led
at the escape of Thurstane, but as fluent and complimentary as usual.

"My dear Lieutenant! Language is below my feelings. I want to kneel down
and worship you. You ought to have a statue--yes, and an altar. If your
humanity has not been successful, it has been all the same glorious."

"Nonsense," answered Thurstane. "Every one of us has done well in his
turn! It was my tour of duty to-day. Don't praise me. I haven't
accomplished anything."

"Ah, the scoundrels!" declaimed Coronado. "How could they violate a truce!
It is unknown, unheard of. The miserable traitors! I wish you could have
killed Manga Colorada."

From this dialogue he hurried away to find and catechise Texas Smith. The
desperado told his story: "Jest got a bead on him--had him sure pop--never
see a squarer mark--when somebody mounted me--pitched me clean out of my
hole."

"Who?" demanded Coronado, a rim of white showing clear around his black
pupils.

"Dunno. Didn't see nobody. 'Fore I could reload and git in it was gone."

"What the devil did you stop to reload for?"

"Stranger, I _allays_ reload."

Coronado flinched under the word _stranger_ and the stare which
accompanied it.

"It was a woman's yell," continued Texas.

Coronado felt suddenly so weak that he sat down on a mouldering heap of
adobes. 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. Perhaps he was just a bit more fastidious than usual
about having his weapons in perfect order and constantly handy; and
perhaps too he looked over his shoulder a little oftener than common while
at his work or his games; but on the whole he was a masterpiece of strong,
serene, ferocious self-possession. Coronado also, as unquiet at heart as
the devil, was outwardly as calm as Greek art. They were certainly a
couple of almost sublime scoundrels.

It was now nightfall; the day closed with extraordinary abruptness; the
sun went down as though he had been struck dead; it was like the fall of
an ox under the axe of the bu