Overland: A Novel

by John William De Forest

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.