man had come up to the
pueblo on purpose to have a plain talk with the girl and learn exactly
what she meant to do with him. It was now more than a week since he had
offered himself, and in that time she had made no sign which indicated her
purpose. He had looked at her and sighed at her without getting a response
of any sort. This could not go on; he must know how she felt towards him;
he must know how much, she cared for Thurstane. How else could he decide
what to do with her and with _him_?

Thus, while the other members of the party were watching the Moqui dances,
Coronado and Clara were talking matters of the heart, and were deciding,
unawares to her, questions of life and death.

CHAPTER XVI.

It must be remembered that when Mrs. Stanley carried off skipper Glover to
help her investigate the religion of the Moquis, she left Coronado alone
with Clara in one of the interior rooms of the chief's house.

Thurstane, to be sure, was in the next room and in sight; but he had with
him the chief, two other leading Moquis, and his chance Navajo
interpreter; they were making a map of the San Juan country by scratching
with an arrow-point on the clay floor; everybody was interested in the
matter, and there was a pretty smart jabbering. Thus Coronado could say
his say without being overheard or interrupted.

For a little while he babbled commonplaces. The truth is that the sight of
the girl had unsettled his resolutions a little. While he was away from
her, he could figure to himself how he would push her into taking him at
once, or how, if she refused him, he would let loose upon her the dogs of
fate. But once face to face with her, he found that his resolutions had
dispersed like a globule of mercury under a hammer, and that he needed a
few moments to scrape them together again. So he prattled nothings while
he meditated; and you would have thought that he cared for the nothings.
He had that faculty; he could mentally ride two horses at once; he would
have made a good diplomatist.

His mind glanced at the past while it peered into the future. What a
sinuous underground plot the superficial incidents of this journey
covered! To his fellow-travellers it was a straight line; to him it was a
complicated and endless labyrinth. How much more he had to think of than
they! Only he knew that Pedro Munoz was dead, that Clara Van Diemen was an
heiress, that she was in danger of being abandoned to the desert, that
Thursta