John William De Forest

“ Next the cockle-shell of a boat was spinning on its keel-less bottom, and whirling broadside on, bow foremost, stern foremost, any way, down the San Juan.
"Paddle away!" shouted Thurstane to Glover. "Drive her in shore! Pitch her in!"
The old coaster sent a quick, anxious look down the river, and saw at once that there was no chance of reaching the bank. Below them, not three hundred yards distant, was an archipelago of rocks, the débris of fallen precipices and pinnacles, through which, for half a mile or more, the water flew in whirlpools and foam. ”

“ He thought of Clara; was it Clara? Jealous and terrified, he for an instant, only for an instant, wished she were dead.
"See here," he said, when he had restrung his nerves a little. "We must separate. If there is any trouble, call on me. I'll stand by you."
"I reckon you'd better," muttered Smith, looking at Coronado as if he were already drawing a bead on him.
Without further talk they parted. The Texan went off to rub down his horse, mend his accoutrements, squat around the cooking fires, and gamble with the drivers. ”

“ It was not probable that Coronado would pay him for shooting the wrong man, and setting on foot a dangerous investigation. So the desperado continued to peer through the dim night, cursing his stars and everybody's stars for not shining better, and seeing his opportunity slip rapidly away. After Thurstane and the others had passed, after the chance of murder had stalked by him like a ghost and vanished, he left his ambush, glided down the ravine to his horse, waked him up with a vindictive kick, leaped into the saddle, and hastened to camp. ”

“ You, a gentleman and an officer—what else would you have advised?"
"Let it go," growled Thurstane. "Let that pass. I won't talk of it—nor of other things. But," and here he seemed to shake with emotion, "I want nothing more to do with you—you nor your family. I have had suffering enough."
"Ah, it is with her that you quarrel rather than with me," inferred Coronado impudently, for he had recovered his self-possession. "Certainly, my poor Lieutenant! You have reason. But remember, so has she. She is enormously rich and can have any one. That is the way these women understand life." ”

“ She could have stopped her breathing ten times easier than she could have quelled her terror and her joy. She was no more master of the power and direction of her feelings, than the river below was master of its speed and course. One of the mightiest of the instincts which rule the human race had made her entirely its own. She was not herself; she was Thurstane; she was love. The love incarnate is itself, and not the person in whom it is embodied.
There was but one answer possible to Clara. Somehow, either by look or word, she must say to Thurstane, "Yes." ”

“ Thurstane sometimes listened to them, sometimes lost himself in reveries about Clara, sometimes surveyed the scenery of the cañon.
The abyss was always the same, yet with colossal variety: here and there yawnings of veined precipices, followed by cavernous closings of the awful sides; breakings in of subsidiary cañons, some narrow clefts, and others gaping shattered mouths; the walls now presenting long lines of rampart, and now a succession of peaks. But still, although they had now traversed the chasm for seventy or eighty miles, they found no close and no declension to its solemn grandeur. ”

“ Aunt Maria's Olympian head nodded, and her cheerful face, glowing with tea and the camp fires, confessed "Certainly!"
"What nonsense, Coronado!" said Clara. "I was horribly frightened, and you know it."
Aunt Maria frowned with surprise and denial. "Absurd, child! You were not frightened at all. Of course you were not. Why, even if you had been slightly timorous, you had your cousin to protect you."
"Ah, Mrs. Stanley, I am a poor knight-errant," said Coronado. "We Mexicans are no longer formidable. One man of your Anglo-Saxon blood is supposed to be a better defence than a dozen of us. ”

“ For a long time they approach each other so slowly that the movement is imperceptible but at last they are within range of each other's magnetism; there is a start, a swift rush, and they are together. Thus it was that Clara was gently, very gently, and unconsciously to herself, approaching Coronado. A mote on the wave of life, she was subject to attraction, as all of us motes are, and this man was the only tractor at hand. Aunt Maria did not count, for woman cannot absorb woman. As to Thurstane, he not only was not there, but he was not anywhere, as she at last believed. ”

“ Looking ahead, Thurstane saw that they had reached the top of the tableland which lies south of the San Juan, and that nothing was before them for the rest of the day but a rolling plateau seamed with meandering fissures of undiscoverable depth. Traversable as the country was, however, there was one reason for extreme anxiety. If they should lose the trail, if they should get on the wrong side of one of those profound and endless chasms, they might reach the river at a point where descent to it would be impossible, and might die of thirst within sight of water. ”

“ There was a brief panic, and another attempt to push the animals, which Thurstane checked with levelled pistol.
The train had already entered a gully. As this gully advanced it rapidly broadened and deepened into a cañon. It was the track of an extinct river which had once flowed into the San Juan on its way to the distant Pacific. Its windings hid the desired goal; the fugitives must plunge into it blindfold; whatever fate it brought them, they must accept it. They were like men who should enter the cavern of unknown goblins to escape from demons who were following visibly on their footsteps. ”

“ Clara turned: there was a scream of joy: she was on the ground, running: she was in Thurstane's arms. During that unearthly moment there was no thought in those two of Coronado, or of any being but each other. It is impossible fully to describe such a meeting; its exterior signs are beyond language; its emotion is a lifetime. If words are feeble in presence of the heights and depths of the Colorado, they are impotent in presence of the altitudes and abysses of great passion. ”

“ Human speech has never yet completely expressed human intellect, and it certainly never will completely express human sentiments. These lovers, who had been wandering in chasms impenetrable to hope, were all of a sudden on mountain summits dizzy with joy. What could they say for themselves, or what can another say for them?
Clara only uttered inarticulate murmurs, while her hands crawled up Thurstane's arms, pressing and clutching him to make sure that he was alive. ”

“ Sergeant Meyer was on the right, veteran Kelly on the left, the two recruits in the centre, the pieces at a shoulder, the bayonets fixed. As Thurstane rode up to this diminutive line of battle, Meyer was shouting forth his sharp and decisive orders. They were just the right orders; excited as the young officer was, he comprehended that there was nothing to change; moreover, he had already learned how men are disconcerted in battle by a multiplicity of directions. So he sat quietly on his horse, revolver in hand, his blue-black eyes staring angrily at the coming storm. ”

“ Then, stealing through the profound darkness, came the faintest rustle imaginable. It was not the noise of feet, but rather that of bodies slowly dragging through herbage, as if men were crawling or rolling toward the Casa. Thurstane, not quite sure of his hearing, and unwilling to disturb the garrison without cause, cocked his revolver and listened intently.
Suddenly the sentry in the plaza fired, and, rushing in upon him, fell motionless at his feet, while the air was filled in an instant with the whistling of arrows, the trampling of running men, and the horrible quavering of the war-whoop. ”

“ At this, Aunt Maria struggled from between two rolls of bedding into a sitting posture and ejaculated, "Of course not!"
"Did they hit you?" asked Clara, looking eagerly at Thurstane.
"How brave you are!" he replied, admiring her so much that he did not notice her question.
"But I do hope it is over," added the girl, poking her head out of the wagon. "Ah! what is that?"
With this little cry of dismay she pointed at a group of savages who had gathered between the train and the mouth of the cañon ahead of it.
"They are the enemy," said Thurstane. "We may have another little tussle with them. ”

“ The peaceful and industrious Moquis, with their gay and warm blankets, their fields of corn and beans, and their flocks of sheep, are the quarry which attracts this ferocious cavalry of the desert, these Tartars and Bedouin of America.
Thurstane took more pains than ever with the guard duty. Coronado, unmilitary though he was, and heartily as he abominated the Lieutenant, saw the wisdom of submitting to the latter's discipline, and made all his people submit. A practical-minded man, he preferred to owe the safety of his carcass to his rival rather than have it impaled on Apache lances. ”

“ Although his mind was so full of Clara that it did not seem as if he could receive an impression from any other human being, his attention was for a moment arrested by a countenance which struck him as being more ferocious than he had ever seen before except on the shoulders of an Apache. A tall man in Mexican costume, with a scar on his chin and another on his cheek, was glaring at him with two intensely black and savage eyes. It was Texas Smith, taking the measure of Thurstane's fighting power and disposition. ”

“ Did the savage know anything about Coronado? Had he attacked his wagons without being aware that they belonged to the man who had paid him five hundred dollars and sent him to harry Bernalillo? Or had he attacked in full knowledge of this fact, because he had been beaten off the southern trail, and believed that he had been lured thither to be beaten? Had he learned, either from Apaches or Navajos, whose hand it was that slew his boy? We can only ask these questions.
One thing alone is positive: there was a debt of blood to be paid. An Indian war is often the result of a private vendetta. ”

“ Notwithstanding the river, there still was the desert. The little plain was but an oasis. Two miles to the east the San Juan burst out of a defile of sandstone, and a mile to the west it disappeared in a similar chasm. The walls of these gorges rose abruptly two thousand feet above the hurrying waters. All around were the monstrous, arid, herbless, savage, cruel ramparts of the plateau. No outlook anywhere; the longest reach of the eye was not five miles; then came towering precipices. The travellers were like ants gathered on an inch of earth at the bottom of a fissure in a quarry. ”

“ Ah, these lovers! They find a universe where others see only trifles; they are gifted with the second-sight and live amid miracles.
"Do be careful, oh my dear friend!" was the last whisper of Clara as Thurstane quitted the tower. Then she passed the day in ascending and descending between heights of happiness and abysses of anxiety. Her existence henceforward was a Jacob's ladder, which had its foot on a world of crime and sorrow, and its top in heavens passing description.
As for Thurstane, he had to think and act, for something must be done with Texas Smith. ”