"Did you?" replied the old man, not much believing it. "Then all is well."
He wanted to ask how it was that Clara had survived her dose; but of course curiosity on that subject must not find vent; it would be equivalent to a confession.
"Where is she going?" were his next words.
"To Fort Yuma."
"To Fort Yuma! What for?"
"I may as well tell it," burst out Coronado angrily. "She is going there to nurse that officer. He escaped, but he has been sick, and she will go."
"She must not go," whispered Garcia. "Oh, the ——." And here he called Clara a string of names which cannot be repeated. "She shall not go there," he continued. "She will marry him. Then the property is gone, and we are ruined. Oh, the ——." And then came another assortment of violent and vile epithets, such as are not found in dictionaries.
Coronado was anxious to divert and dissipate a rage which might make trouble; and as soon as he could get in a word, he asked, "But what have you been doing, my uncle?"
By dint of questioning and guessing he made out the story of the old man's adventures since leaving the hacienda. Garcia, in extreme terror of hanging, had gone straight to San Francisco and taken passage for San Diego, with the intention of not stopping until he should be at least as far away as Santa Fé. But after a few hours at sea, he had recovered his wits and his courage, and asked himself, why should he fly? If Clara died, the property would be his, and if she survived, he ought to be near her; while as for Carlos, he would surely never expose and hang a man who could cut him off with a shilling. So he landed at Monterey, took the first coaster back to San Francisco, lurked about the city until he learned that the girl was still living, and was just about to put a bold front on the matter by going to see her at the hacienda, when he learned accidentally that she was on the point of voyaging southward. Puzzled and alarmed by this, he resolved to accompany her in her wanderings, and succeeded in getting himself quietly on board the Lolotte.
"Well, let us go on deck," said Coronado, when the old man had regained his tranquillity. "But let us be gentle, my uncle. We know how to govern ourselves, I hope. You will of course behave like a mother to our little cousin. Congratulate her on her recovery; apologize for your awkward mistake. It was caused by the coming on of the fit, you remember. A man who is about to have an attack of epilepsy can't of course tell one pocket from another. But such a man is all the more bound to be unctuous."