On the very morning after the above dialogue Garcia’s train started for Rio Arriba, taking with it a girl who had been singled out for a marriage which she did not guess, or for a death whose horrors were beyond her wildest fears.

The train consisted of six long and heavy covered vehicles, not dissimilar in size, strength, and build to army wagons.  Garcia had thought that two would suffice; six wagons, with their mules, etc., were a small fortune:  what if the Apaches should take them?  But Coronado had replied:  “Nobody sends a train of two wagons; do you want to rouse suspicion?”

So there were six; and each had a driver and a muleteer, making twelve hired men thus far.  On horseback, there were six Mexicans, nominally cattle-drivers going to California, but really guards for the expedition—­the most courageous bullies that could be picked up in Santa Fe, each armed with pistols and a rifle.  Finally, there were Coronado and his terrible henchman, Texas Smith, with their rifles and revolvers.  Old Garcia perspired with anguish as he looked over his caravan, and figured up the cost in his head.

Thurstane, wretched at heart, but with a cheering smile on his lips, came to bid the ladies farewell.

“What do you think of this?” Aunt Maria called to him from her seat in one of the covered wagons.  “We are going a thousand miles through deserts and savages.  You men suppose that women have no courage.  I call this heroism.”

“Certainly,” nodded the young fellow, not thinking of her at all, unless it was that she was next door to an idiot.

Although his mind was so full of Clara that it did not seem as if he could receive an impression from any other human being, his attention was for a moment arrested by a countenance which struck him as being more ferocious than he had ever seen before except on the shoulders of an Apache.  A tall man in Mexican costume, with a scar on his chin and another on his cheek, was glaring at him with two intensely black and savage eyes.  It was Texas Smith, taking the measure of Thurstane’s fighting power and disposition.  A hint from Coronado had warned the borderer that here was a person whom it might be necessary some day to get rid of.  The officer responded to this ferocious gaze with a grim, imperious stare, such as one is apt to acquire amid the responsibilities and dangers of army life.  It was like a wolf and a mastiff surveying each other.

Thurstane advanced to Clara, helped her into her saddle, and held her hand while he urged her to be careful of herself, never to wander from the train, never to be alone, etc.  The girl turned a little pale; it was not exactly because of his anxious manner; it was because of the eloquence that there is in a word of parting.  At the moment she felt so alone in the world, in such womanish need of sympathy, that had he whispered to her, “Be my wife,” she might have reached out her hands to him.  But Thurstane was far from guessing that an angel could have such weak impulses; and he no more thought of proposing to her thus abruptly than of ascending off-hand into heaven.