PART IV

REMEMBERING THE TRAIL

XXII. THE GOLDEN WEDDING

FOREWORD

Westward, along the level prairies of a kingdom yet to be, my memory

runs, with a clear vision of the days when romance died not and strong

hearts never failed. The glamour of the plains is before my eyes; the

tingle of courage, danger-born, is in my pulse-beat; the soft hand of

love is touching my hand. I live again the drama of life wherein there

are no idle actors, no stale, unmeaning lines. And beyond the action,

this way _up_ the years, there runs also the forward-gazing vision

toward a new Hesperides:

Through the veins

Of whose vast Empire flows, in strength'ning tides,

Trade, the calm health of nations.

* * * * *

And sometimes I would doubt

If statesmen, rocked and dandled into power,

Could leave such legacies to kings.

I

CLEARING THE TRAIL

VANGUARDS OF THE PLAINS

A ROMANCE OF THE SANTA FÉ TRAIL

I

THE BEGINNINGS OF A PLAINSMAN

There came a time in the law of life

When over the nursing sod

The shadows broke, and the soul awoke

In a strange, dim dream of God.

--LANGDON SMITH.

It might have been but yesterday that I saw it all: the glinting

sunlight on the yellow Missouri boiling endlessly along at the foot of

the bluff; the flood-washed sands across the river; the tangle of tall,

coarse weeds fringing them, edged by the scrubby underbrush. And beyond

that the big trees of the Missouri woodland, so level against the

eastern horizon that I used to wonder if I might not walk upon their

solid-looking tops if I could only reach them. I wondered, too, why the

trees on our side of the river should vary so in height when those in

the eastern distance were so evenly grown. One day I had asked Jondo the

reason for this, and had learned that it was because of the level ground

on the farther side of the valley. I began then to love the level places

of the earth. I love them still. And, always excepting that one titanic

rift, where the world stands edgewise, with the sublimity of the

Almighty shimmering through its far depths, I love them more than any

other thing that nature has yet offered to me.

But to come back to that picture of yesterday: old Fort Leavenworth on

the bluff; the little and big ravines that billow the landscape about

it; the faint lines of trails winding along the hillsides toward the

southwest; the unclouded skies so everlastingly big and intensely blue;

and, hanging like a spray of glorious blossoms flung high above me, the

swaying folds of the wind-caressed flag, now drooping on its tall staff,

now swelling full and free, straight from its gripping halyards.

Between me and the fort many people were passing to and fro, some of

whom were to walk with me down the long trail of years. Evermore that

April day stands out as the beginning of things for me. Dim are the days

behind it, a jumble of happy childish hours, each keen enough as the

things of childhood go; but from that one day to the present hour the

unforgotten deeds of busy years run clearly in my memory as I lift my

pen to write somewhat of their dramatic record.

And that this may not seem all a backward gaze, let me face about and

look forward from the beginning--a stretch of canvas, lurid sometimes,

sometimes in glorious tinting, sometimes intensely dark, with rifts of

lightning cleaving through its blackness. But nowhere dull, nowhere

without design in every brush-stroke.

I had gone out on the bluff to watch for the big fish that Bill Banney,

a young Kentuckian over at the fort, had told me were to be seen only on

those April days when the Missouri was running north instead of south.

And that when little boys kept very still, the fish would come out of

the water and play leap-frog on the sand-bars.

If I failed to see them this morning, I meant to run back to the

parade-ground and play leap-frog myself with my cousin Beverly, who

wanted proof for most of Bill Banney's stories. Beverly was growing wise

and lanky for his age. I was still chubby, and in most things innocent,

and inclined to believe all that I heard, or I should not have been

taken in by that fish story.

We were orphans with no recollection of any other home than the log

house near the fort. We had been fathered and mothered by our uncle,

Esmond Clarenden, owner of the little store across the square from our

house, and a larger establishment down at Independence on the Missouri

River.

Always a wonderful man to me was that Esmond Clarenden, product of one

of the large old New England colleges. He found time to guard our young

years with the same diplomatic system by which he controlled all of his

business affairs. He laid his plans carefully and never swerved from

carrying them through afterward; he insisted on order in everything; he

rendered value for value in his contracts; he chose his employees

carefully, and trusted them fully; he had a keen sense of humor, a

genial spirit of good-will, and he loved little children. Fitted as he

was by culture and genius to have entered into the greater opportunities

of the Eastern States, he gave himself to the real up-building of the

West, and in the larger comfort and prosperity and peace of the Kansas

prairies of to-day his soul goes marching on.

The waters, as I watched them, were all running south toward that vague,

down-stream world shut off by trees at a bend of the course. I waited a

long time there for the current to shift to the north, wondering

meanwhile about those level-topped forests, and what I might see beyond

them if I were sitting on their flat crests. And, as I wondered, the

first dim sense of being _shut in_ came filtering through my childish

consciousness. I could not cross the river. Big as my playground had

always been, I had never been out of sight of the fort's flagstaff

up-stream, nor down-stream. The wooded ravines blocked me on the

southwest. What lay beyond these limits I had tried to picture again and

again. I had been a dreamer all of my short life, and this new feeling

of being shut in, held back, from something slipped upon me easily.

As I sat on the bluff in the April sunshine, I turned my face toward

the west and stretched out my chubby arms for larger freedom. I wanted

to _see the open level places_, wanted till it hurt me. I could cry

easily enough for some things. I could not cry for this. It was too deep

for tears to reach. Moreover, this new longing seemed to drop down on me

suddenly and overwhelm me, until I felt almost as if I were caught in a

net.

As I stared with half-seeing eyes toward the wooded ravines beyond the

fort, suddenly through the budding branches I caught sight of a horseman

riding down a half-marked trail into a deep hollow. Horsemen were common

enough to forget in a moment, but when this one reappeared on the hither

side of the ravine, I saw that the rider's face was very dark, that his

dress, from the sombrero to the spurred heel, was Mexican, and that he

was heavily armed, even for a plainsman. When he reached the top of the

bluff he made straight across the square toward my uncle Esmond

Clarenden's little storehouse, and I lost sight of him.

Something about him seemed familiar to me, for the gift of remembering

faces was mine, even then. A fleeting childish memory called up such a

face and dress somewhere back in the dim days of babyhood, with the

haunting sound of a low, musical voice, speaking in the soft Castilian

tongue.

But the memory vanished and I sat a long time gazing at the wooded west

that hid the open West of my day-dreams.

Suddenly Jondo came riding up on his big black horse to the very edge

of the bluff.

"You are such a little mite, I nearly forgot to see you," he called,

cheerily. "Your Uncle Esmond wants you right away. Mat Nivers, or

somebody else, sent me to run you down," he added, leaning over to lift

me up to a seat on the horse behind him.

Few handsomer men ever graced a saddle. Big, broad-shouldered, muscular,

yet agile, a head set like a Greek statue, and a face--nobody could ever

make a picture of Jondo's face for me--the curling brown hair, soft as a

girl's, the broad forehead, deep-set blue eyes, heavy dark brow, cheeks

always ruddy through the plain's tan, strong white teeth, firm square

chin, and a smile like sunshine on the gray prairies. Eyes, lips,

teeth--aye, the big heart behind them--all made that smile. No grander

prince of men ever rode the trails or dared the dangers of the untamed

West. I did not know his story for many years. I wish I might never have

known it. But as he began with me, so he ended--brave, beloved old

Jondo!

Down on the parade-ground Beverly Clarenden and Mat Nivers were sitting

with their feet crossed under them, tailor fashion, facing each other

and talking earnestly. Over by the fort, Esmond Clarenden stood under a

big elm-tree. A round little, stout little man he was, whose sturdy

strength and grace of bearing made up for his lack of height. Like a

great green tent the boughs of the elm, just budding into leaf, drooped

over him. A young army officer on a cavalry horse was talking with him

as we came up.

"Run over there to Beverly now. Gail," my uncle said, with a wave of his

hand.

I was always in awe of shoulder-straps, so I scampered away toward the

children. But not until, child-like, I had stared at the three men long

enough to take a child's lasting estimate of things.

I carry still the keen impression of that moment when I took,

unconsciously, the measure of the three: the mounted army man, commander

of the fort, big in his official authority and force; Jondo on his great

black horse, to me the heroic type of chivalric courage; and between the

two, Esmond Clarenden, unmounted, with feet firmly planted, suggesting

nothing heroic, nothing autocratic. And yet, as he stood there,

square-built, solid, certain, he seemed in some dim way to be the real

man of whom the other two were but shadows. It took a quarter of a

century for me to put into words what I learned with one glance that day

in my childhood.

As I came running toward the parade-ground Beverly Clarenden called out:

"Come here, Gail! Shut your little mouth and open your big ears, and

I'll tell you something. Maybe I'd better not tell you all at once,

though. It might make you dizzy," he added, teasingly.

"And maybe you better had," Mat Nivers said, calmly.

"Maybe you'd better tell him yourself, if you feel that way," Beverly

retorted.

"I guess I'll do that," Mat began, with a twinkle in her big gray eyes;

but my cousin interrupted her.

Beverly loved to tease Mat through me, but he never got far, for I

relied on her to curb him; and she was not one to be ruffled by trifles.

Mat was an orphan and, like ourselves, a ward of Esmond Clarenden, but

there were no ties of kinship between us. She was three years older than

Beverly, and although she was no taller than he, she seemed like a woman

to me, a keen-witted, good-natured child-woman, neat, cleanly, and

contented. I wonder if many women get more out of life in these days of

luxurious comforts than she found in the days of frontier hardships.

"Well, it's this way, Gail. Mat doesn't know the straight of it,"

Beverly began, dramatically. "There's going to be a war, or something,

in Mexico, or somewhere, and a lot of soldiers are coming here to drill,

and drill, and drill. And then--"

The boy paused for effect.

"And then, and then, _and_ then--or some time," Mat Nivers mimicked,

jumping into the pause. "Why, they'll go to Mexico, or somewhere. And

what Bev is really trying to tell hasn't anything to do with it--not

directly, anyhow," she added, wisely. "The only new thing is that Uncle

Esmond is going to Santa Fé right away. You know he has bought goods of

the Santa Fé traders since we couldn't remember. And now he's going down

there himself, and he's going to take you boys with him. That's what

Bev is trying to get out, or keep back."

"Whoopee-diddle-dee!" Beverly shouted, throwing himself backward and

kicking up his heels.

I jumped up and capered about in glee at the thought of such a journey.

But my heart-throb of childish delight was checked, mid-beat.

"Won't Mat go, too?" I asked, with a sudden pain at my throat. Mat

Nivers was a part of life to me.

The smile fell away from the girl's lips. Her big, sunshiny gray eyes

and her laughing good nature always made her beautiful to Beverly and

me.

"I don't want to go and leave Mat," I insisted.

"Oh, I do," Beverly declared, boastingly. "It would be real nice and

jolly without her. And what could a little girl do 'way out on the

prairies, and no mother to take care of her, while we were shooting

Indians?"

He sprang up and took aim at the fort with an imaginary bow and arrow.

But there was a hollow note in his voice as if it covered a sob.

"She can shoot Indians as good as you can, Beverly Clarenden, and,

besides, there isn't anybody to mother her here but Jondo, and I reckon

he'll go with us, won't he?" I urged.

Mothering was not in my stock of memories. The heart-hunger of the

orphan child had been eased by the gentleness of Jondo, the championship

of Mat Nivers, and the sure defense of Esmond Clarenden, who said little

to children, and was instinctively trusted by all of them.

With Beverly's banter the smile came back quickly to Mat's eyes. It was

never lost from them long at a time.

"Beverly Clarenden, you keep _your_ little mouth shut and _your_ big

ears open," she began, laughingly. "I know the whole sheboodle better 'n

any of you, and I'm not teasing and whimpering both at the same time,

neither. Bev doesn't know anything except what I've told him, and I

wasn't through when you got here, Gail. There is going to be a big war

in Texas, and our soldiers are going to go, and to win, too. Just look

up at that flag there, and remember now, boys, that wherever the Stars

and Stripes go they _stay_."

"Who told you all that?" Beverly inquired.

"The stars up in the sky told me that last night," Mat replied, pulling

down the corners of her mouth solemnly. "But Uncle Esmond hasn't

anything to do with the war, nor soldiers, only like he has been doing

here," the girl went on. "He's a store-man, a merchant, and I guess he's

just about as good as a general--a colonel, anyhow. But he's too short

to fight, and too fat to run."

"He isn't any coward," Beverly objected.

"Who said he was?" Mat inquired. "He's one of them usefulest men that

keeps things going everywhere."

"I saw a real Mexican come up out of the ravine awhile ago and go

straight over toward Uncle Esmond's store. What do you suppose he came

here for? Is he a soldier from down there?" I asked.

"Oh, just one Mexican don't mean anything anywhere, but the war in

Mexico has something to do with our going to Santa Fé, even if Uncle

Esmond is just a nice little store-man. That's all a girl knows about

things," Beverly insisted.

Mat opened her big eyes wide and looked straight at the boy.

"I don't pretend to know what I don't know, but I'll bet a million

billion dollars there is something else besides just all this war stuff.

I can't tell it, I just feel it. Anyhow, I'm to stay here with Aunty

Boone till you come back. Girls can be trusted anywhere, but it may take

the whole Army of the West, yet, to follow up and look after two little

runty boys. And let me tell _you_ something, Bev, something I heard

Aunty Boone say this morning." She said: "Taint goin' to be more 'n a

minnit now till them boys grows up an' grows together, same size, same

age. They been little and big, long as they goin' to be. Now you know

what you're coming to."

Mat was digging in the ground with a stick, and she flipped a clod at

Beverly with the last words. Both of us had once expected to marry her

when we grew up, unless Jondo should carry her away as his bride before

that time. He was a dozen years older than Mat, who was only fourteen

and small for her age. A flush always came to her cheeks when we talked

of Jondo in that way. We didn't know why.

We sat silent for a little while. A vague sense of desolateness, of the

turning-places of life, as real to children as to older folk, seemed to

press suddenly down upon all three of us. Ours was not the ordinary

child-life even of that day. And that was a time when children had no

world of their own as they have to-day. Whatever developed men and women

became a part of the younger life training as well. And while we were

ignorant of much that many children then learned early, for we had lived

mostly beside the fort on the edge of the wilderness, we were alert, and

self-dependent, fearless and far-seeing. We could use tools readily: we

could build fires and prepare game for cooking; we could climb trees,

set traps, swim in the creek, and ride horses. Moreover, we were bound

to one another by the force of isolation and need for playmates. Our

imagination supplied much that our surroundings denied us. So we felt

more deeply, maybe, than many city-bred children who would have paled

with fear at dangers that we only laughed over.

No ripple in the even tenor of our days, however, had given any hint of

the coming of this sudden tense oppression on our young souls, and we

were stunned by what we could neither express nor understand.

"Whatever comes or doesn't come," Beverly said at last, stretching

himself at full length, stomach downward, on the bare ground, "whatever

happens to us, we three will stand by each other always and always,

won't we, Mat?"

He lifted his face to the girl's. Oh, Beverly! I saw him again one day

down the years, stretched out on the ground like this, lifting again a

pleading face. But that belongs--down the years.

"Yes, always and always," Mat replied, and then because she had a

Spartan spirit, she added: "But let's don't say any more that way. Let's

think of what you are going to see--the plains, the Santa Fé Trail, the

mountains, and maybe bad Indians. And even old Santa Fé town itself. You

are in for 'the big shift,' as Aunty Boone says, and you've got to be

little men and take whatever comes. It will come fast enough, you can

bet on that."

Yesterday I might have sobbed on her shoulder. I did not know then that

out on the bluff an hour ago I had come to the first turn in my

life-trail, and that I could not look back now. I did know that I

_wanted to go with Uncle Esmond._ I looked away from Mat's gray eyes,

and Beverly's head dropped on his arms, face downward--looked at nothing

but blue sky, and a graceful drooping flag; nothing but a half-sleepy,

half-active fort; nothing but the yellow April floods far up-stream,

between wooded banks tenderly gray-green in the spring sunshine. But I

did not see any of these things then. Before my eyes there stretched a

vast level prairie, with dim mountain heights beyond them. And marching

toward them westward, westward, past lurking danger, Indians here and

wild beasts there, went three men: the officer on his cavalry mount;

Jondo on his big black horse; Esmond Clarenden, neither mounted nor on

foot, it seemed, but going forward somehow. And between these three and

the misty mountain peaks there was a face--not Mat Nivers's, for the

first time in all my day-dreams--a sweet face with dark eyes looking

straight into mine. And plainly then, just as plainly as I have heard it

many times since then, came a call--the first clear bugle-note of the

child-soul--a call to service, to patriotism, and to love.

All that afternoon while Mat Nivers sang about her tasks Beverly and I

tried to play together among the elm and cottonwood trees about our

little home, but evening found us wide awake and moping. Instead of the

two tired little sleepy-heads that could barely finish supper, awake,

when night came, we lay in our trundle-bed, whispering softly to each

other and staring at the dark with tear-wet eyes--our spiritual

barometers warning us of a coming change. Something must have happened

to us that night which only the retrospect of years revealed. In that

hour Beverly Clarenden lost a year of his life and I gained one. From

that time we were no longer little and big to each other--we were

comrades.

It must have been nearly midnight when I crept out of bed and slipped

into the big room where Uncle Esmond and Jondo sat by the fireplace,

talking together.

"Hello, little night-hawk! Come here and roost," Jondo said, opening his

arms to me.

I slid into their embrace and snuggled my head against his broad

shoulder, listening to all that was said. Three months later the little

boy had become a little man, and my cuddling days had given place to

the self-reliance of the fearless youngster of the trail.

"Why do you make this trip now, Esmond?" Jondo asked at length, looking

straight into my uncle's face.

"I want to get down there right now because I want to get a grip on

trade conditions. I can do better after the war if I do. It won't last

long, and we are sure to take over a big piece of ground there when it

is over. And when that is settled commerce must do the real building-up

of the country. I want to be a part of that thing and grow with it. Why

do you go with me?"

My uncle looked directly at Jondo, although he asked the question

carelessly.

"To help you cross the plains. You know the redskins get worse every

trip," Jondo answered, lightly.

I stared at both of them until Jondo said, laughingly:

"You little owl, what are you thinking about?"

"I think you are telling each other stories," I replied, frankly.

For somehow their faces made me think of Beverly's face out on the

parade-ground that morning, when he had lifted it and looked at Mat

Nivers; and their voices, deep bass as they were, sounded like Beverly's

voice whispering between his sobs, before he went to sleep.

Both men smiled and said nothing. But when I went to my bed again Jondo

tucked the covers about me and Uncle Esmond came and bade me good

night.

"I guess you have the makings of a plainsman," he said, with a smile, as

he patted me on the head.

"The beginnings, anyhow," Jondo added. "He can see pretty far already."

For a long time I lay awake, thinking of all that Uncle Esmond and Jondo

had said to me. It is no wonder that I remember that April day as if it

were but yesterday. Such days come only to childhood, and oftentimes

when no one of older years can see clearly enough to understand the

bigness of their meaning to the child who lives through them.

All of my life I had heard stories of the East, of New York and St.

Louis, where there were big houses and wonderful stores. And of

Washington, where there was a President, and a Congress, and a strange

power that could fill and empty Fort Leavenworth at will. I had heard of

the Great Lakes, and of cotton-fields, and tobacco-plantations, and

sugar-camps, and ships, and steam-cars. I had pictured these things a

thousand times in my busy imagination and had longed to see them. But

from that day they went out of my life-dreams. Henceforth I belonged to

the prairies of the West. No one but myself took account of this, nor

guessed that a life-trend had had its commencement in the small events

of one unimportant day.

II

A DAUGHTER OF CANAAN

One stone the more swings to her place

In that dread Temple of Thy worth;

It is enough that through Thy grace

I saw naught common on Thy earth.

The next morning I was wakened by the soft voice of Aunty Boone, our

cook, saying:

"You better get up! Revilly blow over at the fort long time ago. Wonder

it didn't blow your batter-cakes clear away. Mat and Beverly been up

since 'fore sunup."

Aunty Boone was the biggest woman I have ever seen. Not the tallest,

maybe--although she measured up to a height of six feet and two

inches--not the fattest, but a woman with the biggest human frame,

overlaid with steel-hard muscles. Yet she was not, in her way, clumsy or

awkward. She walked with a free stride, and her every motion showed a

powerful muscular control. Her face was jet-black, with keen shining

eyes, and glittering white teeth. In my little child-world she was the

strangest creature I had ever known. In the larger world whither the

years of my manhood have led me she holds the same place.

She had been born a princess of royal blood, heir to a queenship in her

tribe in a far-away African kingdom. In her young womanhood, so the tale

ran, the slave-hunter had found her and driven her aboard a slave-ship

bound for the American coast. He never drove another slave toward any

coast. In Virginia her first purchaser had sold her quickly to a Georgia

planter whose _heirs_ sent her on to Mississippi. Thence she soon found

her way to the Louisiana rice-fields. Nobody came to take her back to

any place she had quitted. "Safety first," is not a recent practice. She

had enormous strength and capacity for endurance, she learned rapidly,

kept her own counsel, obeyed no command unless she chose to do so, and

feared nothing in the Lord's universe. The people of her own race had

little in common with her. They never understood her and so they feared

her. And being as it were outcast by them, she came to know more of the

ways and customs, and even the thoughts, of the white people better than

of her own. Being quick to imitate, she spoke in the correcter language

of those whom she knew best, rather than the soft, ungrammatical dialect

of the plantation slave or the grunt and mumble of the isolated African.

Realizing that service was to be her lot, she elected to render that

service where and to whom she herself might choose.

One day she had walked into New Orleans and boarded a Mississippi

steamer bound for St. Louis. It took three men to eject her bodily from

the deck into a deep and dangerous portion of the stream. She swam

ashore, and when the steamer made its next stop she walked aboard again.

The three men being under the care of a physician, and the remainder of

the crew burdened with other tasks, she was not again disturbed. Some

time later she appeared at the landing below Fort Leavenworth, and

strode up the slope to the deserted square where Esmond Clarenden stood

before his little store alone in the deepening twilight.

I have heard that she had had a way of appearing suddenly, like a beast

of prey, in the dusk of the evening, and that few men cared to meet her

at that time alone.

My uncle was a snug-built man, sixty-two inches high, with small,

shapely hands and feet. Towering above him stood this great, strange

creature, barefooted, ragged, half tiger, half sphinx.

"I'm hungry. I'll eat or I kill. I'm nobody's slave!"

The soft voice was full of menace, the glare of famine and fury was in

the burning eyes, and the supple cruelty of the wild beast was in the

clenched hands.

Esmond Clarenden looked up at her with interest. Then pointing toward

our house he said, calmly:

"Neither are you anybody's master. Go over there to the kitchen and get

your supper. If you can cook good meals, I'll pay you well. If you

can't, you'll leave here."

Possibly it was the first time in her strange and varied career that she

had taken a command kindly, and obeyed because she must. And so the

savage African princess, the terror of the terrible slave-ship, the

untamed plantation scourge, with a record for deeds that belong to

another age and social code, became the great, silent, faithful,

fearless servant of the plains; with us, but never of us, in all the

years that followed. But she fitted the condition of her day, and in her

place she stood, where the beloved black mammy of a gentler mold would

have fallen.

She announced that her name was Daniel Boone, which Uncle Esmond

considered well enough for one of such a westward-roving nature. But

Jondo declared that the "Daniel" belonged to her because, like unto the

Bible Daniel, no lion, nor whole den of lions, would ever dine at her

expense. To us she became Aunty Boone. With us she was always

gentle--docile, rather; and one day we came to know her real measure,

and--we never forgot her.

I bounced out of bed at her call this morning, and bounced my breakfast

into a healthy, good-natured stomach. The sunny April of yesterday had

whirled into a chilly rain, whipped along by a raw wind. The skies were

black and all the spring verdure was turned to a sickish gray-green.

"Weather always fit the times," Aunty Boone commented as she heaped my

plate with the fat buckwheat cakes that only she could ever turn off a

griddle. "You packin' up for somepin' now. What you goin' to get is

fo'casted in this here nasty day."

"Why, we _are_ going away!" I cried, suddenly recalling the day before.

"I wish, though, that Mat could go. Wouldn't you like to go, too, Aunty?

Only, Bev says there's deserts, where there's just rocks and sand and

everything, and no water sometimes. You and Mat couldn't stand that

'cause you are women-folks."

I stiffened with importance and clutched my knife and fork hard.

"Couldn't!" Aunty Boone gave a scornful grunt. "Women-folks stands

double more 'n men. You'll see when you get older. I know about you

freightin' off to Santy Fee. _You_ don't know what desset is. _You_

never _see sand_. You never _feel_ what it is to _want watah_. Only

folks 'cross the ocean in the real desset knows that. Whoo-ee!"

I remembered the weird tales she had told us of her girlhood--tales that

had thrilled me with wonder--told sometimes in the twilight, sometimes

by the kitchen fire on winter nights, sometimes on long, still,

midsummer afternoons when the air quivered with heat and the Missouri

hung about hot sand-bars, half asleep.

"What do you know about this trip, Aunty Boone?" I asked, eagerly; for

although she could neither read nor write, she had a sponge-like

absorbing power for keeping posted on all that happened at the fort.

"Cla'n'den"--the woman never called my uncle by any other name--"he's

goin' to Santy Fee, an' you boys with him, 'cause--"

She paused and her shining eyes grew dull as they had a way of doing in

her thoughtful or prophetic moments.

"He knows what for--him an' Jondo. One of 'em's storekeeper an' t'other

a plainsman, but they tote together always--an' they totin' now. You

can't see what, but they totin', they totin', just the same. Now run out

to the store. Things is stirrin'. Things is stirrin'."

I bolted my cakes, sodden with maple syrup, drank my mug of milk, and

hurried out toward the storehouse.

Fort Leavenworth in the middle '40's was sometimes an indolent place,

and sometimes a very busy one, depending upon the activity of the

Western frontier. On this raw April morning everything was fairly ajerk

with life and motion. And I knew from child-experience that a body of

soldiers must be coming up the river soon. Horses were rushed to-day

where yesterday they had been leisurely led. Orders were shouted now

that had been half sung a week ago. Military discipline took the place

of fatigue attitudes. There was a banging of doors, a swinging of

brooms, a clatter of tin, and a clanging of iron things. And everywhere

went that slapping wind. And every shallow place in the ground held a

chilly puddle. The government buildings always seemed big and bare and

cold to me. And this morning they seemed drearier than ever, beaten upon

by the fitful swish of the rain.

In contrast with these were my uncle's snug quarters, for warmth was a

part of Esmond Clarenden's creed. I used to think that the little

storeroom, filled with such things as a frontier fort could find use

for, was the biggest emporium in America, and the owner thereof suffered

nothing, in my eyes, in comparison with A.T. Stewart, the opulent New

York merchant of his day.

As I ran, bareheaded and coatless, across the wide wet space between our

home and the storehouse a soldier came dashing by on horseback. I dodged

behind him only to fall sprawling in a slippery pool under the very feet

of another horseman, riding swiftly toward the boat-landing.

Neither man paid any attention to me as I slowly picked myself up and

started toward the store. The soldier had not seen me at all. The other

man's face was dark, and he wore the dress of the Mexican. It was only

by his alertness and skill that his horse missed me, but as he hurried

away he gave no more heed to me than if I had been a stone in his path.

I had turned my ankle in the fall and I could only limp to the

storehouse and drop down inside. I would not cry out, but I could not

hold back the sobs as I tried to stand, and fell again in a heap at

Jondo's feet.

"Things were stirrin'" there, as Aunty Boone had said, but withal there

was no disorder. Esmond Clarenden never did business in that way. No

loose ends flapped about his rigging, and when a piece of work was

finished with him, there was nothing left to clear away. Bill Banney,

the big grown-up boy from Kentucky, who, out of love of adventure, had

recently come to the fort, was helping Jondo with the packing of certain

goods. Mat and Beverly were perched on the counter, watching all that

was being done and hearing all that was said.

"What's the matter, little plainsman?" Jondo cried, catching me up and

setting me on the counter. "Got a thorn in your shoe, or a stone-bruise,

or a chilblain?"

"I slipped out there behind a soldier on horseback, right in front of a

little old Mexican who was just whirling off to the river," I said, the

tears blinding my eyes.

"Why, he's turned his ankle! Looks like it was swelling already," Mat

Nivers declared, as she slid from the counter and ran toward me.

"It's a bad job," Jondo declared. "Just when we want to get off, too."

"Can't I go with you to Santa Fé, Uncle Esmond?" I wailed.

"Yes, Gail, we'll fix you up all right," my uncle said, but his face was

grave as he examined my ankle.

It was a bad job, much worse than any of us had thought at first. And as

they all gathered round me I suddenly noticed the same Mexican standing

in the doorway, and I heard some one, I think it was Uncle Esmond, say:

"Jondo, you'd better take Gail over to the surgeon right away--" His

voice trailed off somewhere and all was blank nothingness to me. But my

last impression was that my uncle stayed behind with the strange

Mexican.

In the excitement everybody forgot that I had on neither hat nor coat as

they carried me through the raw wet air to the army surgeon's quarters

beyond the soldiers' barracks.

A chill and fever followed, and for a week there was only pain and

trouble for me. Nothing else hurt quite so deeply, however, as the fear

of being left behind when the Clarendens should start for Santa Fé. I

would ask no questions, and nobody mentioned the trip, for which

everything was preparing. I began at last to have a dread of being left

in the night, of wakening some morning to find only Mat and myself with

Aunty Boone in the little log house. Uncle Esmond had already been away

for three days, but nobody told me where he had gone, nor why he went,

nor when he would come back. It kept me awake at night, and the loss of

sleep made me nervous and feverish.

One afternoon about a week after my accident, when Beverly and Mat were

putting the room in order and chattering like a couple of squirrels,

Beverly said, carelessly:

"Gail, it's been a half a week since Uncle Esmond went down to our other

store in Independence, and we are going to start on our trip just as

soon as he gets back, unless he sends for me and Jondo."

I knew that he was trying to tell me that they meant to go without me,

for he hurried out with the last words. No boy wants to talk to a

disappointed boy, and I had to clinch my teeth hard to keep back the

tears.

"I want to get well quicker, Mat. I want to go to Santa Fé with

Beverly," I wailed, making a desperate effort to get out of bed.

"You cuddle right down there, Gail Clarenden, if you want to get well at

all. If you're real careful you'll be all right in a day or two. Let's

wait for Uncle Esmond to come home before we start any worries."

It was in her voice, girl or woman, that comforting note that could

always soothe me.

"Mat, won't you try to get them to let me go?" I pleaded.

She made no promises, but busied herself with getting my foot into its

place again, singing softly to herself all the while. Then she read me

stories from our few story-books till I fell asleep.

It was twilight when I wakened. Where I lay I could hear Esmond

Clarenden and Aunty Boone talking in the kitchen, and I listened eagerly

to all they said.

"But it's no place for a woman," my uncle was urging, gravely.

"I ain't a woman, I'm a cook. You want cooks if you eats. Mat ain't a

woman, she's a girl. But she's stronger 'n Beverly. If you can't leave

him, how can you leave her? An' Gail never get well if he's left here,

Cla'n'den, now he's got the goin' fever. Never! An' if you never got

back--"

"I don't believe he would get well, either." Then Uncle Esmond spoke

lower and I could not hear any more.

Pretty soon Mat and Beverly burst open the door and came dancing in

together, the sweet air of the warm April evening coming in with them,

and life grew rose-colored for me in a moment.

"We are all going to Santa Fé over the long trail. Every last gun of us.

Aunty Boone, and Mat, and you, and me, and Jondo, and Uncle Esmond,

rag-tag and bobtail. Whoop-ee-diddle-dee!" Beverly threw up his cap,

and, catching Mat by the arms, they whirled around the room together.

"Who says so, Bev?" I asked, eagerly.

"Them as knows and bosses everything in this world. Jondo told me, and

he's just the boss's shadow. Now guess who," Beverly replied.

"It's all true, Gail," Mat assured me. "Esmond Clarenden _is_ going to

Santa Fé in spite of 'war, pestilence, famine, and sword,' as my

_History of the World_ says, and he _is_ going to take son Beverly, and

son Gail to watch son Beverly; and Miss Mat Nivers to watch both of them

and shoo Indians away; and Aunt Daniel Boone to scare the Mexicans into

the Gulf of California, if they act ugly, see!"

She capered about the room, and as she passed me she stooped and patted

me on the forehead. I didn't want her to do that. I had taken a long

jump away from little-boy-dom a week ago, but I was supremely content

now that all of us were to take the long trail together.

That evening while Mat and Beverly went to look after some fishing-lines

they had set--Mat and Bev were always going fishing--and Jondo was down

at the store, the officer in command of the fort came in. He paid no

attention to me lying there, all eyes and ears whenever shoulder-straps

were present.

"What did you decide to do about the trip to Santa Fé?" he asked, as he

tipped back in his chair and settled down to cigars and an evening chat.

"We shall be leaving on the boat in the morning," my uncle replied.

The colonel's chair came down with a crack. "You don't mean it!" he

exclaimed.

"I told you a week ago that I would be starting as soon as possible,"

Esmond Clarenden said, quietly.

"But, man, the war is raging, simply raging, down in Mexico right now.

Our division will be here to commence drill in a few weeks, and we start

for the border in a few months. You are mad to take such a risk." The

commander's voice rose.

"We must go, that's all!" my uncle insisted.

"We? We? Who the devil are 'we'? None of my companies mutinied, I hope."

The words did not sound like a joke, and there was little humor in the

grim face.

"'We' means Jondo, Banney, a young fellow from Kentucky--" Uncle Esmond

began.

"Humph! Banney's father carried a gun at Fort Dearborn in 1812. I

thought that young fellow came here for military service," the colonel

commented, testily.

"Rather say he came for adventure," Esmond Clarenden suggested.

"He'll get a deuced lot of it in a hurry, if you persuade him off with

you."

A flush swept over Esmond Clarenden's face, but his good-natured smile

did not fail as he replied:

"I don't persuade anybody. The rest of the company are my two nephews

and the little girl, my ward, with our cook, Daniel Boone, as

commander-in-chief of the pots and pans and any Indian meat foolish

enough to fall in her way."

Then came the explosion. Powder would have cost less than the energy

blown off there. The colonel stamped and swore, and sprang to his feet

in opposition, and flung himself down in disgust.

"Women and children!" he gasped. "Why do you sacrifice helpless innocent

ones?"

Just then Aunty Boone strode in carrying a log of wood as big as a man's

body, which she deftly threw on the fire. As the flame blazed high she

gave one look at the young officer sitting before it, and then walked

out as silently and sturdily as she had entered. It was such a look as a

Great Dane dog full of superiority and indifference might have given to

a terrier puppy, and from where I lay I thought the military man's face

took on a very strange expression.

"I 'sacrifice my innocent ones,'" my uncle answered the query, "because

they will be safer with me than anywhere else. Young as they are, there

are some forces against them already."

"Well, you are going to a perilous place, over a most perilous trail, in

a most perilous time of national affairs, to meet such treacherously

villainous men as New Mexico offers in her market-places right now? And

all for the sake of the commerce of the plains? Why do you take such

chances to do business with such people, Clarenden?"

Esmond Clarenden had been staring at the burning logs in the big

fireplace during this conversation. He turned now and faced the young

army officer squarely as he said in that level tone that we children had

learned long ago was final:

"Colonel, I'd go straight to hell and do business with the devil himself

if I had any business dealings with him."

The colonel's face fell. Slowly he relighted his cigar, and leaned back

again in his chair, and with that diplomacy that covers a skilful

retreat he said, smilingly:

"If any man west of the Missouri River ever could do that it would be

you, Clarenden. By the holy Jerusalem, the military lost one grand

commander when you chose a college instead of West Point, and the East

lost one well-bred gentleman from its circles of commerce and culture

when you elected to do business on the old Santa Fé Trail instead of

Broadway. But I reckon the West will need just such men as you long

after the frontier fort has become a central point in the country's

civilized area. And, blast you, Clarenden, blast your very picture! No

man can help liking you. Not even the devil if he had the chance. Not

one man in ten thousand would dare to make that trip right now. You've

got the courage of a colonel and the judgment of a judge. Go to Santa

Fé! We may meet you coming back. If we do, and you need us, command us!"

He gave a courteous salute, and the two began to talk of other things;

among them the purposes that were bringing young men westward.

"So Banney, right out of old blue-grassy Kentucky, is going to back out

of here and go with you," the colonel remarked.

"I've hired him to drive one team. It's a lark for him, but the army

would be a lark just the same," Esmond Clarenden declared. "He says he

is to kill rattlesnakes and Mexicans, while Jondo kills Indians and I

sit tight on top of the bales of goods to keep the wind from blowing

them away. And the boys are to be made bridle-wise, _plains-broke_ for

future freighting. That's all that life means to him right now."

I do not know what else was said, nor what I heard and what I dreamed

after that. If this journey meant a lark to a grown-up boy, it meant a

pilgrimage through fairyland to a young boy like myself.

And so the new life opened to us; and if the way was fraught with

hardship and danger, it also taught us courage and endurance. Nor must

we be measured by the boy life of to-day. Children lived the grown-up

life then. It was all there was for them to live.

The yellow Missouri boiled endlessly along by the foot of the bluff. The

flag flapped broadly in the strong breeze that blew in from the west;

the square log house--the only home we had ever known--looked forlornly

after us, with its two front windows with blinds half drawn, like two

half-closed, watching eyes; the cottonwoods and elms, the tiny

storehouse--everything--grew suddenly very dear to us. The fort

buildings throwing long shadows in the early morning, the level-topped

forests east of the Missouri River, and the budding woodland that

overdraped the ravines to the west, even in their silence, seemed like

sentient things, loving us, as we loved them.

We children had gone all over the place before sunrise and touched

everything, in token of good-by; from some instinct tarrying longest at

the flagpole, where we threw kisses to the great, beautiful banner high

above us. Now, at the moment of leaving all these familiar things of all

our years, a choking pain came to our throats. Mat's eyes filled with

tears and she looked resolutely forward. Beverly and I clutched hands

and shut our teeth together, determined to overcome this home-grip on

our hearts. Aunty Boone sat in a corner of the deck as the boat swung

out into the stream, her eyes dull and unseeing. She never spoke of her

thoughts, but I have wondered often, since that big day of my young

years, if she might not have recalled other voyages: the slave-ship

putting out to sea with the African shores fading behind her; and the

big river steamer at the New Orleans dock where brutal hands had hurled

her from the deck into the dangerous floods of the Mississippi. This was

her third voyage, a brief run from Fort Leavenworth to Independence. She

was apart from her fellow-passengers as in the other two, but now nobody

gave her a curse, nor a blow.

III

THE WIDENING HORIZON

Whose furthest footsteps never strayed

Beyond the village of his birth,

Is but a lodger for the night

In this old Wayside Inn of Earth.

The broad green prairies of the West roll back in huge billows from the

Missouri bluffs, and ripple gently on, to melt at last into the level

grassy plains sloping away to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Up

and down these land-waves, and across these ripples, the old Santa Fé

Trail, the slender pathway of a wilderness-bridging commerce, led out

toward the great Southwest--a thousand weary miles--to end at last,

where the narrow thoroughfare reached the primitive hostelry at the

corner of the plaza in the heart of the capital of a Spanish-Mexican

demesne.

It was a strange old highway, tying the western frontier of a new,

self-reliant American civilization to the eastern limit of an autocratic

European offshoot, grafted upon an ancient Indian stock of the Western

Hemisphere. In language, nationality, social code, political faith, and

prevailing spiritual creed, the terminals of this highway were as

unlike as their geographical naming. For the trail began at

_Independence_, in Missouri, and ended at Santa Fé, the "_City of the

Holy Faith_," in New Mexico.

The little trading town of Independence was a busy place in the frontier

years of the Middle West. Ungentle and unlovely as it was, it was the

great gateway between the river traffic on the one side, and the plains

commerce of the far Southwest on the other. At the wharf at Westport,

only a few miles away, the steamers left their cargoes of flour and

bacon, coffee and calicoes, jewelry and sugar--whatever might have a

market value to merchants beyond the desert lands. And here these same

steamers took on furs, and silver bullion, and such other produce of the

mountains and mines and open plains as the opulently laden caravans had

toiled through long days, overland, to bring to the river's wharf.

To-day the same old gateway stands as of yore. But it may be given only

to men who have seen what I have seen, to know how that our Kansas City,

the Beautiful, could grow up from that old wilderness outpost of

commerce threescore and more years ago.

The Clarenden store was the busiest spot in the center of this busy

little town. Goods from both lines of trade entered and cleared here. In

front of the building three Conestoga wagons with stout mule teams stood

ready. A fourth wagon, the Dearborn carriage of that time, filled

mostly with bedding, clothing, and the few luxuries a long camping-out

journey may indulge in, waited only for a team, and we would be off to

the plains.

Jondo and Bill Banney were busy with the last things to be done before

we started. Aunty Boone sat on a pile of pelts inside the store, smoking

her pipe. Beverly and Mat stood waiting in the big doorway, while I sat

on a barrel outside, because my ankle was still a bit stiff. A crowd had

gathered before the store to see us off. It was not such a company as

the soldier-men at the fort. The outlaw, the loafer, the drunkard, the

ruffian, the gambler, and the trickster far outnumbered the stern-faced

men of affairs. When the balance turns the other way the frontier

disappears. Mingling with these was a pale-faced invalid now and then,

with the well-appointed new arrivals from the East.

"What are we waiting for, Bev?" I asked, as the street filled with men.

"Got to get another span of moolies for our baby-cart. Uncle Esmond

hadn't counted on the nurse and the cook going, you know, but he rigged

this littler wagon out in a twinkle."

"That's the family carriage, drawn by spirited steeds. Us children are

to ride in it, with Daniel Boone to help with the driving," Mat added.

Just then Esmond Clarenden appeared at the door.

"How soon do you start, Clarenden?" some one in the crowd inquired.

"Just as soon as I can get a pair of well-broken mules," he replied.

"I'm looking for the man who has them to sell quick. I'm in a hurry."

"What's your great rush?" a well-dressed stranger asked. "They tell me

things look squally out West."

"All the more reason for my being in a hurry then," Uncle Esmond

returned.

"They ain't but three men of you, is they? What do you want of more

mules?" put in an inquisitive idler of the trouble-loving class who

sooner or later turn arguments into bitter brawls.

"These three children and the cook in there have this wagon. They are

all fair drivers, if I can get the right mules," my uncle said.

Women and children did not cross the plains in those days, nor could

public welfare allow that so valuable a piece of property as Aunty Boone

would be in the slave-market should be lost to commerce, and the storm

of protest that followed would have overcome a less determined man. It

was not on account of sympathy for the weak and defenseless that called

out all this abuse, but the lawless spirit that stirs up a mob on the

slightest excuse.

I slid away to the door, where, with Mat and Beverly, I watched Esmond

Clarenden, who was listening with his good-natured smile to all of that

loud street talk.

"No man's life is insurable in these troublesome times, with our troops

right now down in Mexico," a suave Southern trader urged. "Better sell

your slave and put that nice little gal in a boardin'-school somewhere

in the South."

"I'll give you a mighty good bargain for that wench, Clarenden. She

might be worth a clare fortune in New Orleans. What d'ye say to a cool

thousand?" another man declared, with a slow. Southern drawl.

Aunty Boone took the pipe from her lips and looked at the stranger.

"Y'would!" she grunted, stretching her big right hand across her lap,

like a huge paw with claws ready underneath.

"Them plains Injuns never was more _hostile_ than they air right now. I

just got in from the mountains an' I know. An' they're bein' set on by

more _hostile_ Mexican devils, and political _intrigs_," a bearded

mountaineer trapper argued.

"'Sides all that," interposed the suave Southern gentleman, "it's too

early in the spring. Freightin's bound to be delayed by rains--and a

nice little gal with only a nigger--" He was not quite himself, and he

did not try to say more.

"Seems like some of these gentlemen consider you are some sort of a

fool," a tall, lean Yankee youth observed, as he listened to the babble.

I had climbed back on the barrel again to see the crowd better, and I

stared at the last speaker. His voice was not unpleasant, but he

appeared pale and weak and spiritless in that company of tanned, rugged

men. Evidently he was an invalid in search of health. We children had

seen many invalids, from time to time, at the fort harmless folk, who

came to fuss, and stayed to flourish, in our gracious land of the open

air.

"You are a dam' fool," roared a big drunken loafer from the edge of the

crowd. "An' I'd lick you in a minnit if you das step into the middle of

the street onct. Ornery sneak, to take innocent children into such

perils. Come on out here, I tell ye!"

A growl followed these words. Many men in that company were less than

half sober, and utterly irresponsible.

"Le's jes' hang the fool storekeepin' gent right now; an' make a

free-fur-all holiday. I'll begin," the drunken ruffian bawled. He was of

the sort that always leads a mob.

The growl deepened, for blood-lust and drunkenness go together.

Terrified for my uncle's safety, I stood breathless, staring at the

evil-faced crowd of men going suddenly mad, without excuse. At the

farthest edge of the insipient mob, sitting on his horse and watching my

uncle's face intently, was the very Mexican whom I had twice seen at

Fort Leavenworth. At the drunken rowdy's challenge, I thought that he

half-lifted a threatening hand. But Esmond Clarenden only smiled, with a

mere turn of his head as if in disapproval. In that minute I learned my

first lesson in handling ruffians. I knew that my uncle was not afraid,

and because of that my faith in his power to take care of himself came

back.

"I want to leave here in half an hour. If you have any good

plains-broke mules you will sell for cash, I can do business with you

right now. If not, the sooner you leave this place the better."

He lifted his small, shapely hand unclenched, his good-natured smile and

gentlemanly bearing unchanged, but his low voice was stronger than all

the growls of the crowd that fell back like whipped dogs.

As he spoke a horse-dealer, seeing the gathering before the store, came

galloping up.

"I'm your man. Money talks so I can understand it. Wait five minutes and

ten seconds and I'll bring a whole strand of mules."

A rattling of wagons and roar of voices at the far end of the street

told of the arrival of a company coming in from the wharf at Westport,

and the crowd whirled about and made haste toward the next scene of

interest.

Only two men remained behind, the tall New England youth and the Mexican

on the farther side of the street sitting motionless on his horse. A

moment later he was gone, and the street was empty save for the

pale-faced invalid who had come over to the doorway where Mat and

Beverly and I waited together.

"Why don't you youngsters stay home with your mother, or is she going

with you?" he asked, a gleam of interest lighting his dull face as he

looked at Mat Nivers.

"We haven't any of us got a mother," Mat replied, timidly, lifting her

gray eyes to his.

"Mother! Ain't you all one family?" the young man questioned in

surprise.

"No, we are three orphan children that Uncle Esmond has adopted all our

lives, I guess." Beverly informed him.

A wave of sympathy swept over his face.

"You poor, lonely, unhappy cubs! You've never had a mother to love you!"

he exclaimed, in kindly pity.

"We aren't poor nor lonely nor unhappy. We have always had Uncle Esmond

and we didn't need a mother," I exclaimed, earnestly.

The young man stared at me as I spoke. "What's he, a bachelor or married

man?" he inquired.

"He couldn't be married and keep us, I reckon, and he's taking us with

him so nothing will happen to us while he's gone. He's really truly

Bev's uncle and mine, but he's just the same as uncle to Mat, who hasn't

anybody else," I declared, enthusiastically. Uncle Esmond was my pride,

and I meant that he should be fully appreciated.

The Yankee gazed at all three of us, his eyes resting longest on Mat's

bright face. The listlessness left his own that minute and a new light

shone on his countenance. But when he turned to my uncle the seeming

lack of all interest in living returned to his face again.

"Say," he drawled, looking down at the stubborn little merchant from his

slim six feet of altitude, "you are such a dam' fool as our friend, the

tipsy one, says, that I believe I'll go along 'cross the plains with

you, if you'll let me. I've not got a darned thing to lose out there but

a sick carcass that I'm pretty tired of looking after," he went on,

wearily. "I reckon I might as well see the fun through if I never set a

hoof on old Plymouth Rock again. My granddaddy was a minute-man at

Lexington. Say"--he paused, and his sober face turned sad--"if all the

bean-eaters who claim their grandpas were minute-men tell the truth,

there wasn't no glory in winning at Lexington, there was such a

tremendous sight of 'em. I've heard about eight million men myself make

the same claim. But my granddad was the real article in the minute-men

business. And I've always admired his grit most of any man in the world.

He was about your shape, I reckon, from his picture that old man Copley

got out. But, man! he wasn't a patchin' on your coat-sleeve. You are the

preposterous-est unlawful-est infamous-est man I ever saw. It's just

straight murder and suicide you are bent on, takin' this awful chance of

plungin' into a warrin', snake-eatin' country like New Mexico, and I

like you for it. Will you take me as an added burden? If you will, I'll

deposit the price of my state-room right now. I've got only a little wad

of money to get well on or die on. I can spend it either way--not much

difference which. My name is Krane, Rex Krane, and in spite of such a

floopsy name I hail from Boston, U.S.A."

There was a hopeless sagging about the young man's mouth, redeemed only

by the twinkle in his eye.

Esmond Clarenden gave him a steady measuring look. He estimated men

easily, and rarely failed to estimate truly.

"I'll take you on your face value," he answered, "and if you want to

turn back there will be a chance to do it out a hundred miles or more on

the trail. You can try it that far and see how you like it. I'll furnish

you your board. There are always plenty of bedrooms on the ground floor

and in one of the wagons on rainy nights. You can take a shift driving a

team now and then, and every able-bodied man has to do guard duty some

of the time. You understand the dangers of the situation by this time.

Here comes my man," he added, as the horse-dealer appeared, leading a

string of mules up the street.

"Here's your critters. Take your choice," the dealer urged.

"I'll take the brown one," my uncle replied, promptly. And the bargain

was closed.

Mat and Beverly and I had already climbed into our wagon, and Aunty

Boone appeared now at the store door, ready to join us.

"You takin' that nigger?" the trader asked.

"Yes. Lead out your best offer now. I want another mule," Esmond

Clarenden replied.

But the horse-merchant proved to be harder to deal with than the crowd

had been. The foolish risk of losing so valuable a piece of property as

Daniel Boone ought to be in the slave-market taxed his powers of

understanding, profanity, and abuse.

"Cussin' solid, an' in streaks," Aunty Boone chuckled, softly, as she

listened to him unmoved.

Equally unmoved was Esmond Clarenden. But his genial smile and

diplomatic power of keeping still did not prevent him from being as set

as the everlasting hills in his own purpose.

"This here critter is all I'll sell you," the trader declared at last,

pulling a big white-eyed dun animal out of the group. "An' nobody's

goin' to drive her easy."

"I'll take it," Uncle Esmond said, promptly, and the vicious-looking

beast was brought to where Aunty Boone stood beside the wagon-tongue.

It was a clear case of hate at first sight, for the mule began to plunge

and squeal the instant it saw her. The woman hesitated not a minute, but

lifting her big ham-like foot, she gave it one broadside kick that it

must have mistaken for a thunderbolt, and in that low purr of hers, that

might frighten a jungle tiger, she laid down the law of the journey.

"You tote me to Santy Fee, or be a dead mule. Take yo' choice right now!

Git up!"

For fifty days the one dependable, docile servant of the Clarendens was

the big dun mule, as gentle and kitten-like as a mule can be.

And so, in spite of opposing conditions and rabble protest and doleful

prophecy and the assurance of certain perils, we turned our faces

toward the unfriendly land of the sunset skies, the open West of my

childish day-dreams.

* * * * *

The prairies were splashed with showers and the warm black soil was

fecund with growths as our little company followed the windings of the

old trail in that wondrous springtime of my own life's spring. There

were eight of us: Clarenden, the merchant; Jondo, the big plainsman;

Bill Banney, whom love of adventure had lured from the blue grass of

Kentucky to the prairie-grass of the West; Rex Krane, the devil-may-care

invalid from Boston; and the quartet of us in the "baby cab," as Beverly

had christened the family wagon. Uncle Esmond had added three swift

ponies to our equipment, which Jondo and Bill found time to tame for

riding as we went along.

We met wagon-trains, scouts, and solitary trappers going east, but so

far as we knew our little company was the only westward-facing one on

all the big prairies.

"It's just like living in a fairy-story, isn't it, Gail?" Beverly said

to me one evening, as we rounded a low hill and followed a deep little

creek down to a shallow fording-place. "All we want is a real princess

and a real giant. Look at these big trees all you can, for Jondo says

pretty soon we won't see trees at all."

"Maybe we'll have Indians instead of giants," I suggested. "When do you

suppose we'll begin to see the real _bad_ Indians; not just Osages and

Kaws and sneaky little Otoes and Pot'wat'mies like we've seen all our

lives?"

"Sooner than we expect," Beverly replied. "Could Mat Nivers ever be a

real princess, do you reckon?"

"I know she won't," I said, firmly, the vision of that fateful day at

Fort Leavenworth coming back as I spoke--the vision of level green

prairies, with gray rocks and misty mountain peaks beyond. And

somewhere, between green prairies and misty peaks, a sweet child face

with big dark eyes looking straight into mine. I must have been a

dreamer. And in my young years I wondered often why things should be so

real to me that nobody else could ever understand.

"I used to think long ago at the fort that I'd marry Mat some day,"

Beverly said, reminiscently, as if he were looking across a lapse of

years instead of days.

"So did I," I declared. "But I don't want to now. Maybe our princess

will be at the end of the trail, Bev, a real princess. Still, I love Mat

just as if she were my sister," I hastened to add.

"So do I," Beverly responded, heartily.

A little grain of pity for her loss of prestige was mingling with our

subconscious feeling of a need for her help in the day of the giant, if

not in the reign of the princess.

We were trudging along behind our wagon toward the camping-place for the

night, which lay beyond the crossing of the stream. We had lived much

out of doors at Fort Leavenworth, but the real out of doors of this

journey was telling on us already in our sturdy, up-leaping strength, to

match each new hardship. We ate like wolves, slept like dead things, and

forgot what it meant to be tired. And as our muscles hardened our minds

expanded. We were no longer little children. Youth had set its seal upon

us on the day when our company had started out from Independence toward

the great plains of the Middle West. Little care had we for the

responsibility and perils of such a journey; and because our thoughts

were buoyant our bodies were vigorous.

Our camp that night was under wide-spreading elm-trees whose roots

struck deep in the deep black loam. After supper Mat and Beverly went

down to fish in the muddy creek. Fishing was Beverly's sport and solace

everywhere. I was to follow them as soon as I had finished my little

chores. The men were scattered about the valley and the camp was

deserted. Something in the woodsy greenness of the quiet spot made it

seem like home to me--the log house among the elms and cottonwoods at

the fort. As I finished my task I wondered how a big, fine house such as

I had seen in pictures would look nestled among these beautiful trees. I

wanted a home here some day, a real home. It was such a pleasant place

even in its loneliness.

To the west the ground sloped up gently toward the horizon-line,

shutting off the track of the trail beyond the ridge. A sudden longing

came over me to see what to-morrow's journey would offer, bringing back

the sense of being _shut in_ that had made me lose interest in fishes

that wouldn't play leap-frog on the sand-bars. And with it came a

longing to be alone.

Instead of following Mat and Beverly to the creek I went out to the top

of the swell and stood long in the April twilight, looking beyond the

rim of the valley toward the darkening prairies with the great splendor

of the sunset's afterglow deepening to richest crimson above the

purpling shadows.

Oh, many a time since that night have I looked upon the Kansas plains

and watched the grandeur of coloring that only the Almighty artist ever

paints for human eyes. And always I come back, in memory, to that April

evening. The soul of a man must have looked out through the little boy's

eyes on that night, and a new mile-stone was set there, making a

landmark in my life trail. For when I turned toward the darkening east

and the shadowy camp where the evening fires gleamed redly in the dusk,

I knew then, as well as I know now, if I could only have put it into

words, that I was not the same little boy who had run up the long slope

to see what lay next in to-morrow's journey.

I walked slowly back to the camp and sat down beside Esmond Clarenden.

"What are you thinking about, Gail?" he asked, as I stared at the fire.

"I wish I knew what would happen next," I replied.

Jondo was lying at full length on the grass, his elbow bent, and his

hand supporting his head. What a wonderful head it was with its crown of

softly curling brown hair!

"I wonder if we have done wrong by the children, Clarenden," the big

plainsman said, slowly.

Uncle Esmond shook his head as he replied:

"I can't believe it. They may not be safe with us, but we know they

would not have been safe without us."

Just then Beverly and Mat came racing up from the creek bank.

"Let us stay up awhile," Mat pleaded. "Maybe we'll be less trouble some

of these days if we hear you talk about what's coming."

"They are right, Jondo. Gail here wants to know what is coming next, and

Mat wants a share in our councils. What do you want, Beverly?"

"I want to practise shooting on horseback. I can hit a mark now standing

still. I want to do it on the run," Beverly replied.

I can see now the earnest look in Esmond Clarenden's eyes as he

listened. I've seen it in a mother's eyes more than once since then, as

she kissed her eldest-born and watched it toddle off alone on its first

day of school; or held her peace, when, breaking home ties, the son of

her heart bade her good-by to begin life for himself in the world

outside.

The last light of day was lost over the western ridge. The moon was

beginning to swell big and yellow through the trees. Twilight was

darkening into night. Bill Banney and Rex Krane had joined us now, for

every hour we were learning to keep closer together. Jondo threw more

wood on the fire, and we nestled about it in snug, homey fashion as if

we were to listen to a fairy-tale--three children slipping fast out of

childhood into the stern, hard plains life that tried men's souls. As we

listened, the older men told of the perils as well as the fascinating

adventures of trail life, that we might understand what lay before us in

the unknown days. And then they told us stories of the plains, and of

the quaint historic things of Santa Fé; of El Palacio, home of all the

Governors of New Mexico; an Indian pueblo first, it may have been

standing there when William the Norman conquered Harold of the Saxon

dynasty of England; or further back when Charlemagne was hanging heathen

by the great great gross to make good Christians of them; or even when

old Julius Cæsar came and saw and conquered, on either side of the

Rubicon, this same old structure may have sheltered rulers in a world

unknown. They told us of the old, old church of San Miguel, a citadel

for safety from the savage foes of Spain, a sanctuary ever for the

sinful and sorrowing ones. And of the Plaza--sacred ground whereon by

ceremonial form had been established deeds that should change the

destinies of tribes and shape the trend of national pride and power in a

new continent. And of La Garita, place of execution, facing whose blind

wall the victims of the Spanish rule made their last stand, and,

helpless, fell pierced by the bullets of the Spanish soldiery.

And we children looked into the dying camp-fire and builded there our

own castles in Spain, and hoped that that old flag to which we had

thrown good-by kisses such a little while ago would one day really wave

above old Santa Fé and make it ours to keep. For, young as we were, the

flag already symbolized to us the protecting power of a nation strong

and gentle and generous.

"The first and last law of the trail is to 'hold fast,'" Jondo said, as

we broke up the circle about the camp-fire.

"If you can keep that law we will take you into full partnership

to-night," Esmond Clarenden added, and we knew that he meant what he

said.

IV

THE MAN IN THE DARK

A stone's throw from either hand,

From that well-ordered road we tread,

And all the world is wide and strange.

--KIPLING

"We shall come to the parting of the ways to night if we make good time,

Krane," Esmond Clarenden said to the young Bostonian, as we rested at

noon beside the trait. "To-night we camp at Council Grove and from there

on there is no turning back. I had hoped to find a big crowd waiting to

start off from that place. But everybody we have met coming in says that

there are no freighters going west now. Usually there is no risk in

coming alone from Council Grove to the Missouri River, and there is

always opportunity for company at this end of the trail."

We were sitting in a circle under the thin shade of some

cottonwood-trees beside a little stream; the air of noon, hot above our

heads, was tempered with a light breeze from the southwest. As my uncle

spoke, Rex glanced over at Mat Nivers, sitting beside him, and then

gazed out thoughtfully across the stream. I had never thought her

pretty before. But now her face, tanned by the sun and wind, had a

richer glow on cheek and lip. Her damp hair lay in little wavelets about

her temples, and her big, sunny, gray eyes were always her best feature.

Girls made their own dresses on the frontier, and I suppose that

anywhere else Mat would have appeared old-fashioned in the neat,

comfortable little gowns of durable gingham and soft woolen stuffs that

she made for herself. But somehow in all that long journey she was the

least travel-soiled of the whole party.

At my uncle's words she looked up questioningly and I saw the bloom

deepen on her cheek as she met the young man's eyes. Somebody else saw

that shadow of a blush--Bill Banney lying on the ground beside me, and

although he pulled his hat cautiously over his face, I thought he was

listening for the answer.

The young New-Englander stared long at the green prairie before he

spoke. I never knew whether it was ignorance, or a lack of energy, that

was responsible for his bad grammar in those early days, for Rex Krane

was no sham invalid. The lines on his young face told of suffering, and

the thin, bony hands showed bodily weakness. At length he turned to my

uncle.

"I started out sort of reckless on this trip," he said, slowly. "I'm

nearly twenty and never been worth a dang to anybody anywhere on God's

earth; so I thought I might as well be where things looked interestin'.

But"--he hesitated--"I'm gettin' a lot stronger every day, a whole lot

stronger. Mebby I'd be of some use afterwhile--I don't know, though. I

reckon I'd better wait till we get to that Council Grove place. Sounds

like a nice locality to rest and think in. Are you goin' on, anyhow,

Clarenden, crowd or no crowd?"

"Though the heavens fall," my uncle answered, simply.

Jondo had turned quickly to hear this reply and a great light leaped

into his deep-set blue eyes. I glanced over at Aunty Boone, sitting

apart from us, as she ever chose to do, her own eyes dull, as they

always were when she saw keenest; and I remembered how, back at Fort

Leavenworth, she had commented on this journey, saying: "They tote

together always, an' they're totin' now." Child though I was, I felt

that a something more than the cargo of goods was leading my uncle to

Santa Fé. What I did not understand was his motive for taking Beverly

and Mat and me with him. I had been satisfied before just to go, but now

I wanted very much to know why I was going.

Council Grove by the Neosho River was the end of civilization for the

freighter. Beyond it the wilderness spread its untamed lengths, and

excepting Bent's Fort far up the Arkansas River on the line of the first

old trail, rarely followed now, it held not a sign of civilization for

the traveler until he should reach the first outposts of the Mexican

almost in the shadow of Santa Fé. It is no wonder that wagon-trains

mobilized here, waiting for an increase in numbers before they dared to

start on westward. And now there were no trains waiting for our coming.

Only a gripping necessity could have led a man like Esmond Clarenden to

take the trail alone in the certain perils of the plains during the

middle '40's. I did not know until long afterward how brave was the

loving heart that beat in that little merchant's bosom. A devotee of

ease and refinement, he walked the prairie trails unafraid, and made the

desert serve his will.

The dusk of evening had fallen long before we pitched camp that night

under the big oak-trees in the Neosho River valley outside of the little

trading-post. Up in the village a light or two gleamed faintly. From

somewhere in the darkness came the sound of a violin, mingling with loud

talking and boisterous laughter in a distant drinking-den. It would be

some time until moon-rise, and the shadowy places thickened to

blackness.

In fair weather all of us except Mat Nivers slept in the open. On stormy

nights the younger men occupied one of the wagons, Jondo and Beverly

another, and my uncle and myself the third. Mat had the "baby-cab" as

Beverly called it, with Aunty Boone underneath it. The ground was Aunty

Boone's kingdom. She sat upon it, ate from it, slept on it, and seemed

no more soiled than a snake would be by the contact with it.

"Some day I goes plop under it, and be ground myself," she used to say.

"Good black soil I make, too," she always added, with her low chuckle.

To-night we were all in the wagons, for the spring rains had made the

Neosho valley damp and muddy. I was just on the edge of dreamless

slumber when a low voice that seemed to cut the darkness caught my ear.

"Cla'nden! Cla'nden!" it hissed, softly.

My uncle slipped noiselessly out to where Aunty Boone stood, her head so

near to the canvas wagon-cover inside of which I lay that I could hear

all that was said.

She was always a night prowler. What other women learn now from the

evening newspaper or from neighborly gossip she, being created without a

sense of fear, went forth in her time and gathered at first hand.

"I been prospectin' up 'round the saloon, Cla'nden. They's a nasty mess

of Mexicans in town, all gettin' drunk."

Then I heard a faint rustle of the bushes and I knew that the woman was

slipping away to her place under the wagon. I remembered the Mexican

whom I had last seen across the street from the Clarenden store in

Independence. These were bad Mexicans, as Aunty Boone had said, and that

man had seemed in a silent way a friend of my uncle. I wondered what

would happen next. It soon happened. My uncle Esmond came inside the

wagon and called, softly:

"Gail, wake up."

"I'm awake," I replied, in a half-whisper, as alert as a mystery-loving

boy could be.

"Slip over to Jondo and tell him there are Mexicans in town, and I'm

going across the river to see what's up. Tell him to wake up everybody

and have them stay in the wagons till I get back."

He slid away and the shadows ate him. I followed as far as Jondo's

wagon, and gave my message. As I came back something seemed to slip away

before me and disappear somewhere. I dived into our wagon and crouched

down, waiting with beating heart for Uncle Esmond to come back. Once I

thought I heard the sound of a horse's feet on the trail to the

eastward, but I was not sure.

All was still and black in the little camp for a long time, and then

Esmond Clarenden and Rex Krane crept into the wagon and dropped the flap

behind them.

"Krane, have you decided about this trip yet?" Uncle Esmond asked. "If

not, you'd better get right up into town and forget us. You can't be too

quick about it, either."

"Ain't we going to stay here a few days? Why do you want to know

to-night?"

Rex Krane, Yankee-like, met the query with a query.

"Because there's a pretty strong party of Mexican desperadoes here who

are going on east, and they mean trouble for somebody. I shouldn't care

to meet them with our strength alone. They are all pretty drunk now and

getting wilder every minute. Listen to that!"

A yell across the river broke the night stillness.

"There is no telling how soon they may be over here, hunting for us. We

must get by them some way, for I cannot risk a fight with them here.

Which chance will you choose, the possibility of being overtaken by that

Mexican gang going east, or the perils of the plains and the hostility

of New Mexico right now? It's about as broad one way as the other for

safety, with staying here for a time as the only middle course at

present. But that is a perfectly safe one for you."

"I am going on with you," Rex Krane said, with his slow Yankee drawl.

"When danger gets close, then I scatter. There's more chance in seven

hundred miles to miss somethin' than there is in a hundred and fifty.

And even a half-invalid might be of some use. Say, Clarenden, how'd you

get hold of this information? You turned in before I did."

"Daniel Boone went out on scout duty--self-elected. You know she

considers that the earth was made for her to walk on when she chooses to

use it that way. She spied trouble ahead and came back, and gave me the

key to the west door of Council Grove so I could get out early," my

uncle replied.

"I reckoned as much," Rex declared.

In the dark I could feel Esmond Clarenden give a start.

"What do you mean?" he inquired.

"Oh, I saw the fat lady start out, so I followed her, but I located the

nest of Mexicans before she did, and got a good deal out of their

drunken jargon. And then I cat-footed it back after a snaky-looking,

black Spaniard that seemed to be following her. There were three of us

in a row, but the devil hasn't got the hindmost one, not yet--that's

me."

"You saw some one follow Daniel into camp?" my uncle broke in,

anxiously. But no threatening peril ever hurried Rex Krane's speech.

"Yes, and I also followed some one; but I lost him in this ink-well of a

hole, and I was waitin' till he left so I could put the cat out, an'

shut the door, when you cut across the river. I've been sittin' round

now to see that nothin' broke loose till you got back. Meantime, the

thing sort of faded away. I heard a horse gallopin' off east, too. Mebby

they are outpostin' to surround our retreat. I didn't wake Bill. He's

got no more imagination than Bev. If I had needed anybody I'd have

stirred up Gail, here."

In the dark I fairly swelled with pride, and from that moment Rex Krane

was added to my little list of heroes that had been made up, so far, of

Esmond Clarenden and Jondo and any army officer above the rank of

captain.

"Krane, you'll do. I thought I had your correct measure back in

Independence," Uncle Esmond said, heartily. "As to the boys, I can risk

them; they are Clarendens. My anxiety is for the little orphan girl. She

is only a child. I couldn't leave her behind us, and I must not let a

hair of her head be harmed."

"She's a right womanly little thing," Rex Krane said, carelessly; but I

wondered if in the dark his eyes might not have had the same look they

had had at noon when he turned to Mat sitting beside my uncle. Maybe

back at Boston he had a little sister of his own like her. Anyhow, I

decided then that men's words and faces do not always agree.

Again the roar of voices broke out, and we scrambled from the wagon and

quickly gathered our company together.

"What did you find out?" Jondo asked.

"We must clear out of here right away and get through to the other side

of town and be off by daylight without anybody knowing it. They are a

gang of ugly Mexicans who would not let us cross the river if we should

wait till morning. They have already sent a spy over here, and they are

waiting for him to report."

"Where is he now?" Bill Banney broke in.

"They's two of him--I know there is," Rex Krane declared. "One of him

went east, to cut us off I reckon; an' t'other faded into nothin' toward

the river. Kind of a double deal, looks to me."

Both men looked doubtingly at the young man; but without further words,

Jondo took command, and we knew that the big plainsman would put through

whatever Esmond Clarenden had planned. For Aunty Boone was right when

she said, "They tote together."

"We must snake these wagons through town, as though we didn't belong

together, but we mustn't get too far apart, either. And remember now,

Clarenden, if anybody has to stop and visit with 'em, I'll do it

myself," Jondo said.

"Why can't we ride the ponies? We can go faster and scatter more," I

urged, as we hastily broke camp.

"He is right, Esmond. They haven't been riding all their lives for

nothing," Jondo agreed, as Esmond Clarenden turned hesitatingly toward

Mat Nivers.

In the dim light her face seemed bright with courage. It is no wonder

that we all trusted her. And trust was the large commodity of the plains

in those days, when even as children we ran to meet danger with

courageous daring.

"You must cross the river letting the ponies pick their own ford," Jondo

commanded us. "Then go through to the ridge on the northwest side of

town. Keep out of the light, and if anybody tries to stop you, ride like

fury for the ridge."

"Lemme go first," Aunty Boone interposed. "Nobody lookin' for me this

side of purgatory. 'Fore they gets over their surprise I'll be gone.

Whoo-ee!"

The soft exclamation had a breath of bravery in it that stirred all of

us.

"You are right, Daniel. Lead out. Keep to the shadows. If you must run

make your mules do record time," Uncle Esmond said.

"You'll find me there when you stop," Rex Krane declared. No sick man

ever took life less seriously. "I'm goin' ahead to John-the-Baptist this

procession and air the parlor bedrooms."

"Krane, you are an invalid and a fool. You'd better ride in the wagon

with me," Bill Banney urged.

"Mebby I am. Don't throw it up to me, but I'm no darned coward, and I'm

foot-loose. It's my job to give the address of welcome over t'other side

of this Mexican settlement."

The tall, thin young man slouched his cap carelessly on his head and

strode away toward the river. Youth was reckless in those days, and the

trail was the home of dramatic opportunity. But none of us had dreamed

hitherto of Rex Krane's degree of daring and his stubborn will.

The big yellow moon was sailing up from the east; the Neosho glistened

all jet and silver over its rough bed; the great shadowy oaks looked

ominously after us as we moved out toward the threatening peril before

us. Slowly, as though she had time to kill, Aunty Boone sent the brown

mule and trusty dun down to the river's rock-bottom ford. Slowly and

unconcernedly she climbed the slope and passed up the single street

toward the saloon she had already "prospected." Pausing a full minute,

she swung toward a far-off cabin light to the south, jogging over the

rough ground noisily. The door of the drinking-den was filled with dark

faces as the crowd jostled out. Just a lone wagon making its way

somewhere about its own business, that was all.

As the crowd turned in again three ponies galloped up the street toward

the slope leading out to the high level prairies beyond the Neosho

valley. But who could guess how furiously three young hearts beat, and

how tightly three pairs of young hands clutched the bridle reins as we

surged forward, forgetting the advice to keep in the shadow.

Just after we had crossed the river, a man on horseback fell in behind

us. We quickened our speed, but he gained on us. Before we reached the

saloon he was almost even with us, keeping well in the shadow all the

while. In the increasing moonlight, making everything clear to the eye,

I gave one quick glance over my shoulder and saw that the horseman was a

Mexican. I have lived a life so fraught with danger that I should hardly

remember the feeling of fear but for the indelible imprint of that one

terrified minute in the moonlit street of Council Grove.

Two ruffians on watch outside the saloon sprang up with yells. The door

burst open and a gang of rowdies fairly spilled out around us. We three

on our ponies had the instinctive security on horseback of children born

to the saddle, else we should never have escaped from the half-drunken

crew. I recall the dust of striking hoofs, the dark forms dodging

everywhere, the Mexican rider keeping between us and the saloon door,

and most of all I remember one glimpse of Mat Nivers's face with big,

staring eyes, and firm-set mouth; and I remember my fleeting impression

that she could take care of herself if we could; and over all a sudden

shadow as the moon, in pity of our terror, hid its face behind a tiny

cloud.

When it shone out again we were dashing by separate ways up the steep

slope to the west ridge, but, strangely enough, the Mexican horseman

with a follower or two had turned away from us and was chasing off

somewhere out of sight.

Up on top of the bluff, with Rex Krane and Aunty Boone, we watched and

waited. The wooded Neosho valley full of inky blackness seemed to us

like a bottomless gorge of terror which no moonlight could penetrate. We

strained our ears to catch the rattle of the wagons, but the noise from

the saloon, coming faintly now and then, was all the sound we could hear

save the voices of the night rising up from the river, and the

whisperings of the open prairie to the west.

In that hour Rex Krane became our good angel.

"Keep the law, 'Hold fast'! You made a splendid race of it, and if

Providence made that fellow lose you gettin' out, and led him and his

gang sideways from you, I reckon she will keep on takin' care of you

till Clarenden resumes control, so don't you worry."

But for his brave presence the terror of that lonely watch would have

been harder than the peril of the street, for he seemed more like a

gentle mother than the careless, scoffing invalid of the trail.

Midnight came, and the chill of midnight. We huddled together in our

wagon and still we waited. Down in the village the lights still burned,

and angry voices with curses came to our ears at intervals.

Meantime the three men across the river moved cautiously, hoping that

we were safe on the bluff, and knowing that they dared not follow us too

rapidly. The wagons creaked and the harness rattled noisily in the night

stillness, as slowly, one by one, they lumbered through the darkness

across the river and up the bank to the village street. Here they halted

and grouped together.

"We must hide out and wait, Clarenden," Jondo counciled. "I hope

the ponies and the wagon ahead are safe, but they stirred things up. If

we go now we'll all be caught."

The three wagons fell apart and halted wide of the trail where the

oak-trees made the blackest shade. The minutes dragged out like hours,

and the anxiety for the unprotected group on the bluff made the three

men frantic to hurry on. But Jondo's patience equaled his courage, and

he always took the least risk. It was nearly midnight, and every noise

was intensified. If a mule but moved it set up a clatter of harness

chains that seemed to fill the valley.

At last a horseman, coming suddenly from somewhere, rode swiftly by each

shadow-hidden wagon, half pausing at the sound of the mules stamping in

their places, and then he hurried up the street.

"Three against the crowd. If we must fight, fight to kill," Jondo urged,

as the ready firearms were placed for action.

In a minute or two the crew broke out of the saloon and filled the

moonlit street, all talking and swearing in broken Spanish.

"Not come yet!"

"Pedro say they be here to-morrow night!" "We wait till to-morrow

night!"

And with many wild yells they fell back for a last debauch in the

drinking-den.

"I don't understand it," Jondo declared. "That fellow who rode by here

ought to have located every son of us, but if they want to wait till

to-morrow night it suits me."

An hour later, when the village was in a dead sleep, three wagons slowly

pulled up the long street and joined the waiting group at the top, and

the crossing over was complete.

Dawn was breaking as our four wagons, followed by the ponies, crept away

in the misty light. As we trailed off into the unknown land, I looked

back at the bluff below which nestled the last houses we were to see for

seven hundred miles. And there, outlined against the horizon, a Mexican

stood watching us. I had seen the same man one day riding up from the

ravine southwest of Fort Leavenworth. I had seen him dashing toward the

river the next day. I had watched him sitting across the street from the

Clarenden store in Independence.

I wondered if it might have been this man who had hung about our camp

the evening before, and if it might have been this same man who rode

between us and the saloon mob, leading the crowd after him and losing us

on the side of the bluff. And as we had eluded the Council Grove danger,

I wondered what would come next, and if he would be in it.

V

WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST

"So I draw the world together, link by link."

--KIPLING.

Day after day we pushed into the unknown wilderness. No wagon-trains

passed ours moving eastward. No moccasined track in the dust of the

trail gave hint of any human presence near. Where to-day the Pullman car

glides in smooth comfort, the old Santa Fé Trail lay like a narrow brown

ribbon on the green desolation of Nature's unconquered domain. Out

beyond the region of long-stemmed grasses, into the short-grass land, we

pressed across a pathless field-of-the-cloth-of-green, gemmed with

myriads of bright blossoms--broad acres on acres that the young years of

a coming century should change into great wheat-fields to help fill the

granaries of the world. How I reveled in it--that far-stretching plain

of flower-starred verdure! It was my world--mine, unending, only

softening out into lavender mists that rimmed it round in one unbroken

fold of velvety vapor.

At last we came to the Arkansas River--flat-banked, sand-bottomed,

wide, wandering, impossible thing--whose shallow waters followed

aimlessly the line of least resistance, back and forth across its bed.

Rivers had meant something to me. The big muddy Missouri for

Independence and Fort Leavenworth, that its steamers might bring the

soldiers, and my uncle's goods to their places. The little rivers that

ran into the big ones, to feed their currents for down-stream service.

The creeks, that boys might wade and swim and fish, else Beverly would

have lived unhappily all his days. But here was a river that could

neither fetch nor carry. Nobody lived near it, and it had no deep waters

like our beloved, ugly old Missouri. I loved the level prairies, but I

didn't like that river, somehow. I felt exposed on its blank, treeless

borders, as if I stood naked and defenseless, with no haven of cover

from the enemies of the savage plains.

The late afternoon was hot, the sky was dust-dimmed, the south wind

feverish and strength-sapping. At dawn we had sighted a peak against the

western horizon. We were approaching it now--a single low butte, its

front a sheer stone bluff facing southward toward the river, it lifted

its head high above the silent plains; and to the north it stretched in

a long gentle slope back to a lateral rim along the landscape. The trail

crept close about its base, as if it would cling lovingly to this one

shadow-making thing amid all the open, blaring, sun-bound miles

stretching out on either side of it.

As Beverly and I were riding in front of Mat's wagon, of which we had

elected ourselves the special guardians, Rex Krane came up alongside

Bill Banney's team in front of us. The young men were no such

hard-and-fast friends as Beverly and I. For some reason they had little

to say to each other.

"Is that what you call Pike's Peak, Bill?" Rex asked.

"No, the mountains are a month away. That's Pawnee Rock, and I'll

breathe a lot freer when we get out of sight of that infernal thing,"

Bill replied.

"What's its offense?" Rex inquired.

"It's the peak of perdition, the bottomless pit turned inside out," Bill

declared.

"I don't see the excuse for a rock sittin' out here, sayin' nothin',

bein' called all manner of unpleasant names," the young Bostonian

insisted.

"Well, I reckon you'd find one mighty quick if you ever heard the

soldiers at Fort Leavenworth talk about it once. All the plainsmen dread

it. Jondo says more men have been killed right around this old stone

Sphinx than any other one spot in North America, outside of

battle-fields."

"Happy thought! Do their ghosts rise up and walk at midnight? Tell me

more," Rex urged.

"Nobody walks. Everybody runs. There was a terrible Indian fight here

once; the Pawnees in the king-row, and all the hosts of the Midianites,

and Hivites, and Jebusites, Kiowa, Comanche, and Kaw, rag-tag and

bobtail, trying to get 'em out. I don't know who won, but the citadel

got christened Pawnee Rock. It took a fountain filled with blood to do

it, though."

Rex Krane gave a long whistle.

"I believe Bill is trying to scare him, Bev," I murmured.

"I believe he's just precious wasting time," Beverly replied.

"And so," Bill continued, "it came to be a sort of rock of execution

where romances end and they die happily ever afterward. The Indians get

up there and, being able to read fine print with ease as far away as

either seacoast, they can watch any wagon-train from the time it leaves

Council Grove over east to Bent's Fort on the Purgatoire Creek out west;

and having counted the number of men, and the number of bullets in each

man's pouch, they slip down and jump on the train as it goes by. If the

men can make it to beat them to the top of the rock, as they do

sometimes, they can keep the critters off, unless the Indians are strong

enough to keep them up there and sit around and wait till they starve

for water, and have to come down. It's a grim old fortress, and never

needs a garrison. Indians or white men up there, sometimes they defend

and sometimes attack. But it's a bad place always, and on account of

having our little girl along--" Bill paused. "A fellow gets to see a lot

of country out here," he added.

"Banney, just why didn't you join the army? You'd have a chance to see a

lot more of the country, if this Mexican War goes on," Rex Krane said,

meditatively.

"I'd rather be my own captain and order myself to the front, and

likewise command my rear-guard to retire, whenever I doggone please,"

Bill said. "It isn't the soldiers that'll do this country the most good.

They are useful enough when they are useful, Lord knows. And we'll

always need a decent few of 'em around to look after women and children,

and invalids," he went on. "I tell you, Krane, it's men like Clarenden

that's going to make these prairies worth something one of these days.

The men who build up business, not them that shoot and run to or from.

That's what the West's got to have. I'm through going crazy about army

folks. One man that buys and sells, if he gives good weight and measure,

is, himself, a whole regiment for civilization."

Just then Jondo halted the train, and we gathered about him.

"Clarenden, let's pitch camp at the rock. The horses are dead tired and

this wind is making them nervous. There's a storm due as soon as it lays

a bit, and we would be sort of protected here. A tornado's a giant out

in this country, you know."

"This tavern doesn't have a very good name with the traveling public,

does it, Clarenden?" Rex Krane suggested.

"Not very," my uncle replied. "But in case of trouble, the top of it

isn't a bad place to shoot from."

"What if the other fellow gets there first?" Bill Banney inquired.

"We can run from here as easily as any other place," Jondo assured us.

"I haven't seen a sign of Indians yet. But we've got to be careful. This

point has a bad reputation, and I naturally begin to _feel_ Indians in

the air as soon as I come in sight of it. If we need the law of the

trail anywhere, we need it here," he admonished.

Beverly and I drew close together. We were in the land of _bad_ Indians,

but nothing had happened to us yet, and we could not believe that any

danger was near us now, although we were foolishly half hoping that

there might be, for the excitement of it.

"There's no place in a million miles for anybody to hide, Bill. Where

would Jondo's Indians be?" Beverly asked, as we were getting into camp

order for the night.

Beverly's disposition to demand proof was as strong here as it had been

in the matter of rivers turning their courses, and fishes playing

leap-frog.

"They might be behind that ridge out north, and have a scout lying flat

on the top of old Pawnee Rock, up there, lookin' benevolently down at us

over the rim of his spectacles right now," Bill replied, as he pulled

the corral ropes out of the wagon.

"What makes you think so?" I asked, eagerly.

"What Jondo said about his _feeling Indians_, I guess, but he reads

these prairie trails as easy as Robinson Crusoe read Friday's footprints

in the sand, and he hasn't read anything in 'em yet. Indians don't

fight at night, anyhow. That's one good thing. Get hold of that rope,

Bev, and pull her up tight," Bill replied.

Every night our four wagons in camp made a hollow square, with space

enough allowed at the corners to enlarge the corral inside for the

stock. These corners were securely roped across from wagon to wagon.

To-night, however, the corral space was reduced and the quartet of

vehicles huddled closer together.

At dusk the hot wind came sweeping in from the southwest, a wild,

lashing fury, swirling the sand in great spirals from the river bed. Our

fire was put out and the blackness of midnight fell upon us. The horses

were restless and the mules squealed and stamped. All night the very

spirit of fear seemed to fill the air.

Just before daybreak a huge black storm-cloud came boiling up out of the

southwest, with a weird yellow band across the sky before it. Overhead

the stars shed a dim light on the shadowy face of the plains. A sudden

whisper thrilled the camp, chilling our hearts within us.

"Indians near!" We all knew it in a flash.

Jondo, on guard, had caught the sign first. Something creeping across

the trail, not a coyote, for it stood upright a moment, then bent again,

and was lost in the deep gloom. Jondo had shifted to another angle of

the outlook, had seen it again, and again at a third point. It was

encircling the camp. Then all of us, except Jondo, began to see moving

shapes. He saw nothing for a long time, and our spirits rose again.

"You must have been mistaken, Jondo," Rex Krane ventured, as he stared

into the black gloom. "Maybe it was just this infernal wind. It's one

darned sea-breeze of a zephyr."

"I've crossed the plains before. I wasn't mistaken," the big plainsman

replied. "If I had been, you'd still see it. The trouble is that it is

watching now. Everybody lay low. It will come to life again. I hope

there's only one of it."

We had hardly moved after the first alarm, except to peer about and

fancy that dark objects were closing in upon us.

It did come to life again. This time on Jondo's side of the camp.

Something creeping near, and nearer.

The air was motionless and hot above us, the upper heavens were

beginning to be threshed across by clouds, and the silence hung like a

weight upon us. Then suddenly, just beyond the camp, a form rose from

the ground, stood upright, and stretched out both arms toward us. And a

low cry, "Take me. I die," reached our ears.

Still Jondo commanded silence. Indians are shrewd to decoy their foes

out of the security of the camp. The form came nearer--a little girl, no

larger than our Mat--and again came the low call. The voice was Indian,

the accent Spanish, but the words were English.

"Come to us!" Esmond Clarenden answered back in a clear, low tone; and

slowly and noiselessly the girl approached the camp.

I can feel it all now, although that was many years ago: the soft

starlight on the plains; the hot, still air holding its breath against

the oncoming tornado; the group of wagons making a deeper shadow in the

dull light; beyond us the bold front of old Pawnee Rock, huge and gray

in the gloom; our little company standing close together, ready to hurl

a shower of bullets if this proved but the decoy of a hidden foe; and

the girl with light step drawing nearer. Clad in the picturesque garb of

the Southwest Indian, her hair hanging in a great braid over each

shoulder, her dark eyes fixed on us, she made a picture in that dusky

setting that an artist might not have given to his brush twice in a

lifetime on the plains.

A few feet from us she halted.

"Throw up your hands!" Jondo commanded.

The slim brown arms were flung above the girl's head, and I caught the

glint of quaintly hammered silver bracelets, as she stepped forward with

that ease of motion that generations of moccasined feet on sand and sod

and stone can give.

"Take me," she cried, pleadingly. "The Mexicans steal me from my people

and bring me far away. They meet Kiowa. Kiowa beat me; make me slave."

She held up her hands. They were lacerated and bleeding. She slipped the

bright blanket from her brown shoulder. It was bruised and swollen.

"You go to Santa Fé? Take me. I do you good, not bad."

"What would these Kiowas do to us, then?"

It was Bill Banney who spoke.

"They follow you--kill you."

"Oh, cheerful! I wish you were twins," Rex Krane said, softly.

Jondo lifted his hand.

"Let me talk to her," he said.

Then in her own language he got her story.

"Here we are." He turned to us. "Stolen from her people by the Mexicans,

probably the same ones we passed in Council Grove; traded to the Kiowas

out here somewhere, beaten, and starved, and held for ransom, or trade

to some other tribe. They are over there behind Pawnee Rock. They got

sight of us somehow, but they don't intend to bother us. They are on the

lookout for a bigger train. She has slipped away while they sleep. If we

send her back she will be beaten and made a slave. If we keep her, they

will follow us for a fight. They are fifty to our six. What shall we

do?"

"We don't need any Indians to help us get into trouble. We are sure

enough of it without that," Bill Banney declared. "And what's one

Indian, anyhow? She's just--"

"Just a little orphan girl like Mat," Rex Krane finished his sentence.

Bill frowned, but made no reply.

The Indian girl was standing outside the corral, listening to all that

was said, her face giving no sign of the struggle between hope and

despair that must have striven within her.

"Uncle Esmond, let's take her, and take our chances." Beverly's boyish

voice had a defiant tone, for the spirit of adventure was strong within

him. The girl turned quickly and a great light leaped into her eyes at

the boy's words.

"Save a life and lose ours. It's not the rule of the plains,

but--there's a higher law like that somewhere, Clarenden," Jondo said,

earnestly.

The girl came swiftly toward Uncle Esmond and stood upright before him.

"I will not hide the truth. I go back to Kiowas. They sell me for big

treasure. They will not harm you," she said. "I stay with you, they say

you steal me, and they come at the first bird's song and kill you every

one. They are so many."

She stood motionless before him, the seal of grim despair on her young

face.

"What's your name?" Esmond Clarenden asked. "Po-a-be. In your words,

'Little Blue Flower,'" the girl said.

"Then, Little Blue Flower, you must stay with us."

She pointed toward the eastern sky where a faint light was beginning to

show above the horizon. "See, the day comes!"

"Then we will break camp now," my uncle said.

"Not in the face of this storm, Clarenden," Jondo declared. "You can

fight an Indian. You can't do a thing but 'hold fast' in one of these

hurricanes."

The air was still and hot. The black cloud swept swiftly onward, with

the weird yellow glow before it. In the solitude of the plains the trail

showed like a ghostly pathway of peril. Before us loomed that grim rock

bluff, behind whose crest lay the sleeping band of Kiowas. It was only

because they slept that Little Blue Flower could steal away in hope of

rescue.