard, gravelly plains, thinly coated with gra.s.s and dotted with cacti, mezquit trees, the leafless palo verde, and the greasewood bush. Here and there towered that giant cactus, the saguarra, a fluted shaft, thirty, forty, and even sixty feet high, with a coronet of richly-colored flowers, the whole fabric as splendid as a Corinthian column. p.r.i.c.kly pears, each one large enough to make a thicket, abounded. Through the scorching suns.h.i.+ne ran scorpions and lizards, pursued by enormous rattlesnakes. During the days the heat ranged from 100 to 115 deg. in the shade, while the nights were swept by winds as parching as the breath of an oven. The distant mountains glared at the eye like metals brought to a white heat. Not seldom they pa.s.sed horses, mules, cattle, and sheep, which had perished in this terrible transit and been turned to mummies by the dry air and baking sun. Some of these carca.s.ses, having been set on their legs by pa.s.sing travellers, stood upright, staring with blind eyeb.a.l.l.s, grinning through dried lips, mockeries of life, statues of death.

In spite of these hards.h.i.+ps and horrors, Clara kept up her courage and was almost cheerful; for in the first place Coronado had ceased his terrifying attentions, and in the second place they were nearing Cactus Pa.s.s, where she hoped to meet Thurstane. When love has not a foot of certainty to stand upon, it can take wing and soar through the incredible. The idea that they two, divided hundreds of miles back, should come together at a given point by pure accident, was obviously absurd. Yet Clara could trust to the chance and live for it.

The scenery changed to mountains. There were barren, sublime, awful peaks to the right and left. To the girl's eyes they were beautiful, for she trusted that Thurstane beheld them. She was always on horseback now, scanning every feature of the landscape, searching of course for him. She did not pa.s.s a cactus, or a thicket of mezquit, or a bowlder without anxious examination. She imagined herself finding him helpless with hunger, or pa.s.sing him unseen and leaving him to die. She was so pale and thin with constant anxiety that you might have thought her half starved, or recovering from some acute malady.

About five one afternoon, as the train was approaching its halting-place at a spring on the western side of the pa.s.s, Clara's feverish mind fixed on a group of rocks half a mile from the trail as the spot where she would find Thurstane. In obedience to similar impressions she had already made many expeditions of this nature. Constant failure, and a consciousness that all this searching was folly, could not shake her wild hopes. She set off at a canter alone; but after going some four hundred yards she heard a gallop behind her, and, looking over her shoulder, she saw Coronado. She did not want to be away from the train with him; but she must at all hazards reach that group of rocks; something within impelled her. Better mounted than she, he was soon by her side, and after a while struck out in advance, saying, "I will look out for an ambush."

When Coronado reached the rocks he was fifty yards ahead of Clara. He made the circuit of them at a slow canter; in so doing he discovered the starving and fainted Thurstane lying in the high gra.s.s beneath a low shelf of stone; he saw him, he recognized him, and in an instant he trembled from head to foot. But such was his power of self-control that he did not check his horse, nor cast a second look to see whether the man was alive or dead. He turned the last stone in the group, met Clara with a forced smile, and said gently, "There is nothing."

She reined up, drew a long sigh, thought that here was another foolish hope crushed, and turned her horse's head toward the train.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

The tread of Coronado's horse pa.s.sing within fifteen feet of Thurstane roused him from the troubled sleep into which he had sunk after his long fainting fit.

Slowly he opened his eyes, to see nothing but long gra.s.ses close to his face, and through them a haze of mountains and sky. His first moments of wakening were so far from being a full consciousness that he did not comprehend where he was. He felt very, very weak, and he continued to lie still.

But presently he became aware of sounds; there was a trampling, and then there were words; the voices of life summoned him to live. Instantly he remembered two things: the starving comrades whom it was his duty to save, and the loved girl whom he longed to find. Slowly and with effort, grasping at the rock to aid his trembling knees, he rose to his feet just as Clara turned her horse's head toward the plain.

Coronado threw a last anxious glance in the direction of the wretch whom he meant to abandon to the desert. To his horror he saw a lean, smirched, ghostly face looking at him in a dazed way, as if out of the blinding shades of death. The quickness of this villain was so wonderful that one is almost tempted to call it praiseworthy. He perceived at once that Thurstane would be discovered, and that he, Coronado, must make the discovery, or he might be charged with attempting to leave him to die.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed loudly, "there he is!"

Clara turned: there was a scream of joy: she was on the ground, running: she was in Thurstane's arms. During that unearthly moment there was no thought in those two of Coronado, or of any being but each other. It is impossible fully to describe such a meeting; its exterior signs are beyond language; its emotion is a lifetime. If words are feeble in presence of the heights and depths of the Colorado, they are impotent in presence of the alt.i.tudes and abysses of great pa.s.sion. Human speech has never yet completely expressed human intellect, and it certainly never will completely express human sentiments. These lovers, who had been wandering in chasms impenetrable to hope, were all of a sudden on mountain summits dizzy with joy. What could they say for themselves, or what can another say for them?

Clara only uttered inarticulate murmurs, while her hands crawled up Thurstane's arms, pressing and clutching him to make sure that he was alive. There was an indescribable pathos in this eagerness which could not trust to sight, but must touch also, as if she were blind. Thurstane held her firmly, kissing hair, forehead, and temples, and whispering, "Clara!

Clara!" Her face, which had turned white at the first glimpse of him, was now roseate all over and damp with a sweet dew. It became smirched with the dust of his face; but she would only have rejoiced, had she known it; his very squalor was precious to her.

At last she fell back from him, held him at arm's length with ease, and stared at him. "Oh, how sick!" she gasped. "How thin! You are starving."

She ran to her horse, drew from her saddle-bags some remnants of food, and brought them to him. He had sunk down faint upon a stone, and he was too weak to speak aloud; but he gave her a smile of encouragement which was at once pathetic and sublime. It said, "I can bear all alone; you must not suffer for me." But it said this out of such visible exhaustion, that, instead of being comforted, she was terrified.

"Oh, you must not die," she whispered with quivering mouth. "If you die, I will die."

Then she checked her emotion and added, "There! Don't mind me. I am silly.

Eat."

Meanwhile Coronado looked on with such a face as Iago might have worn had he felt the jealousy of Oth.e.l.lo. For the first time he positively knew that the woman he loved was violently in love with another. He suffered so horribly that we should be bound to pity him, only that he suffered after the fas.h.i.+on of devils, his malignity equalling his agony. While he was in such pain that his heart ceased beating, his fingers curled like snakes around the handle of his revolver. Nothing kept him from shooting that man, yes, and that woman also, but the certainty that the deed would make him a fugitive for life, subject everywhere to the summons of the hangman.