“Don’t scold her,” begged Aunt Maria, who was sobbing like a child.  “She doesn’t know what she is asking.”

But Clara knew too much; at the word Pepita she guessed the torture scene; and then it came into her mind that Thurstane might be even now at the stake.  She immediately broke into screams, which ended in convulsions and a long fit of insensibility.

“It is killing her,” wailed Aunt Maria.  “Oh, my child! my child!”

Coronado spurred at full speed for a mile, muttering to the desert, “Let it kill her! let it!”

At last he halted for the train to overtake him, glanced anxiously at Clara’s wagon, saw that Mrs. Stanley was still bending over her, guessed that she was still alive, drew a sigh of relief, and rode on alone.

“Oh, this love-making!” sighed Aunt Maria scores of times, for she had at last learned of the engagement.  “When will my sex get over the weakness?  It kills them, and they like it.”

That night Clara could not sleep, and kept Coronado awake with her moanings.  All the next day she lay in a semi-unconsciousness which was partly lethargy and partly fever.  It was well; at all events he could bear it so—­bear it better than when she was crying and praying for death.  The next night she fell into such a long silence of slumber that he came repeatedly to her wagon to hearken if she still breathed.  Youth and a strong constitution were waging a doubtful battle to rescue her from the despair which threatened to rob her of either life or reason.

So the journey continued.  Henceforward the trail followed Bill Williams’s river to the Colorado, tracked that stream northward to the Mohave valley, and, crossing there, took the line of the Mohave river toward California.  It was a prodigious pilgrimage still, and far from being a safe one.  The Mohaves, one of the tallest and bravest races known, from six feet to six and a half in height, fighting hand to hand with short clubs, were not perfectly sure to be friendly.  Coronado felt that, if ever he got his wife and his fortune, he should have earned them.  He was resolute, however; there was no flinching yet in this versatile, yet obstinate nature; he was as wicked and as enduring as a Pizarro.

We will not make the journey; we must suppose it.  Weeks after the desert had for a second time engulfed Thurstane, a coasting schooner from Santa Barbara entered the Bay of San Francisco, having on board Clara, Mrs. Stanley, and Coronado.

The latter is on deck now, smoking his eternal cigarito without knowing it, and looking at the superb scenery without seeing it.  A landscape mirrored in the eye of a horse has about as much effect on the brain within as a landscape mirrored in the eye of Coronado.  He is a Latin; he has a fine ear for music, and he would delight in museums of painting and sculpture; but he has none of the passion of the sad, grave, imaginative Anglican race for nature.  Mountains, deserts, seas, and storms are to him obstacles and hardships.  He has no more taste for them than had Ulysses.