f richly-colored flowers, the whole fabric as
splendid as a Corinthian column. Prickly pears, each one large enough to
make a thicket, abounded. Through the scorching sunshine ran scorpions and
lizards, pursued by enormous rattlesnakes. During the days the heat ranged
from 100 to 115 deg. in the shade, while the nights were swept by winds as
parching as the breath of an oven. The distant mountains glared at the eye
like metals brought to a white heat. Not seldom they passed horses, mules,
cattle, and sheep, which had perished in this terrible transit and been
turned to mummies by the dry air and baking sun. Some of these carcasses,
having been set on their legs by passing travellers, stood upright,
staring with blind eyeballs, grinning through dried lips, mockeries of
life, statues of death.

In spite of these hardships and horrors, Clara kept up her courage and was
almost cheerful; for in the first place Coronado had ceased his terrifying
attentions, and in the second place they were nearing Cactus Pass, where
she hoped to meet Thurstane. When love has not a foot of certainty to
stand upon, it can take wing and soar through the incredible. The idea
that they two, divided hundreds of miles back, should come together at a
given point by pure accident, was obviously absurd. Yet Clara could trust
to the chance and live for it.

The scenery changed to mountains. There were barren, sublime, awful peaks
to the right and left. To the girl's eyes they were beautiful, for she
trusted that Thurstane beheld them. She was always on horseback now,
scanning every feature of the landscape, searching of course for him. She
did not pass a cactus, or a thicket of mezquit, or a bowlder without
anxious examination. She imagined herself finding him helpless with
hunger, or passing him unseen and leaving him to die. She was so pale and
thin with constant anxiety that you might have thought her half starved,
or recovering from some acute malady.

About five one afternoon, as the train was approaching its halting-place
at a spring on the western side of the pass, Clara's feverish mind fixed
on a group of rocks half a mile from the trail as the spot where she would
find Thurstane. In obedience to similar impressions she had already made
many expeditions of this nature. Constant failure, and a consciousness
that all this searching was folly, could not shake her wild hopes. She set
off at a canter alone; but after going some four hundred yards s