It is almost impossible to do Coronado justice.  While he was pretending to aid Clara in searching for Texas Smith, he knew that the man had gone out to murder Thurstane.  We must remember that the man was almost as wretched as he was wicked; if punishment makes amends for crime, his was in part absolved.  As he walked about with the girl he thought over and over, Will it kill her?  He tried to answer, No.  Another voice persisted in saying, Yes.  In his desperation he at last replied, Let it!

We must follow Texas Smith.  He had not started on his errand until he had received five hundred dollars in gold, and five hundred in a draft on San Francisco.  Then he had himself proposed, “I mought quit the train, an’ take my own resk acrost the plains.”  This being agreed to, he had mounted his horse, slipped away through the willows, and ridden into the desert after Thurstane.

He knew the trail; he had been from Cactus Pass to Diamond River and back again; he knew it at least as well as the man whose life he was tracking.  He thought he remembered the spring where Glover had broken down, and felt pretty sure that it could not be less than twenty miles from the camp.  Mounted as he was, he could put himself ahead of Thurstane and ambush him in some ravine.  Of a sudden he laughed.  It was not a burst of merriment, but a grim wrinkling of his dark, haggard cheeks, followed by a hissing chuckle.  Texas seldom laughed, and with good reason, for it was enough to scare people.

“Mought be done,” he muttered.  “Mought git the better of ’em all that way.  Shute, ‘an then yell.  The greasers’ud think it was Injuns, an’ they’d travel for camp.  Then I’d stop the spare mules an’ start for Californy.”

For Texas this plan was a stroke of inspiration.  He was not an intelligent scoundrel.  All his acumen, though bent to the one point of roguery, had barely sufficed hitherto to commit murders and escape hanging.  He had never prospered financially, because he lacked financial ability.  He was a beast, with all a tiger’s ferocity, but with hardly more than a tiger’s intelligence.  He was a savage numskull.  An Apache Tonto would have been more than his match in the arts of murder, and very nearly his match in the arts of civilization.

Instead of following Thurstane directly, he made a circuit of several miles through a ravine, galloped across a wide grassy plain, and pulled up among some rounded hillocks.  Here, as he calculated, he was fifteen miles from camp, and five from the spot where lay Glover and Sweeny.  The moon had already gone down and left the desert to the starlight.  Posting himself behind a thicket, he waited for half an hour or more, listening with indefatigable attention.

He had no scruples, but he had some fears.  If he should miss, the lieutenant would fire back, and he was cool enough to fire with effect.  Well, he wouldn’t miss; what should he miss for?  As for the greasers, they would run at the first shot.  Nevertheless, he did occasionally muddle over the idea of going off to California with his gold, and without doing this particular job.  What kept him to his agreement was the hope of stealing the spare mules, and the fear that the draft might not be paid if he shirked his work.