two or three of these tete-a-tetes were brought
about every day. Thurstane wanted them all the time; would have been glad
to make life one long dialogue with Miss Van Diemen; found an aching void
in every moment spent away from her. Clara, too, in spite of maidenly
struggles with herself, began to be of this way of feeling. Wonderful
place the Great American Desert for falling in love!

Coronado soon guessed, and with good reason, that the seed which he had
sown in the girl's mind was being replaced by other germs, and that he had
blundered in trusting that she would think of him while she was talking
with Thurstane. The fear of losing her increased his passion for her, and
made him hate his rival with correlative fervor.

"Why don't you find a chance at that fellow?" he muttered to his bravo,
Texas Smith.

"How the h--l kin I do it?" growled the bushwhacker, feeling that his
intelligence and courage were unjustly called in question. "He's allays
around the train, an' his sojers allays handy. I hain't had nary chance."

"Take him off on a hunt."

"He ain't a gwine. I reckon he knows himself. I'm afeard to praise huntin'
much to him; he might get on my trail. Tell you these army chaps is resky.
I never wanted to meddle with them kind o' close. You know I said so. I
said so, fair an' square, I did."

"You might manage it somehow, if you had the pluck."

"Had the pluck!" repeated Texas Smith. His sallow, haggard face turned
dusky with rage, and his singularly black eyes flamed as if with
hell-fire. A Malay, crazed with opium and ready to run _amok_, could not
present a more savage spectacle than this man did as he swayed in his
saddle, grinding his teeth, clutching his rifle, and glaring at Coronado.
What chiefly infuriated him was that the insult should come from one whom
he considered a "greaser," a man of inferior race. He, Texas Smith, an
American, a _white man_, was treated as if he were an "Injun" or a
"nigger." Coronado was thoroughly alarmed, and smoothed his ruffled
feathers at once.

"I beg your pardon," he said, promptly. "My dear Mr. Smith, I was entirely
wrong. Of course I know that you have courage. Everybody knows it.
Besides, I am under the greatest obligations to you. You saved my life. By
heavens, I am horribly ashamed of my injustice."

A minute or so of this fluent apologizing calmed the bushwhacker's rage
and soothed his injured feelings.

"But you oughter be keerful how you talk that way to