eau, when they reached the mouth of the
canon which had once contained a river, and discovered by the merest
accident that it still treasured a shallow pool of stagnant water. The
fevered mules plunged in headlong and drank greedily; the riders were
perforce obliged to slake their thirst after them. There was a hastily
eaten supper, and then came the only luxury or even comfort of the day,
the sound and delicious sleep of great weariness.

Repose, however, was not for all, inasmuch as Thurstane had reorganized
his system of guard duty, and seven of the party had to stand sentry. It
was Coronado's _tour_; he had chosen to take his watch at the start; there
would be three nights on this stretch, and the first would be the easiest.
He was tired, for he had been fourteen hours in the saddle, although the
distance covered was only forty miles. But much as he craved rest, he kept
awake until midnight, now walking up and down, and now smoking his eternal
cigarito.

There was a vast deal to remember, to plan, to hope for, to dread, and to
hate. Once he sat down beside the unconscious Thurstane, and meditated
shooting him through the head as he lay, and so making an end of that
obstacle. But he immediately put this idea aside as a frenzy, generated by
the fever of fatigue and sleeplessness. A dozen times he was assaulted by
a lazy or cowardly temptation to give up the chances of the desert, push
back to the Bernalillo route, leave everything to fortune, and take
disappointment meekly if it should come. When the noon of night arrived,
he had decided upon nothing but to blunder ahead by sheer force of
momentum, as if he had been a rolling bowlder instead of a clever,
resolute Garcia Coronado.

The truth is, that his circumstances were too mighty for him. He had
launched them, but he could not steer them as he would, and they were
carrying him he knew not whither. At one o'clock he awoke Texas Smith, who
was now his sergeant of the guard; but instead of enjoining some instant
atrocity upon him, as he had more than once that night purposed, he merely
passed the ordinary instructions of the watch; then, rolling himself in
his blankets, he fell asleep as quickly and calmly as an infant.

At daybreak commenced another struggle with the desert. It was still sixty
miles to the San Juan, over a series of savage sandstone plateaux, said to
be entirely destitute of water. If the animals could not accomplish the
distance in two days, it s