Well, we have heard these two talk, and much in their usual fashion.  Not great souls as yet:  they may indeed become such some day; but at present they are only mature in moral power and in capacity for mighty emotions.  Information, mental development, and conversational ability hereafter.

In one way or another two or three of these tete-a-tetes were brought about every day.  Thurstane wanted them all the time; would have been glad to make life one long dialogue with Miss Van Diemen; found an aching void in every moment spent away from her.  Clara, too, in spite of maidenly struggles with herself, began to be of this way of feeling.  Wonderful place the Great American Desert for falling in love!

Coronado soon guessed, and with good reason, that the seed which he had sown in the girl’s mind was being replaced by other germs, and that he had blundered in trusting that she would think of him while she was talking with Thurstane.  The fear of losing her increased his passion for her, and made him hate his rival with correlative fervor.

“Why don’t you find a chance at that fellow?” he muttered to his bravo, Texas Smith.

“How the h—­l kin I do it?” growled the bushwhacker, feeling that his intelligence and courage were unjustly called in question.  “He’s allays around the train, an’ his sojers allays handy.  I hain’t had nary chance.”

“Take him off on a hunt.”

“He ain’t a gwine.  I reckon he knows himself.  I’m afeard to praise huntin’ much to him; he might get on my trail.  Tell you these army chaps is resky.  I never wanted to meddle with them kind o’ close.  You know I said so.  I said so, fair an’ square, I did.”

“You might manage it somehow, if you had the pluck.”

“Had the pluck!” repeated Texas Smith.  His sallow, haggard face turned dusky with rage, and his singularly black eyes flamed as if with hell-fire.  A Malay, crazed with opium and ready to run amok, could not present a more savage spectacle than this man did as he swayed in his saddle, grinding his teeth, clutching his rifle, and glaring at Coronado.  What chiefly infuriated him was that the insult should come from one whom he considered a “greaser,” a man of inferior race.  He, Texas Smith, an American, a white man, was treated as if he were an “Injun” or a “nigger.”  Coronado was thoroughly alarmed, and smoothed his ruffled feathers at once.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, promptly.  “My dear Mr. Smith, I was entirely wrong.  Of course I know that you have courage.  Everybody knows it.  Besides, I am under the greatest obligations to you.  You saved my life.  By heavens, I am horribly ashamed of my injustice.”

A minute or so of this fluent apologizing calmed the bushwhacker’s rage and soothed his injured feelings.

“But you oughter be keerful how you talk that way to a white man,” he said.  “No white man, if he’s a gentleman, can stan’ being told he hain’t got no pluck.”