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, pushing 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 pass 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 grass 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. Prickly pears, each one large enough to make a thicket, abounded. Through the scorching sunshine 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 passed 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 carcasses, having been set on their legs by passing travellers, stood upright, staring with blind eyeballs, grinning through dried lips, mockeries of life, statues of death.
In spite of these hardships 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 Pass, 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 pass a cactus, or a thicket of mezquit, or a bowlder without anxious examination. She imagined herself finding him helpless with hunger, or passing 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 pass, 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 grass 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.