Overland Part 7

"How now about your safe road through the southern counties?" he said.

"Apaches!"

"So I hear," replied the young officer soberly. "It is horribly unlucky."

"We start to-morrow," added Coronado.

"To-morrow!" replied Thurstane, with a look of dismay.

"I hope you will be with us," said Coronado.

"Everything goes wrong," exclaimed the annoyed lieutenant. "Here are some of my stores damaged, and I have had to ask for a board of survey. I couldn't possibly leave for two days yet, even if my recruits should arrive."

"How very unfortunate!" groaned Coronado. "My dear fellow, we had counted on you."

"Lieutenant Thurstane, can't you overtake us?" inquired Clara.

Thurstane wanted to kneel down and thank her, while Coronado wanted to throw something at her.

"I will try," promised the officer, his fine, frank, manly face brightening with pleasure. "If the thing can be done, it will be done."

Coronado, while hoping that he would be ordered by the southern route, or that he would somehow break his neck, had the superfine bra.s.s to say, "Don't fail us, Lieutenant."

In spite of the managements of the Mexican to keep Clara and Thurstane apart, the latter succeeded in getting an aside with the young lady.

"So you take the northern trail?" he said, with a seriousness which gave his blue-black eyes an expression of almost painful pathos. Those eyes were traitors; however discreet the rest of his face might be, they revealed his feelings; they were altogether too pathetic to be in the head of a man and an officer.

"But you will overtake us," Clara replied, out of a charming faith that with men all things are possible.

"Yes," he said, almost fiercely.

"Besides, Coronado knows," she added, still trusting in the male being.

"He says this is the surest road."

Thurstane did not believe it, but he did not want to alarm her when alarm was useless, and he made no comment.

"I have a great mind to resign," he presently broke out.

Clara colored; she did not fully understand him, but she guessed that all this emotion was somehow on her account; and a surprised, warm Spanish heart beat at once its alarm.

"It would be of no use," he immediately added. "I couldn't get away until my resignation had been accepted. I must bear this as well as I can."

The young lady began to like him better than ever before, and yet she began to draw gently away from him, frightened by a consciousness of her liking.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Van Diemen," said Thurstane, in an inexplicable confusion.

"There is no need," replied Clara, equally confused.

"Well," he resumed, after a struggle to regain his self-control, "I will do my utmost to overtake you."

"We shall be very glad," returned Clara, with a singular mixture of consciousness and artlessness.

There was an exquisite innocence and almost childish simplicity in this girl of eighteen. It was, so to speak, not quite civilized; it was not in the style of American young ladies; our officer had never, at home, observed anything like it; and, of course--O yes, of course, it fascinated him. The truth is, he was so far gone in loving her that he would have been charmed by her ways no matter what they might have been.

On the very morning after the above dialogue Garcia's train started for Rio Arriba, taking with it a girl who had been singled out for a marriage which she did not guess, or for a death whose horrors were beyond her wildest fears.

The train consisted of six long and heavy covered vehicles, not dissimilar in size, strength, and build to army wagons. Garcia had thought that two would suffice; six wagons, with their mules, etc., were a small fortune: what if the Apaches should take them? But Coronado had replied: "n.o.body sends a train of two wagons; do you want to rouse suspicion?"

So there were six; and each had a driver and a muleteer, making twelve hired men thus far. On horseback, there were six Mexicans, nominally cattle-drivers going to California, but really guards for the expedition--the most courageous bullies that could be picked up in Santa Fe, each armed with pistols and a rifle. Finally, there were Coronado and his terrible henchman, Texas Smith, with their rifles and revolvers. Old Garcia perspired with anguish as he looked over his caravan, and figured up the cost in his head.

Thurstane, wretched at heart, but with a cheering smile on his lips, came to bid the ladies farewell.

"What do you think of this?" Aunt Maria called to him from her seat in one of the covered wagons. "We are going a thousand miles through deserts and savages. You men suppose that women have no courage. I call this heroism."

"Certainly," nodded the young fellow, not thinking of her at all, unless it was that she was next door to an idiot.

Although his mind was so full of Clara that it did not seem as if he could receive an impression from any other human being, his attention was for a moment arrested by a countenance which struck him as being more ferocious than he had ever seen before except on the shoulders of an Apache. A tall man in Mexican costume, with a scar on his chin and another on his cheek, was glaring at him with two intensely black and savage eyes. It was Texas Smith, taking the measure of Thurstane's fighting power and disposition. A hint from Coronado had warned the borderer that here was a person whom it might be necessary some day to get rid of. The officer responded to this ferocious gaze with a grim, imperious stare, such as one is apt to acquire amid the responsibilities and dangers of army life. It was like a wolf and a mastiff surveying each other.

Thurstane advanced to Clara, helped her into her saddle, and held her hand while he urged her to be careful of herself, never to wander from the train, never to be alone, etc. The girl turned a little pale; it was not exactly because of his anxious manner; it was because of the eloquence that there is in a word of parting. At the moment she felt so alone in the world, in such womanish need of sympathy, that had he whispered to her, "Be my wife," she might have reached out her hands to him. But Thurstane was far from guessing that an angel could have such weak impulses; and he no more thought of proposing to her thus abruptly than of ascending off-hand into heaven.

Coronado observed the scene, and guessing how perilous the moment was, pushed forward his uncle to say good-by to Clara. The old scoundrel kissed her hand; he did not dare to lift his one eye to her face; he kissed her hand and bowed himself out of reach.

"Farewell, Mr. Garcia," called Aunt Maria. "Poor, excellent old creature!

What a pity he can't understand Englis.h.!.+ I should so like to say something nice to him. Farewell, Mr. Garcia."

Garcia kissed his fat fingers to her, took off his sombrero, waved it, bowed a dozen times, and smiled like a scared devil. Then, with other good-bys, delivered right and left from everybody to everybody, the train rumbled away. Thurstane was about to accompany it out of the town when his clerk came to tell him that the board of survey required his immediate presence. Cursing his hard fate, and wis.h.i.+ng himself anything but an officer in the army, he waved a last farewell to Clara, and turned his back on her, perhaps forever.

Santa Fe is situated on the great central plateau of North America, seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. Around it spreads an arid plain, sloping slightly where it approaches the Rio Grande, and bordered by mountains which toward the south are of moderate height, while toward the north they rise into fine peaks, glorious with eternal snow. Although the city is in the lat.i.tude of Albemarle Sound, North Carolina, its elevation and its neighborhood to Alpine ranges give it a climate which is in the main cool, equable, and healthy.

The expedition moved across the plain in a southwesterly direction.

Coronado's intention was to cross the Rio Grande at Pena Blanca, skirt the southern edge of the Jemez Mountains, reach San Isidoro, and then march northward toward the San Juan region. The wagons were well fitted out with mules, and as Garcia had not chosen to send much merchandise by this risky route, they were light, so that the rate of progress was unusually rapid.

We cannot trouble ourselves with the minor incidents of the journey.

Taking it for granted that the Rio Grande was pa.s.sed, that halts were made, meals cooked and eaten, nights pa.s.sed in sleep, days in pleasant and picturesque travelling, we will leap into the desert land beyond San Isidoro.

The train was now seventy-five miles from Santa Fe. Coronado had so pushed the pace that he had made this distance in the rather remarkable time of three days. Of course his object in thus hurrying was to get so far ahead of Thurstane that the latter would not try to overtake him, or would get lost in attempting it.

Meanwhile he had not forgotten Garcia's little plan, and he had even better remembered his own. The time might come when he would be driven to _lose_ Clara; it was very shocking to think of, however, and so for the present he did not think of it; on the contrary, he worked hard (much as he hated work) at courting her.

It is strange that so many men who are morally in a state of decomposition should be, or at least can be, sweet and charming in manner. During these three days Coronado was delightful; and not merely in this, that he watched over Clara's comfort, rode a great deal by her side, gathered wild flowers for her, talked much and agreeably; but also in that he poured oil over his whole conduct, and was good to everybody. Although his natural disposition was to be domineering to inferiors and irascible under the small provocations of life, he now gave his orders in a gentle tone, never stormed at the drivers for their blunders, made light of the bad cooking, and was in short a model for travellers, lovers, and husbands. Few human beings have so much self-control as Coronado, and so little. So long as it was policy to be sweet, he could generally be a very honeycomb; but once a certain limit of patience pa.s.sed, he was like a swarm of angry bees; he became blind, mad, and poisonous with pa.s.sion.

"Mr. Coronado, you are a wonder," proclaimed the admiring Aunt Maria. "You are the only man I ever knew that was patient."

"I catch a grace from those who have it abundantly and to spare," said Coronado, taking off his hat and waving it at the two ladies.

"Ah, yes, we women know how to be patient," smiled Aunt Maria. "I think we are born so. But, more than that, we learn it. Moreover, our physical nature teaches us. We have lessons of pain and weakness that men know nothing of. The great, healthy savages! If they had our troubles, they might have some of our virtues."

"I refuse to believe it," cried Coronado. "Man acquire woman's worth?

Never! The nature of the beast is inferior. He is not fas.h.i.+oned to become an angel."