CHAPTER VIII.
When Coronado proposed to Clara, she was for a moment stricken dumb with astonishment and with something like terror.
Her first idea was that she must take him; that the mere fact of a man asking for her gave him a species of right over her; that there was no such thing possible as answering, No. She sat looking at Coronado with a helpless, timorous air, very much as a child looks at his father, when the father, switching his rattan, says, "Come with me."
On recovering herself a little, her first words—uttered slowly, in a tone of surprise and of involuntary reproach—were, "Oh, Coronado! I did not expect this."
"Can't you answer me?" he asked in a voice which was honestly tremulous with emotion. "Can't you say yes?"
"Oh, Coronado!" repeated Clara, a good deal touched by his agitation.
"Can't you?" he pleaded. Repetitions, in such cases, are so natural and so potent.
"Let me think, Coronado," she implored. "I can't answer you now. You have taken me so by surprise!"
"Every moment that you take to think is torture to me," he pleaded, as he continued to press her.
Perhaps she was on the point of giving way before his insistence. Consider the advantages that he had over her in this struggle of wills for the mastery. He was older by ten years; he possessed both the adroitness of self-command and the energy of passion; he had a long experience in love matters, while she had none. He was the proclaimed heir of a man reputed wealthy, and could therefore, as she believed, support her handsomely. Since the death of her father she considered Garcia the head of her family in New Mexico; and Coronado had had the face to tell her that he made his offer with the approval of Garcia. Then she was under supposed obligations to him, and he was to be her protector across the desert.
She was as it were reeling in her saddle, when a truly Spanish idea saved her.
"Muñoz!" she exclaimed. "Coronado, you forget my grandfather. He should know of this."
Although the man was unaccustomed to start, he drew back as if a ghost had confronted him; and even when he recovered from his transitory emotion, he did not at first know how to answer her. It would not do to say, "Muñoz is dead," and much less to add, "You are his heir."
"We are Americans," he at last argued. "Spanish customs are dead and buried. Can't you speak for yourself on a matter which concerns you and me alone?"
"Coronado, I think it would not be right," she replied, holding firmly to her position. "It is probable that my grandfather would be better pleased to have this matter referred to him. I ought to consider him, and you must let me do so."
"I submit," he bowed, seeing that there was no help for it, and deciding to make a grace of necessity. "It pains me, but I submit. Let me hope that you will not let this pass from your mind. Some day, when it is proper, I shall speak again."
He was not wholly dissatisfied, for he trusted that henceforward her head would be full of him, and he had not much hoped to gain more in a first effort.
"I shall always be proud and gratified at the compliment you have paid me," was her reply to his last request.
"You deserve many such compliments," he said, gravely courteous and quite sincere.
Then they cantered back in silence to meet the advancing train.
Yes, Coronado was partly satisfied. He believed that he had gained a firmer footing among the girl's thoughts and emotions than had been gained by Thurstane. In a degree he was right. No sensitive, and pure, and good girl can receive her first offer without being much moved by it. The man who has placed himself at her feet will affect her strongly. She may begin to dread him, or begin to like him more than before; but she cannot remain utterly indifferent to him. The probability is that, unless subsequent events make him disagreeable to her, she will long accord him a measure of esteem and gratitude.
For two or three days, while Clara was thinking much of Coronado, he gave her less than usual of his society. Believing that her mind was occupied with him, that she was wondering whether he were angry, unhappy, etc., he remained a good deal apart, wrapped himself in sadness, and trusted that time would do much for him. Had there been no rival, the plan would have been a good one; but Ralph Thurstane being present, it was less successful.
Ralph had already become more of a favorite than any one knew, even the young lady herself; and now that he found chances for long talks and short gallops with her, he got on better than ever. He was just the kind of youngster a girl of eighteen would naturally like to have ride by her side. He was handsome; at any rate, he was the handsomest man she had seen in the desert, and the desert was just then her sphere of society. You could see in his figure how strong he was, and in his face how brave he was. He was a good fellow, too; "tendir and trew" as the Douglas of the ballad; sincere, frank, thoroughly truthful and honorable. Every way he seemed to be that being that a woman most wants, a potential and devoted protector. Whenever Clara looked in his face her eyes said, without her knowledge, "I trust you."
Now, as we have already stated, Thurstane's eyes were uncommonly fine and expressive. Of the very darkest blue that ever was seen in anybody's head, and shaded, moreover, by remarkably long chestnut lashes, they had the advantages of both blue eyes and black ones, being as gentle as the one and as fervent as the other. Accordingly, a sort of optical conversation commenced between the two young people. Every time that Clara's glance said, "I trust you," Thurstane's responded, "I will die for you." It was a perilous sort of dialogue, and liable to involve the two souls which looked out from these sparkling, transparent windows. Before long the Lieutenant's modest heart took courage, and his stammering tongue began to be loosed somewhat, so that he uttered things which frightened both him and Clara. Not that the remarks were audacious in themselves, but he was conscious of so much unexpressed meaning behind them, and she was so ready to guess that there might be such a meaning!
It seems ridiculous that a fellow who could hold his head straight up before a storm of cannon shot, should be positively bashful. Yet so it was. The boy had been through West Point, to be sure; but he had studied there, and not flirted; the Academy had not in any way demoralized him. On the whole, in spite of swearing under gross provocation, and an inclination toward strictness in discipline, he answered pretty well for a Bayard.
His bashfulness was such, at least in the presence of Clara, that he trembled to the tips of his fingers in merely making this remark: "Miss Van Diemen, this journey is the pleasantest thing in my whole life."
Clara blushed until she dazzled him and seemed to burn herself. Nevertheless she was favored with her usual childlike artlessness of speech, and answered, "I am glad you find it agreeable."
Nothing more from Ralph for a minute; he was recovering his breath and self-possession.
"You cannot think how much safer I feel because you and your men are with us," said Clara.
Thurstane unconsciously gripped the handle of his sabre, with a feeling that he could and would massacre all the Indians of the desert, if it were necessary to preserve her from harm.
"Yes, you may rely upon my men, too," he declared. "They have a sort of adoration for you."
"Have they?" asked Clara, with a frank smile of pleasure. "I wonder at it. I hardly notice them. I ought to, they seem so patient and trusty."
"Ah, a lady!" said Thurstane. "A good soldier will die any time for a lady."
Then he wondered how she could have failed to guess that she must be worshipped by these rough men for her beauty.
"I have overheard them talking about you," he went on, gratified at being able to praise her to her face, though in the speech of others. "Little Sweeny says, in his Irish brogue, 'I can march twic't as fur for the seein' av her!'"
"Oh! did he?" laughed Clara. "I must carry Sweeny's musket for him some time."
"Don't, if you please," said Thurstane, the disciplinarian rising in him. "You would spoil him for the service."
"Can't I send him a dish from our table?"
"That would just suit his case. He hasn't got broken to hard-tack yet."
"Miss Van Diemen," was his next remark, "do you know what you are to do, if we are attacked?"
"I am to get into a wagon."
"Into which wagon?"
"Into my aunt's."
"Why into that one?"
"So as to have all the ladies together."
"When you have got into the wagon, what next?"
"Lie down on the floor to protect myself from the arrows."
"Very good," laughed Thurstane. "You say your tactics well."
This catechism had been put and recited every day since he had joined the train. The putting of it was one of the Lieutenant's duties and pleasures; and, notwithstanding its prophecy of peril, Clara enjoyed it almost as much as he.
Well, we have heard these two talk, and much in their usual fashion. Not great souls as yet: they may indeed become such some day; but at present they are only mature in moral power and in capacity for mighty emotions. Information, mental development, and conversational ability hereafter.
In one way or another two or three of these tête-à-têtes were brought about every day. Thurstane wanted them all the time; would have been glad to make life one long dialogue with Miss Van Diemen; found an aching void in every moment spent away from her. Clara, too, in spite of maidenly struggles with herself, began to be of this way of feeling. Wonderful place the Great American Desert for falling in love!
Coronado soon guessed, and with good reason, that the seed which he had sown in the girl's mind was being replaced by other germs, and that he had blundered in trusting that she would think of him while she was talking with Thurstane. The fear of losing her increased his passion for her, and made him hate his rival with correlative fervor.
"Why don't you find a chance at that fellow?" he muttered to his bravo, Texas Smith.
"How the h—l kin I do it?" growled the bushwhacker, feeling that his intelligence and courage were unjustly called in question. "He's allays around the train, an' his sojers allays handy. I hain't had nary chance."
"Take him off on a hunt."
"He ain't a gwine. I reckon he knows himself. I'm afeard to praise huntin' much to him; he might get on my trail. Tell you these army chaps is resky. I never wanted to meddle with them kind o' close. You know I said so. I said so, fair an' square, I did."
"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 hell-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 "nigger." 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," assented 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 coarse, 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 buttes; 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 cañons, 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 pass on," suggested Coronado to Clara. "If you will ride with me up this little cañon, 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 cañon, 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 cañon, 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 asserted that they would soon see the train. At last the ravine became a gully, winding up a breast of shadowy mountain cumbered with loose rocks, and impassable 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 cañon. No; it could not be traversed by night, he asserted; 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 cañon. 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.