return to camp. No
need of explaining his absence; he was the head hunter of the expedition;
it was his business to wander.

All this was so easy to do, if he could only take the first step. But he
dared not fire lest he should merely kill a soldier, and so make an uproar
and rouse suspicions without the slightest profit. It was not probable
that Coronado would pay him for shooting the wrong man, and setting on
foot a dangerous investigation. So the desperado continued to peer through
the dim night, cursing his stars and everybody's stars for not shining
better, and seeing his opportunity slip rapidly away. After Thurstane and
the others had passed, after the chance of murder had stalked by him like
a ghost and vanished, he left his ambush, glided down the ravine to his
horse, waked him up with a vindictive kick, leaped into the saddle, and
hastened to camp. To inquiries about the lost couple he replied in his
sullen, brief way that he had not seen them; and when urged to go to their
rescue, he of course set off in the wrong direction and travelled but a
short distance.

Meantime Ralph had found the captives of the canon. Clara, wrapped in her
blankets, was lying at the foot of a rock, and crying while she pretended
to sleep. Coronado, unable to make her talk, irritated by the faint sobs
which he overheard, but stubbornly resolved on carrying out his stupid
plot, had retired in a state of ill-humor unusual with him to another
rock, and was consoling himself by smoking cigarito after cigarito. The
two horses, tied together neck and crupper, were fasting near by. As
Coronado had forgotten to bring food with him, Clara was also fasting.

Think of Apaches, and imagine the terror with which she caught the sounds
of approach, the heavy, stumbling steps through the darkness. Then imagine
the joy with which she recognized Thurstane's call and groped to meet him.
In the dizziness of her delight, and amid the hiding veils of the
obscurity, it did not seem wrong nor unnatural to fall against his arm and
be supported by it for a moment. Ralph received this touch, this shock, as
if it had been a ball; and his nature bore the impress of it as long as if
it had made a scar. In his whole previous life he had not felt such a
thrill of emotion; it was almost too powerful to be adequately described
as a pleasure.

Next came Coronado, as happy as a disappointed burglar whose cue it is to
congratulate the rescuing policeman. "My dear Lie