"How is this, my uncle?" she said, gaily. "You send your merchandise trains through Bernalillo, and you send me through Santa Anna and Rio Arriba."
Garcia, cowed and confounded, made no reply that was comprehensible.
"It is a newly discovered route," put in Coronado, "lately found to be easier and safer than the old one. Two hundred and fifty years in learning the fact, Mrs. Stanley! Just as we were two hundred and fifty years without discovering the gold of California."
"Ah!" said Clara. Absent since her childhood from New Mexico, she knew little about its geography, and could be easily deceived.
After a while Thurstane entered, out of breath and red with haste. He had stolen ten minutes from his accounts and stores to bring Miss Van Diemen a piece of information which was to him important and distressing.
"I fear that I shall not be able to go with you," he said. "I have received orders to wait for a sergeant and three recruits who have been assigned to my company. The messenger reports that they are on the march from Fort Bent with an emigrant train, and will not be here for a week. It annoys me horribly, Miss Van Diemen. I thought I saw my way clear to be of your party. I assure you I earnestly desired it. This route—I am afraid of it—I wanted to be with you."
"To protect me?" queried Clara, her face lighting up with a grateful smile, so innocent and frank was she. Then she turned grave, again, and added, "I am sorry."
Thankful for these last words, but nevertheless quite miserable, the youngster worshipped her and trembled for her.
This conversation had been carried on in a quiet tone, so that the others of the party had not overheard it, not even the watchful Coronado.
"It is too unfortunate," said Clara, turning to them, "Lieutenant Thurstane cannot go with us."