stably
risky; he must not lose time in shuddering over the first steps.

"Mr. Smith," he said, "very glad to know that you are with us. Can you
start in an hour for the camp of Manga Colorada? Sixty miles there. We
must be back by to-morrow night. It would be best not to say where we are
going."

Texas Smith nodded, turned abruptly on the huge heels of his Mexican
boots, stalked to where his horse was fastened, and began to saddle him.

"My dear uncle, why didn't you hire the devil?" whispered Coronado as he
stared after the cutthroat.

"Get yourself ready, my nephew," was Garcia's reply. "I will see to the
men and horses."

In an hour the expedition was off at full gallop. Coronado had laid aside
his American dandy raiment, and was in the full costume of a Mexican of
the provinces--broad-brimmed hat of white straw, blue broadcloth jacket
adorned with numerous small silver buttons, velvet vest of similar
splendor, blue trousers slashed from the knee downwards and gay with
buttons, high, loose embroidered boots of crimson leather, long steel
spurs jingling and shining. The change became him; he seemed a larger and
handsomer man for it; he looked the caballero and almost the hidalgo.

Three hours took the party thirty miles to a hacienda of Garcia's, where
they changed horses, leaving their first mounting for the return. After
half an hour for dinner, they pushed on again, always at a gallop, the
hoofs clattering over the hard, yellow, sunbaked earth, or dashing
recklessly along smooth sheets of rock, or through fields of loose,
slippery stones. Rare halts to breathe the animals; then the steady,
tearing gallop again; no walking or other leisurely gait. Coronado led the
way and hastened the pace. There was no tiring him; his thin, sinewy,
sun-hardened frame could bear enormous fatigue; moreover, the saddle was
so familiar to him that he almost reposed in it. If he had needed physical
support, he would have found it in his mental energy. He was capable of
that executive furor, that intense passion of exertion, which the man of
Latin race can exhibit when he has once fairly set himself to an
enterprise. He was of the breed which in nobler days had produced
Gonsalvo, Cortes, Pizarro, and Darien.

These riders had set out at ten o'clock in the morning; at five in the
afternoon they drew bridle in sight of the Apache encampment. They were on
the brow of a stony hill: a pile of bare, gray, glaring, treeless,
herbless la