Hotter grew the air and darker the swiftly rolling clouds; black and

awful stood old Pawnee Rock with the silent menace of its sleeping

enemy. In the stillness of the pause before the storm burst we heard

Jondo's voice commanding us. With our first care for the frightened

stock, we grouped ourselves together as he ordered close under the

bluff.

Suddenly an angry wind leaped out of the sky, beating back the hot dead

air with gigantic flails of fury. Then the storm broke with tornado rage

and cloudburst floods, and in its track terror reigned. Beverly and I

clung together, and, holding a hand of each, Mat Nivers crouched beside

us, herself strong in this second test of courage as she had been in the

camp that night at Council Grove.

I have never been afraid of storms and I can never understand why timid

folk should speak of them as of a living, self-directing force bent

purposely on human destruction. I love the splendor of the lightning and

the thunder's peal. From our earliest years, Beverly and Mat and I had

watched the flood-waters of the Missouri sweep over the bottomlands, and

we had heard the winds rave, and the cannonading of the angry heavens.

But this mad blast of the prairie storm was like nothing we had ever

seen or heard before. A yellow glare filled the sky, a half-illumined,

evil glow, as if to hide what lay beyond it. One breathed in fine sand,

and tasted the desert dust. Behind it, all copper-green, a broad, lurid

band swept up toward the zenith. Under its weird, unearthly light, the

prairies, and everything upon them, took on a ghastly hue. Then came the

inky-black storm-cloud--long, funnel-shaped, pendulous--and in its

deafening roar and the thick darkness that could be felt, and the awful

sweep of its all-engulfing embrace, the senses failed and the very

breath of life seemed beaten away. The floods fell in streams, hot, then

suddenly cold. And then a fusillade of hail bombarded the flat prairies,

defenseless beneath the munitions of the heavens. But in all the wild,

mad blackness, in the shriek and crash of maniac winds, in the swirl of

many waters, and chill and fury of the threshing hail, the law of the

trail failed not: "Hold fast." And with our hands gripped in one

another's, we children kept the law.

Just at the moment when destruction seemed upon us, the long swinging

cloud--funnel lifted. We heard it passing high above us. Then it dropped

against the face of old Pawnee Rock, that must have held the trail law

through all the centuries of storms that have beaten against its bold,

stern front. One tremendous blast, one crashing boom, as if the

foundations of the earth were broken loose, and the thing had left us

far behind.

Daylight burst upon us in a moment, and the blue heavens smiled down on

the clean-washed prairies. No homes, no crops, no orchards were left in

ruins in those days to mark the cyclone's wrath on wilderness trails. As

the darkness lifted we gathered ourselves together to take hold of life

again and to defend ourselves from our human enemy.

A shower of arrows from the top of the bluff might rain upon us at any

moment, yelling warriors might rush upon us, or a ring of riders

encircle us. It was in times like this that I learned how quickly men

can get the mastery.

Jondo and Esmond Clarenden did not delay a minute in protecting the camp

and setting it in order, taking inventory of the lost and searching for

the missing. Three of our number, with one of the ponies, were missing.

Aunty Boone had crouched in a protected angle at the base of the bluff,

and when we found her she was calmly smoking her pipe.

"Yo' skeered of this little puff?" she queried. "Yo' bettah see a simoon

on the desset, then. This here--just a racket. What's come of that

little redskin?"

She was not to be found. Nor was there any trace of Rex Krane anywhere.

In consternation we scanned the prairies far and wide, but only level

green distances were about us, holding no sign of life. We lived hours

in those watching minutes.

Suddenly Beverly gave a shout, and we saw Little Blue Flower running

swiftly from the sloping side of the bluff toward the camp. Behind her

stalked the young New-Englander.

"I went up to see what she was in such a hurry for to see," he

explained, simply. "I calculated it would be as interestin' to me as to

her, and if anything was about to cut loose"--he laid a hand carelessly

on his revolver--"why, I'd help it along. The little pink pansy, it

seems, went to look after our friends, the enemy," Rex went on. "The

hail nearly busted that old rock open. I thought once it had. The ponies

are scattered and likewise the Kiowas. Gone helter-skelter, like

the--tornado. The thing hit hard up there. Some ponies dead, and mebby

an Indian or two. I didn't hunt 'em up. I can't use 'em that way," he

added. "So I just said, 'Pax vobiscum!' and a lot of it, and came

kittering back."

Little Blue Flower's eyes glistened.

"Gone, all gone. The rain god drove them away. Now I know I may go with

you. The rain god loves you."

It was to Beverly, and not to my uncle, that her eyes turned as she

spoke, but he was not even listening to her. To him she was merely an

Indian. She seemed more than that to me, and therein lay the difference

between us.

If she had been interesting under the starlight, in the light of day she

became picturesque, a beautiful type of her race, silent, alert of

countenance, with big, expressive, black eyes, and long, heavy braids of

black hair. With her brilliant blanket about her shoulders, a turquoise

pendant on a leather band at her throat, silver bracelets on her brown

arms, she was as pleasing as an Indian maiden could be--adding a touch

of picturesque life to that wonderful journey westward from Pawnee Rock

to Santa Fé. Aunty Boone alone resented her presence among us.

"You can trust a nigger," she growled, "'cause you know they none of 'em

no 'count. But you can't tell about this Injun, whether she's good or

bad. I lets that sort of fish alone."

Little Blue Flower looked up at her with steady gaze and made no reply.

Out of that morning's events I learned a lasting lesson, and I know now

that the influence of Rex Krane on my life began that day, as I recalled

how he had followed Aunty Boone about the dark corners of the little

trading-post on the Neosho; and how he had looked at Mat Nivers once

when Uncle Esmond had suggested his turning back to Independence; and

how he had gone before all of us, the vanguard, to the top of the bluff

west of Council Grove; and now he had followed this Indian girl. From

that time I knew in my boy heart that this tall, careless Boston youth

had a zealous care for the safety of women and children. How much care,

events would run swiftly on to show me. But welded into my life from

that hour was the meaning of a man's high, chivalric duty. And among all

the lessons that the old trail taught to me, none served me more than

this one that came to me on that sweet May morning beneath the shadow of

Pawnee Rock.

VI

SPYING OUT THE LAND

City of the Holy Faith,

In thy streets so dim with age,

Do I read not Faith's decay,

But the Future's heritage.

--LILIAN WHITING.

Day was passing and the shadows were already beginning to grow purple in

the valleys, long before the golden light had left the opal-crowned

peaks of the Sangre-de-Christo Mountains beyond them.

On the wide crest of a rocky ridge our wagons halted. Behind us the long

trail stretched back, past mountain height and cañon wall, past barren

slope and rolling green prairie, on to where the wooded ravines hem in

the Missouri's yellow floods.

Before us lay a level plain, edged round with high mesas, over which

snowy-topped mountain peaks kept watch. A sandy plain, checkered across

by verdant-banded arroyos, and splotched with little clumps of trees and

little fields of corn. In the heart of it all was Santa Fé, a mere group

of dust-brown adobe blocks--silent, unsmiling, expressionless--the

city of the Spanish Mexican, centuries old and centuries primitive.

As our tired mules slackened their traces and drooped to rest after the

long up-climb, Esmond Clarenden called out:

"Come here, children. Yonder is the end of the trail."

We gathered eagerly about him, a picture in ourselves, maybe, in an age

of picturesque things; four men, bronzed and bearded; two sturdy boys;

Mat Nivers, no longer a little girl, it seemed now, with the bloom of

health on her tanned cheeks, and the smile of good nature in wide gray

eyes; beside her, the Indian maiden, Little Blue Flower, slim, brown,

lithe of motion, brief of speech; and towering back of all, the

glistening black face of the big, silent African woman.

So we stood looking out toward that northwest plain where the trail lost

itself among the low adobe huts huddled together beside the glistening

waters of the Santa Fé River.

Rex Krane was the first to speak.

"So that's what we've come out for to see, is it?" he mused, aloud.

"That's the precious old town that we've dodged Indians, and shot

rattlesnakes, and sunburnt our noses, and rain-soaked our dress suits

for! That's why we've pillowed our heads on the cushiony cactus and

tramped through purling sands, and blistered our hands pullin' at

eider-down ropes, and strained our leg-muscles goin' down, and busted

our lungs comin' up, and clawed along the top edge of the world with

nothin' but healthy climate between us and the bottom of the bottomless

pit. Humph! That's what you call Santa Fé! 'The city of the Holy Faith!'

Well, I need a darned lot of 'holy faith' to make me see any city there.

It's just a bunch of old yellow brick-kilns to me, and I 'most wish now

I'd stayed back at Independence and hunted dog-tooth violets along the

Big Blue."

"It's not Boston, if that's what you were looking for; at least there's

no Bunker Hill Monument nor Back Bay anywhere in sight. But I reckon

it's the best they've got. I'm tired enough to take what's offered and

keep still," Bill Banney declared.

I, too, wanted to keep still. I had only a faint memory of a real city.

It must have been St. Louis, for there was a wharf, and a steamboat and

a busy street, and soft voices--speaking a foreign tongue. But the

pictures I had seen, and the talk I had heard, coupled with a little

boy's keen imagination, had built up a very different Santa Fé in my

mind. At that moment I was homesick for Fort Leavenworth, through and

through homesick, for the first time since that April day when I had sat

on the bluff above the Missouri River while the vision of the plains

descended upon me. Everything seemed so different to-night, as if a gulf

had widened between us and all the nights behind us.

We went into camp on the ridge, with the journey's goal in plain view.

And as we sat down together about the fire after supper we forgot the

hardships of the way over which we had come. The pine logs blazed

cheerily, and as the air grew chill we drew nearer together about them

as about a home fireside.

The long June twilight fell upon the landscape. The piñon and scrubby

cedars turned to dark blotches on the slopes. The valley swam in a

purple mist. The silence of evening was broken only by a faint bird-note

in the bushes, and the fainter call of some wild thing stealing forth at

nightfall from its daytime retreat. Behind us the mesas and headlands

loomed up black and sullen, but far before us the Sangre-de-Christo

Mountains lifted their glorified crests, with the sun's last radiance

bathing them in crimson floods.

We sat in silence for a long time, for nobody cared to talk. Presently

we heard Aunty Boone's low, penetrating voice inside the wagon corral:

"You pore gob of ugliness! Yo' done yo' best, and it's green corn and

plenty of watah and all this grizzly-gray grass you can stuff in now.

It's good for a mule to start right, same as a man. Whoo-ee!"

The low voice trailed off into weird little whoops of approval. Then the

woman wandered away to the edge of the bluff and sat until late that

night, looking out at the strange, entrancing New Mexican landscape.

"To-morrow we put on our best clothes and enter the city," my uncle

broke the silence. "We have managed to pull through so far, and we

intend to keep on pulling till we unload back at Independence again.

But these are unsafe times and we are in an unsafe country. We are going

to do business and get out of it again as soon as possible. I shall ask

you all to be ready to leave at a minute's notice, if you are coming

back with me!"

"Now you see why I didn't join the army, don't you, Krane?" Bill Banney

said, aside. "I wanted to work under a real general."

Then turning to my uncle, he added:

"I'm already contracted for the round trip, Clarenden."

"You are going to start back just as if there were no dangers to be

met?" Rex Krane inquired.

"As if there were dangers to be _met_, not run from," Esmond Clarenden

replied.

"Clarenden," the young Bostonian began, "you got away from that drunken

mob at Independence with your children, your mules, and your big Daniel

Boone. You started out when war was ragin' on the Mexican frontier, and

never stopped a minute because you had to come it alone from Council

Grove. You shook yourself and family right through the teeth of that

Mexican gang layin' for you back there. You took Little Trailing Arbutus

at Pawnee Rock out of pure sympathy when you knew it meant a fight at

sun-up, six against fifty. And there would have been a bloody one, too,

but for that merciful West India hurricane bustin' up the show. You

pulled us up the Arkansas River, and straddled the Gloriettas, with

every danger that could ever be just whistlin' about our ears. And now

you sit there and murmur softly that 'we are in an unsafe country and

these are unsafe times,' so we'd better be toddlin' back home right

soon. I want to tell _you_ something now."

He paused and looked at Mat Nivers. Always he looked at Mat Nivers, who

since the first blush one noonday long ago, so it seemed, now, never

appeared to know or care where he looked. He must have had such a sister

himself; I felt sure of that now.

"I want to tell _you_," Rex repeated, "that I'm goin' to stay with you.

There's something _safe_ about you. And then," he added, carelessly, as

he gazed out toward the darkening plain below us, "my mother always said

you could tie to a man who was good to children. And you've been good to

this infant Kentuckian here."

He flung out a hand toward Bill Banney without looking away from the

open West. "When you want to start back to God's country and the land of

Plymouth Rocks and Pawnee Rocks, I'm ready to trot along."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Krane," Esmond Clarenden said. "I shall

need all the help I can get on the way back. Because we got through

safely we cannot necessarily count on a safe return. I may need you in

Santa Fé, too."

"Then command me," Rex replied.

He looked toward Mat again, but she and Little Blue Flower were coiling

their long hair in fantastic fashion about their heads, and laughing

like school-girls together.

Little Blue Flower was as a shy brown fawn following us. She had a way

of copying Mat's manner, and she spoke less of Indian and Spanish and

more of English from day to day. She had laid aside her Indian dress for

one of Mat's neat gingham gowns. I think she tried hard to forget her

race in everything except her prayers, for her own people had all been

slain by Mexican ruffians. We could not have helped liking her if we had

tried to do so. Yet that invisible race barrier that kept a fixed gulf

between us and Aunty Boone separated us also from the lovable little

Indian lass, albeit the gulf was far less deep and impassable.

To-night when she and Mat scampered away to the family wagon together,

she seemed somehow to really belong to us.

Presently Jondo and Rex Krane and Bill and Beverly rolled their blankets

about them and went to sleep, leaving Esmond Clarenden and myself alone

beside the dying fire. The air was sharp and the night silence deepened

as the stars came into the skies.

"Why don't you go to bed, Gail?" my uncle asked.

"I'm not sleepy. I'm homesick," I replied. "Come here, boy." He opened

his arms to me, and I nestled in their embrace.

"You've grown a lot in these two months, little man," he said, softly.

"You are a brave-hearted plainsman, and a good, strong little limb when

it comes to endurance, but just once in a while all of us need a

mothering touch. It keeps us sweet, my boy. It keeps us sweet and fit to

live."

Oh, many a time in the years that followed did the loving embrace and

the gentle words of this gentle, strong man come back to comfort me.

"Let me tell you something, Gail. I'm going to need a boy like you to

help me a lot before we leave Santa Fé, and I shall count on you."

Just then a noise at the far side of the corral seemed to disturb the

stock. A faint stir of awakening or surprise--just a hint in the air.

All was still in a moment. Then it came again. We listened. Something,

an indefinite something, somewhere, was astir. The surprise became

unrest, anxiety, fear, among the mules.

"Wait here, Gail. I'll see what's up," Uncle Esmond said, in a low

voice.

He hurried away toward the corral and I slipped back in the shadow of a

rock and leaned against it to wait.

In the dim beams of a starlit New Mexican sky I could see clearly out

toward the valley, but behind the camp all was darkness. As I waited,

hidden by the shadows, suddenly the flap of the family-wagon cover

lifted and Little Blue Flower slid out as softly as a cat walks in the

dust. She was dressed in her own Indian garb now, with her bright

blanket drawn picturesquely about her head and shoulders. Silently she

moved about the camp, peering toward the shadows hiding me. Then with

noiseless step she slipped toward where Beverly Clarenden lay, his

boyish face upturned to the stars, sleeping the dreamless sleep of

youth and health. I leaned forward and stared hard as the girl

approached him. I saw her drop down on one knee beside him, and, bending

over him, she gently kissed his forehead. She rose and gave one hurried

look around the place and then, like a bird lifting its wings for

flight, she threw up her arms, and in another moment she sprang to the

edge of the ridge and slipped from view. I followed, only to see her

gliding swiftly away, farther and farther, along the dim trail, until

the shadows swallowed her from my sight.

A low whinny from the corral caught my ear, followed by a rush of

horses' feet. As I slipped into my place again to wait for my uncle to

return, the smoldering logs blazed out suddenly, lighting up the form of

a man who appeared just beyond the fire, so that I saw the face

distinctly. Then he, too, was gone, following the way the Indian girl

had taken, until he lost himself in the misty dullness of the plains.

Presently Esmond Clarenden came back to the camp-fire.

"Gail, the pony we lost in that storm at Pawnee Rock has come back to

us. It was standing outside the corral, waiting to get in, just as if it

had lost us for a couple of hours. It is in good condition, too."

"How could it ever get here?" I exclaimed.

"Any one of a dozen ways," my uncle replied. "It may have run far that

stormy morning when it broke out of the corral, and possibly some party

coming over the Cimarron Trail picked it up and roved on this way. There

is no telling how it got here, since it keeps still itself about the

matter. Losing and finding and losing again is the law of events on the

plains."

"But why should it find us right here to-night, like it had been led

back?" I insisted.

"That's the miracle of it, Gail. It is always the strange thing that

really happens here. In years to come, if you ever tell the truth about

this trip, it will not be believed. When this isn't the frontier any

longer, the story of the trail will be accounted impossible."

Everything seemed impossible to me as I sat there staring at the dying

fire. Presently I remembered what I had seen while my uncle was away.

"Little Blue Flower has run away," I said, "and I saw the Mexican that

came to Fort Leavenworth the day before I twisted my ankle. He slipped

by here just a minute ago. I know, for I saw his face when the logs

flared up."

Esmond Clarenden gave a start. "Gail, you have the most remarkable

memory for faces of any child I ever knew," he said.

"Did he follow us, too, like the pony, or did he ride the pony after

us?" I asked. "He's just everywhere we go, somehow. Did I ever see him

before he came to the fort, or did I dream it?"

"You are a little dreamer, Gail," my uncle said, kindly. "But dreams

don't hurt, if you do your part whenever you are needed."

"Bev and Bill Banney make fun of dreams," I said.

"Yes, they don't have 'em; but Bev and Bill are ready when it comes to

doing things. They are a good deal alike, daring, and a bit reckless

sometimes, with good hard sense enough to keep them level."

"Don't I do, too?" I inquired.

"Yes, you do and dream, both. That's all the better. But you mustn't

forget, too, that sometimes the things we long for in our dreams we must

fight for, and even die for, maybe, that those who come after us may be

the better for our having them. What was it you said about Little Blue

Flower?" Uncle Esmond had forgotten her for the moment.

"She's gone to Santa Fé, I reckon. Is she bad, Uncle Esmond? Tell me all

about things," I urged.

"We are all here spying out the land, Mexican, Indian, trader,

freighter, adventurer, invalid," Uncle Esmond replied. "I don't know

what started the little Indian girl off, unless she just felt Indian, as

Jondo would say; but I may as well tell you, Gail, that it may have been

the Mexican who got our pony for us. He is a strange fellow, walks like

a cat, has ears like a timber wolf, and the cunning of a fox."

"Is he our friend?" I asked, eagerly.

"Listen, boy. He came to Fort Leavenworth on purpose to bring me an

important message, and he waited at Independence to see us off. Do you

remember the two spies Krane talked about at Council Grove? I think he

followed the Mexican spy across the river to our camp and sent him on

east. Then he went back and got the crowd all mixed up by his report,

while their own man scouted the trail out there for miles all night. He

is the man who put you through town and decoyed the ruffians to one

side. He located us after we had crossed the river, and then broke up

their meeting and put the fellows off to wait till the next night. That

is the way I worked out that Council Grove puzzle. He has a wide range,

and there are big things ahead for him in New Mexico.

"Sooner or later however," my uncle went on, "we will have to reckon

with that Kiowa tribe for stealing their captive. They meant to return

her for a big ransom price.... Great Heavens, Gail! You seem like a man

to me to-night instead of my little boy back at the fort. The plains

bring years to us instead of months, with just one crossing. I am

counting on you not to tell all you've been told and all you've seen. I

can be sure of you if you can keep things to yourself. You'd better get

to sleep now. There will be plenty to see over in Santa Fé. And there is

always danger afoot. But remember, it is the coward who finds the most

trouble in this world. Do your part with a gentleman's heart and a

hero's hand, and you'll get to the end of every trail safely. Now go to

bed."

Where I lay that night I could see a wide space of star-gemmed sky, the

blue night-sky of the Southwest, and I wondered, as I looked up into

the starry deeps, how God could keep so many bright bodies afield up

there, and yet take time to guard all the wandering children of men.

With the day-dawn the strange events of the night seemed as unreal as

the vanishing night-shadows. The bluest skies of a blue-sky land curved

in fathomless majesty over the yellow valley of the Santa Fé. Against

its borders loomed the silent mountain ranges--purple-shaddowed,

silver-topped Ortiz and Jemez, Sandia and Sangre-de-Christo. Dusty and

deserted lay the trail, save that here and there a group of dark-faced

carriers of firewood prodded on their fagot-laden burros toward the

distant town. As our wagons halted at the sandy borders of an arroyo the

brown-clad form of a priest rose up from the shade of a group of scrubby

piñon-trees beside the trail.

Esmond Clarenden lifted his hat in greeting.

"Are you going our way? We can give you a ride," he paused to say.

The man's face was very dark, but it was a young, strong face, and his

large, dark eyes were full of the fire of life. When he spoke his voice

was low and musical.

"I thank you. I go toward the mountains. You stay here long?"

"Only to dispose of my goods. My business is brief," Esmond Clarenden

declared.

The good man leaned forward as if to see each face there, sweeping in

everything at one glance. Then he looked down at the ground.

"These are troublesome days. War is only a temporary evil, but it makes

for hate, and hate kills as it dies. Love lives and gives life." A smile

lighted his eyes, though his lips were firm. "I wish you well. Among

friends or enemies the one haven of safety always is the holy

sanctuary."

Uncle Esmond bowed his head reverently.

"You will find it beside the trail near the river. The walls are very

old and strong, but not so old as hate, nor so strong as love. A little

street runs from it, crooked--six houses away. Peace be to all of you."

He broke off suddenly and his last sentence was spoken in a clear,

strong tone unlike the gentler voice.

"I thank you, Father!" Jondo said, as the priest passed his wagon.

The holy man gave him one swift, searching glance. Then lifting his

right hand as if in blessing, and slowly dropping it until the

forefinger pointed toward the west, he passed on his way.

Jondo's brown cheek flushed and the lines about his mouth grew hard.

"Take my place, Bev," he said, as he left his wagon and joined Esmond

Clarenden.

The two spoke earnestly together. Then Jondo mounted Beverly's pony.

"If you need me--" I heard him say, and he turned away and rode in the

direction the priest had taken.

Uncle Esmond offered no explanation for this sudden action, and his

sunny face was stern.

Usually wagon-trains were spied out long before they reached the city,

and a rabble attended their entry. To-day we moved along quietly until

the trail became a mere walled lane. On either side one-story adobe huts

sat with their backs to the street. No windows opened to the front, and

only a wooden door or a closed gateway stared in blank unfriendliness at

the passer-by. Little straggling lanes led off aimlessly on either side,

as narrow and silent as the strange terminal of the long trail itself.

I was only a boy, with the heart of a boy and the eyes of a boy. I could

only feel; I could not understand the spell of that hour. But to me

everything was alluring, wrapt as it was in the mystery of a

civilization old here when Plymouth Rock felt the first Pilgrim's foot,

or Pawnee Rock stared at the first bold plainsman of the pale face and

the conquering soul.

I was riding beside Beverly's wagon as we neared the quaint,

centuries-old, adobe church of San Miguel, rising tall and silent above

the low huts about it, its rough walls suggesting a fortress of

strength, while its triple towers might be an outlook for a guardsman.

"Look at that church. Bev, I wonder how old it is," I exclaimed.

"I should say about a thousand years and a day," Beverly declared. "See

that flopsy steeple thing! It looks like building-blocks stacked up

there."

"Maybe this is the sanctuary that priest was talking about," I

suggested. "He said the walls were old as hate and strong as love, with

a crooked street beside it somewhere."

"Oh, you sponge! Soaking up everything you see and hear. I wonder you

sleep nights for fear the wind will tell the pine trees something you'll

miss," Beverly declared. "I can tell a horse's age by its teeth, but

churches don't have teeth. Go and ask Mat about it. She knows when the

De Sotos and Cortéses and all the other Spanish grandaddees came to

Mexico."

I had just turned back alongside of Mat's wagon--she was always our book

of ready reference--when a little girl suddenly dashed out of a walled

lane opening into the street behind us. She stopped in the middle of the

road, almost under my pony's feet, then with a shout of laughter she

dashed into the deep doorway of the church and stood there, peering out

at me with eyes brimful of mischief.

I brought my pony back on its haunches suddenly. I had seen this girl

before. The big dark eyes, the straight little nose, the curve of the

pink cheek, the china-smooth chin and neck, and, crowning all, the cloud

of golden hair shading her forehead and falling in tangled curls behind.

I did not notice all these features now. It was only the eyes, dark

eyes, somewhere this side of misty mountain peaks, and maybe the halo of

hair that had been in my vision on that day when Beverly and Mat Nivers

and I sat on the parade-ground facing a sudden turn in our life trail.

I stared at the eyes now, only half conscious that the girl was laughing

at me.

"You big brown bob-cat! You look like you had slept in the Hondo 'royo

all your life," she cried, and turned to run away again.

As she did so a dark face peered round the corner of the church from the

crooked street beside it. A sudden gleam of white teeth and glistening

eyes, a sudden leap and grip, and a boy, larger than Beverly, caught the

little girl by the shoulders and shook her viciously.

She screamed and struggled. Then, with a wild shriek as he clutched at

her curls, she wrenched herself away and plunged inside the church. The

boy dived in after her. Another scream, and I had dropped from my pony

and leaped across the road. I pushed open the door against the two

struggling together. With one grip at his coat-collar I broke his hold

on the little girl and flung him outside.

I have a faint recollection of a priest hurrying down the aisle toward

the fighting children, as the little girl, freed from her assailant,

dashed out of the door.

"He jumped at her first, and shook her and pulled her hair," I cried, as

the priest caught me by the shoulder. "I'm not going to see anybody

pitched into, not a little girl, anyhow."

I jerked myself free from his grasp and ran out to my pony. At the

corner of the church stood the girl, her cheeks flushed, her eyes

blazing defiance, her rumpled curls in a tangle about her face.

"I hate Marcos, he's so cruel, and"--her voice softened and the defiant

eyes grew mischievous--"you aren't a bob-cat. You're a--Look out!"

She shouted the last words and disappeared up the narrow, crooked

street, just as a fragment of rock whizzed over my shoulder. I jumped on

my pony to dash away, when another rock just missed my head, and I saw

the boy, Marcos, beside the church, ready for a third hurl. His black

eyes flashed fire, and the grin of malice on his face showed all his

fine white teeth.

I was as mad as a boy can be. Instead of fleeing, I spurred my pony

straight at him.

"You little beast, I dare you to throw that rock at me! I dare you!" I

cried.

The boy dropped the missile and sped away after the girl. I followed in

time to see them enter a doorway, six or seven houses up the way. Then I

turned back, and in a minute I had overtaken our wagons trailing down to

the ford of the Santa Fé River.

"I thought mebby you'd gone back after Jondo and that holy podder," Rex

Krane greeted me. "Better begin to wink naturally and look a little

pleasanter now. We'll be in the Plazzer in two or three minutes."

The drivers flourished their whips, the mules caught their spirit, and

with bump and lurch and rattle we swung down the narrow crack between

adobe walls that ended before the old Exchange Hotel at the corner of

the Plaza.

This open square in the center of the city was shaded by trees and

littered with refuse. The Palace of the Governors fronted it along the

entire north side, a long, low, one-story structure whose massive adobe

walls defy the wearing years. Compared to the kingly palaces of my

imagination, this royal dwelling seemed a very commonplace thing, and

the wide portal, or veranda, that ran along its front looked like one of

the sheds about the barracks at the fort rather than an entranceway for

rulers. Yet this was the house of a ruler hostile to that flag to which

I had thrown a good-by kiss, up at Fort Leavenworth.

On the other three sides of the Plaza were other low adobe buildings,

for the business of the city faced this central square.

A crowd was gathered there when we reached it. Somebody standing before

the Palace of the Governors was haranguing in fiery Spanish, if gesture

and oral vehemence are true tokens.

As our wagons rumbled up to the corner of the square the crowd broke up

with a shout.

"Los Americanos! Los Carros!"

The cry went up everywhere as the rabble left the speaker to flock about

us--men, women, children, Mexican, Spanish, Indian, with now and then a

Saxon face among them. Our outfit was as well appointed as such a

journey's end permitted. We were in our best clothes--clean-shaven

gentlemen, well-dressed boys, and one girl, neat and comely in a

dark-blue gown of thin stuff with white lace at throat and wrist; and

last, and biggest of all, Aunty Boone, in a bright-green lawn with

little white dots all over it.

As I sat on my pony beside my uncle's wagon, I caught sight of the slim

figure of Little Blue Flower, well back in the shade of the Plaza. She

was watching Beverly, who sat in Jondo's wagon, staring at the crowd and

seeing no one in particular. A minute later a tall young Indian boy

stepped in front of her, and when he moved away she was gone.

Many men came forward to greet Esmond Clarenden, and there were many

inquiries regarding his goods and many exclamations of surprise that he

had come alone with so valuable a cargo.

It was the first time that Beverly and I had seen him among his equals.

At Fort Leavenworth, where the army overruled everything else, men stood

above him in authority or below him in business affairs; and while he

never cringed to the one, nor patronized the other, where there are no

competitors there are no true measures. That day in the Plaza of Santa

Fé the merchant was in his own kingdom, where commerce stood above

everything else.

Moreover, this American merchant, following a danger-girt trail, had

come in fearlessly, and those men of the Plaza knew that he was one to

exact value for value in all his dealings. But I believe that his real

power lay in his ready smile, his courtesy, his patience, and his

up-bubbling good nature that made him a friendship-builder.

Among the men who came to make acquaintance with the American trader was

a Mexican merchant. Evidently he was a man of some importance, for an

interpreter hastened to introduce him, explaining that this man had been

away on a journey of some weeks among the mines of New Mexico and the

Southwest, and only the day before he had come in from Taos.

"You will find him a prince of merchants, a sound, unprejudiced business

man. His name is Felix Narveo," the American interpreter added.

The two men shook hands, greeting each other in the Spanish tongue. This

Felix Narveo was well dressed and well groomed, but I recognized him at

once as the Mexican of Fort Leavenworth and Independence and Council

Grove.

There was one man in that company, however, who did not come forward at

all. When I first caught sight of him he was looking at me. I stared

back at him with a boy's curiosity, but he did not take his eyes from me

until I had dropped my own. After that I watched him keenly. He seemed

almost too fair for a Mexican--a tall, spare-built man with black hair,

and eyes so steely blue that they were almost black. Everywhere I saw

him--at the corners of the little crowd and in the thick of it. He was

an easy mark, for he towered above the rest, and, being slender, he

seemed to worm his way quickly from place to place. At sight of him,

Aunty Boone, who had been peering out with shining eyes, drew her head

in as quick as a snake, under the shadow of the wagon cover, and her

eyes grew dull. He had not seen her, but I could see that he was

watching the remainder of us, and especially my uncle; and I began to

feel afraid of him and to wish that he would leave the Plaza. It was

years ago that all this happened, and yet to-day my fear of that man

still sticks in my memory.

When he turned away, suddenly I caught sight of the boy, whom I had

flung out of the church, standing behind him, the boy whom the little

girl had called Marcos. Although his face was dark and the man's was

fair, there was a strong likeness between the two.

This Marcos stared insolently at all of us. Then with a laugh and a

grimace at me, he ran after the man and they disappeared together around

the corner of the Palace of the Governors. And in the rush of strange

sights I forgot them both for a time.

VII

"SANCTUARY"

Our dwelling-place in all generations.--Psalms xc, 1.

They are wonderful to me still--those few brief days that followed.

While Esmond Clarenden was forcing his business transactions to a speedy

climax, he was all the time foreseeing Santa Fé under the United States

Government. He had not come here as a spy, nor a speculator, but as a

commerce-builder, knowing that the same business life would go on when

the war cloud lifted, and that the same men who had made the plains

commerce profitable under the Mexican flag would not be exiled when the

Stars and Stripes should float above the old Palace of the Governors.

Belief in the ethics of his calling and trust in manhood were ever a

large part of his stock in trade, making him dare to go where he chose

to go, and to do what he willed to do.

But no concern for commerce nor extension of national territory

disturbed our young minds in those sunlit days, as Mat and Beverly and I

looked with the big, quick-seeing eyes of youth on this new strange

world at the end of the trail.

We were all together in the deserted dining-room on our first evening in

Santa Fé when the man whom I had seen on the Plaza strolled leisurely

in. He sat down at one of the farthest tables from us, and his eyes,

glistening like blue-black steel, were fixed on us.

Once at Fort Leavenworth I had watched in terror as a bird fluttered

helplessly toward a still, steel-eyed snake holding it in thrall. And

just at the moment when its enemy was ready to strike, Jondo had

happened by and shot the snake's head off. The same terror possessed me

now, and I began half-consciously to long for Jondo.

In the midst of new sights I had hardly thought of him since he had left

us out beyond the big arroyo. He had come into town at dusk, but soon

after supper he had disappeared. His face was very pale, and his eyes

had a strange look that never left them again. Something was different

in Jondo from that day, but it did not change his gentle nature toward

his fellow-men. During our short stay in Santa Fé we hardly saw him at

all. We children were too busy with other things to ask questions, and

everybody but Rex Krane was too busy to be questioned. Having nothing

else to do, Rex became our chaperon, as Uncle Esmond must have foreseen

he would be when he measured the young man in Independence on the day we

left there.

To-night Esmond Clarenden, smiling and good-natured, paid no heed to the

sharp eyes of this stranger fixed on him.

"What's the matter now, little weather-vane? You are always first to

sense a coming change," he declared.

"Uncle Esmond, I saw that man watching us like he knew us, out there on

the Plaza to-day. Who is he?" I asked, in a low tone.

"His name is Ferdinand Ramero. You will find him watching everywhere.

Let that man alone as you would a snake," my uncle warned us.

"Is that his boy?" I asked.

"What boy?" Uncle Esmond inquired.

"Marcos, the boy I pitched endways out of the church. He's bigger than

Bev, too," I declared, proudly.

"Gail Clarenden, are you crazy?" Uncle Esmond exclaimed.

"No, I'm not," I insisted, and then I told what had happened at the

church, adding, "I saw Marcos with that man in the Plaza, and they went

away together."

Esmond Clarenden's face grew grave.

"What kind of a looking child was she, Gail?" he asked, after a pause.

"Oh, she had yellow hair and big sort of dark eyes! She could squeal

like anything. She wasn't a baby girl at all, but a regular little

fighter kind of a girl."

I grew bashful all at once and hesitated, but my uncle did not seem to

hear me, for he turned to Rex Krane and said, in low, earnest tones:

"Krane, if you can locate that child for me you will do me an invaluable

service. It was largely on her account that I came here now, and it's a

god-send to have a fellow like you to save time for me. Every man has

his uses. Your service will be a big one to me."

The young man's face flushed and his eyes shone with a new light.

"If any of you happen to see that girl let me know at once," my uncle

said, turning to us, "but, remember, don't act as if you were hunting

for her."

"I know now right where she lives. It's up a crooked street by that

church. I saw her run in there," I insisted.

"Every hut looks like every other hut, and every little Mex looks like

every other little Mex," Beverly declared.

Uncle Esmond smiled, but the stern lines in his face hardly broke as he

said, earnestly, "Keep your eyes open and, whatever you do, stay close

to Krane while Bill helps me here, and don't forget to watch for that

little girl when you are sight-seeing."

"There's not much to see, as Bev says, but the outside of 'dobe walls

five feet thick," Rex Krane observed. "But if you know which wall to

look through, the lookin' may be easy enough. Seein' things is my

specialty, and we'll get this princess if we have to slay a giant and an

ogre and take a few dozen Mexican scalps first. The plot just thickens.

It's a great game." The tall New-Englander would not take life seriously

anywhere, and, with our trust in his guardianship, we could want no

better chaperon.

That night Beverly Clarenden and I were in fairyland.

"It's the princess, Bev, the princess we were looking for," I joyously

asserted. "And, oh, Bev, she is beautiful, but snappy-like, too. She

called me a 'big brown bob-cat', and then she apologized, just as nice

as could be."

"And this little Marcos cuss, he'll be the ogre," Beverly declared. "But

who'll we have for the giant? That priest, footing it out by that dry

creek-thing they call a 'royo?"

"Oh no, no! He and Jondo made up together, and Jondo's nobody's bad man

even in a story. It will be that Ferdinand Ramero," I insisted. "But,

say, Bev, Jondo wrote a new name on the register this evening, or

somebody wrote it for him, maybe. It wasn't his own writing. 'Jean

Deau.' I saw it in big, round, back-slanting letters. Why did he do

that?"

"Well, I reckon that's his real name in big, round, back-slanting

letters down here," Beverly replied. "It's French, and we have just been

spelling it like it sounds, that's all."

"Well, maybe so," I commented, and when I fell asleep it was to dream of

a princess and Jondo by a strange name, but the same Jondo.

The air of New Mexico puts iron into the blood. The trail life had

hardened us all, but the finishing touch for Rex Krane came in the

invigorating breath of that mountain-cooled, sun-cleansed atmosphere of

Santa Fé. Shrewd, philosophic, brave-hearted like his historic ancestry,

he laid his plans carefully now, sure of doing what he was set to do.

And the wholesome sense of really serving the man who had measured his

worth at a glance gave him a pleasure he had not known before. Of

course, he moved slowly and indifferently. One could never imagine Rex

Krane hurrying about anything.

"We'll just 'prospect,' as Daniel Boone says," he declared, as he

marshaled us for the day. "We are strangers, sight-seein', got no other

business on earth, least of all any to take us up to this old San Miguel

Church for unholy purposes. 'Course if we see a pretty little dark-eyed,

golden-haired lassie anywhere, we'll just make a diagram of the spot

she's stand'n' on, for future reference. We're in this game to win, but

we don't do no foolish hurryin' about it."

So we wandered away, a happy quartet, and the city offered us strange

sights on every hand. It was all so old, so different, so silent, so

baffling--the narrow, crooked street; the solid house-walls that hemmed

them in; the strange tongue, strange dress, strange customs; the absence

of smiling faces or friendly greetings; the sudden mystery of seeking

for one whom we must not seem to seek, and the consciousness of an

enemy, Ferdinand Ramero, whom we must avoid--that it is small wonder

that we lived in fairyland.

We saw the boy, Marcos, here and there, sometimes staring defiantly at

us from some projected angle; sometimes slipping out of sight as we

approached; sometimes quarreling with other children at their play. But

nowhere, since the moment when I had seen the door close on her up that

crooked street beside the old church, could we find any trace of the

little girl.

In the dim morning light of our fifth day in Santa Fé, a man on

horseback, carrying a big, bulky bundle in his arms, slipped out of the

crooked, shadow-filled street beside the old church of San Miguel. He

halted a moment before the structure and looked up at the ancient crude

spire outlined against the sky, then sped down the narrow way by the

hotel at the end of the trail. He crossed the Plaza swiftly and dashed

out beyond the Palace of the Governors and turned toward the west.

Aunty Boone, who slept in the family wagon--or under it--in the

inclosure at the rear of the hotel, had risen in time to peer out of the

wooden gate just as the rider was passing. It was still too dark to see

the man's face distinctly, but his form, and the burden he carried, and

the trappings of the horse she noted carefully, as was her habit.

"Up to cussedness, that man is. Mighty long an' slim. Lemme see! Humph!

I know _him_. I'll go wake up somebody."

As the woman leaned far out of the gate she caught sight of a little

Indian girl crouching outside of the wall.

"You got no business here, you, Little Blue Flower! Where do you live

when you _do_ live?"

Little Blue Flower pointed toward the west.

"Why you come hangin' 'round here?" the African woman demanded.

"Father Josef send me to help the people who help me," she said, in her

soft, low voice.

"Go back to your own folks, then, and tell your Daddy Joseph a man just

stole a big bunch of something and rode south with it. He can look after

that man. We can get along somehow. Now go."

The voice was like a growl, and the little Indian maiden shrank back in

the shadow of the wall. The next minute Aunty Boone was rapping softly

on the door of the room whose guest had registered as Jean Deau. Ten

minutes later another horseman left the street beside the hotel and

crossed the Plaza, riding erect and open-faced as only Jondo could ride.

Then the African woman sought out Rex Krane, and in a few brief

sentences told him what had been taking place. All of which Rex was far

too wise to repeat to Beverly and me.

That afternoon it happened that we left Mat Nivers at the hotel, while

Rex Krane and Beverly and I strolled out of town on a well-beaten trail

leading toward the west.

"It looks interestin'. Let's go on a ways," Rex commented, lazily.

Nobody would have guessed from his manner but that he was indulgently

helping us to have a good time with certain restriction as to where we

should go, and what we might say, nor that, of the three, he was the

most alert and full of definite purpose.

We sat down beside the way as a line of burros loaded with firewood from

the mountains trailed slowly by, with their stolid-looking drivers

staring at us in silent unfriendliness.

The last driver was the tall young Indian boy whom I had seen standing

in front of Little Blue Flower in the crowd of the Plaza. He paid no

heed to our presence, and his face was expressionless as he passed us.

"Stupid as his own burro, and not nearly so handsome," Beverly

commented.

The boy turned quietly and stared at my cousin, who had not meant to be

overheard. Nobody could read the meaning of that look, for his face was

as impenetrable as the adobe walls of the Palace of the Governors.

"Bev, you are laying up trouble. An Indian never forgets, and you'll be

finding that fellow under your pillow every night till he gets your

scalp," Rex Krane declared, as we went on our way.

Beverly laughed and stiffened his sturdy young arms.

"He's welcome to it if he can get it," he said, carelessly. "How many

million miles do we go to-day, Mr. Krane?"

"Yonder is your terminal," Rex replied, pointing to a little settlement

of mud huts huddling together along the trail. "They call that little

metropolis Agua Fria--'pure water'--because there ain't no water there.

It's the last place to look for anybody. That's why we look there. You

will go in like gentlemen, though--and don't be surprised nor make any

great noise over anything you see there. If a riot starts I'll do the

startin'."

Carelessly as this was said, we understood the command behind it.

Near the village, I happened to glance back over the way we had come,

and there, striding in, soft-footed as a cat behind us, was that young

Indian. I turned again just as we reached the first straggling houses at

the outskirts of the settlement, but he had disappeared.

It was a strange little village, this Agua Fria. Its squat dwellings,

with impenetrable adobe walls, had sat out there on the sandy edge of

the dry Santa Fé River through many and many a lagging decade; a single

trail hardly more than a cart-width across ran through it. A church,

mud-walled and ancient, rose above the low houses, but of order or

uniformity of outline there was none. Hands long gone to dust had shaped

those crude dwellings on this sunny plain where only man decays, though

what he builds endures.

Nobody was in sight and there was something awesome in the very silence

everywhere. Rex lounged carelessly along, as one who had no particular

aim in view and was likely to turn back at any moment. But Beverly and I

stared hard in every direction.

At the end of the village two tiny mud huts, separated from each other

by a mere crack of space, encroached on this narrow way even a trifle

more than the neighboring huts. As we were passing these a soft Hopi

voice called:

"Beverly! Beverly!" And Little Blue Flower, peeping shyly out from the

narrow opening, lifted a warning hand.

"The church! The church!" she repeated, softly, then darted out of

sight, as if the brown wall were but thick brown vapor into which she

melted.

"Why, it's our own little girl!" Beverly exclaimed, with a smile, just

as Little Blue Flower turned away, but I am sure she caught his words

and saw his smile.

We would have called to her, but Rex Krane evidently did not hear her,

for he neither halted nor turned his head. So, remembering our command

to be quiet, we passed on.

"I guess we are about to the end of this 'pure water' resort. It's

gettin' late. Let's go back home now," our leader said, dispiritedly. So

we turned back toward Santa Fé.

At the narrow opening where we had seen Little Blue Flower the young

Indian boy stood upright and motionless, and again he gave no sign of

seeing us.

"Let's just run over to that church a minute while we are here. Looks

interestin' over there," Rex suggested.

I wondered if he could have heard Little Blue Flower, and thought her

suggestion was a good one, or if this was a mere whim of his.

The church, a crude mission structure, stood some distance from the

trail. As we entered a priest came forward to meet us.

"Can I serve you?" he asked.

The voice was clear and sweet--the same voice that we had heard out

beyond the arroyo southeast of town, the same face, too, that we had

seen, with the big dark eyes full of fire. Involuntarily I recalled how

his hand had pointed to the west when he had pronounced a blessing that

day.

"Thank you, Father--" Rex began.

"Josef," the holy man said.

"Yes, thank you, Father Josef. We are just looking at things. No wish to

be rude, you know."

Rex lifted his cap and stood bareheaded in the priestly presence.

Father Josef smiled.

"Look here, then."

He led us up the aisle to where, cuddled down on a crude seat, a little

girl lay asleep. Her golden hair fell like a cloud about her face,

flowing over the edge of the seat almost to the floor. Her cheeks were

pink and warm, and her dimpled white hands were clasped together. I had

caught Mat Nivers napping many a time, but never in my life had I seen

anything half so sweet as this sleeping girl in the beauty of her

innocence. And I knew at a glance that this was the same girl whom I had

seen before at the door of the old Church of San Miguel.

"Same as grown-ups when the sermon is dull. Thank you, Father Josef.

It's a pretty picture. We must be goin' now." Rex Krane dropped some

silver in the priest's hand and we left the church.

At the door we passed the Indian boy again, and a third time he gave no

sign of seeing us. I was the only one who was troubled, however, for Rex

and Beverly did not seem to notice him. As we left the village I caught

sight of him again following behind us.

"Look there, Bev," I said, in a low voice. Beverly glanced back, then

turned and stared defiantly at the boy.

"Maybe Rex knows about Indians," he said, lightly. "That's three times I

found him fooling around in less than an hour, but my scalp is still

hanging over one ear."

He pushed back his cap and pulled at his bright brown locks. Happy Bev!

How headstrong, brave, and care-free he walked the plains that day.

The evening shadows were lengthening and the peaks of the

Sangre-de-Christo range were taking on the scarlet stains of sunset when

we raced into town at last. Rex Krane went at once to find Uncle Esmond,

and Beverly and I hurried to the hotel to tell Mat of all that we had

seen.

Her gray eyes were glowing when she met us at the door and led us into a

corner where we could talk by ourselves.

"Uncle Esmond has sold everything to that Mexican merchant, Felix

Narveo, and we are going to start home just as soon as he can find that

little girl."

"Oh, we've found her! We've found her!" Beverly burst out. But Mat

hushed him at once.

"Don't yell it to the sides, Beverly Clarenden. Now listen!" Mat dropped

her voice almost to a whisper. "He's going to take that little girl back

with us as far as Fort Leavenworth, and then send her on to St. Louis

where she has some folks, I guess."

"Isn't he a clipper, though," Beverly exclaimed.

"But what if the Indians should get us?" I asked, anxiously. "I heard

the colonel at Fort Leavenworth just give it to Uncle Esmond one night

for bringing us."

"You are safe or you are not safe everywhere. And if we got in here I

reckon we can get out," Mat reasoned, philosophically. "And Uncle Esmond

isn't afraid and he's set on doing it. We aren't going to take any goods

back, so we can travel lots faster, and everything will be put in the

wagons so we can grab out what's worth most in a hurry if we have to."

So we talked matters over now as we had done on that April day out on

the parade-ground at Fort Leavenworth. But now we knew something of what

might be before us on that homeward journey. Thrilling hours those were.

It is no wonder that, schooled by their events, young as we were, we put

away childish things.

That night while we slept things happened of which we knew nothing for

many years. There was no moon and the glaring yellow daytime plain was

full of gray-edged shadows, under the far stars of a midnight blue sky,

as Esmond Clarenden took the same trail that we had followed in the

afternoon. On to the village of Agua Fria, black and silent, he rode

until he came to the church door. Here he dismounted, and, quickly

securing his horse, he entered the building. The chill midnight wind

swept in through the open door behind him, threatening to blot out the

flickering candles about the altar. Father Josef came slowly down the

aisle to meet him, while a tall man, crouching like a beast about to

spring, rather than a penitent at prayer, shrank down in the shadowy

corner inside the doorway.

The merchant, solid and square-built and fearless, stood before the

young priest baring his head as he spoke.

"I come on a grave errand, good Father. This afternoon my two nephews

and a young man from New England came in here and saw a child asleep

under protection of this holy sanctuary. That child's name is Eloise St.

Vrain. I had hoped to find her mother able to care for her. She--cannot

do it, as you know. I must do it for her now. I come here to claim what

it is my duty to protect."

At these words the crouching figure sprang up and Ferdinand Ramero, his

steel-blue eyes blazing, came forward with cat-like softness. But the

sturdy little man before the priest stood, hat in hand, undisturbed by

any presence there.

"Father Josef," the tall man began, in a voice of menace, "you will not

protect this American here. I have confessed to you and you know that

this man is my enemy. He comes, a traitor to his own country and a spy

to ours. He has risked the lives of three children by bringing them

across the plains. He comes alone where large wagon-trains dare not

venture. He could not go back to the States now. And lastly, good

Father, he has no right to the child that he claims is here."

"To the child that is here, asleep beside our sacred altar," Father

Josef said, sternly.

Ferdinand Ramero turned upon the priest fiercely.

"Even the Church might go too far," he muttered, threateningly.

"It might, but it never has," the holy man agreed. Then turning to

Esmond Clarenden, he continued: "You must see that these charges do not

stand against you. Our Holy Church offers no protection, outside of

these four walls, to a traitor or a spy or even an unpatriotic

speculator seeking to profit by the needs of war. Nor could it sanction

giving the guardianship of a child to one who daringly imperils his own

life or the lives of children, nor can it sanction any rights of

guardianship unless due cause be given for granting them."

Ferdinand Ramero smiled as the priest concluded. He was a handsome man,

with the sort of compelling magnetism that gives controlling power to

its possessor. But because I knew my uncle so well in after years, I can

picture Esmond Clarenden as he stood that night before the young priest

in the little mud-walled church of Agua Fria. And I can picture the

tall, threatening man in the shadows beside him. But never have I held

an image of him showing a sign of fear.

"Father Josef, I am willing to make any explanation to you. As for this

man whom you call Ramero here--up in the States he bears another name

and I finished with him there six years ago--I have no time nor breath

to waste on him. Are these your demands?" my uncle asked.

"They are," Father Josef replied.

"Do I take away the little girl, Eloise, unmolested, if you are

satisfied?" Esmond Clarenden demanded, first making sure of his bargain,

like the merchant he was.

Ferdinand Ramero stiffened insolently at these words, and looked

threateningly at Father Josef.

"You do," the holy man replied, something of the flashing light in his

eyes alone revealing what sort of a soldier the State had lost when this

man took on churchly orders.

"I am no traitor to my flag, since my full commerical purpose was

known and sanctioned by the military authority at Fort Leavenworth

before I left there. I brought no aid to my country's enemy because my

full cargo was bargained for by your merchant, Felix Narveo, before the

declaration of war was made. I merely acted as his agent bringing his

own to him. I have come here as a spy only in this--that I shall profit

in strictly legitimate business by the knowledge I hold of commercial

conditions and my acquaintance with your citizens when this war for

territory ends, no matter how its results may run. I deal in wholesome

trade, not in human hate. I offer value for value, not blood for blood."

Up to this time a smile had lighted the merchant's eyes. But now his

voice lowered, and the lines about his mouth hardened.

"As to the guardianship of children, Father Josef, I am a bachelor who

for nearly nine years have given a home, education, support, and

affection to three orphan children, until, though young in years, they

are wise and capable. So zealous was I for their welfare, that when word

came to me--no matter how--that a company of Mexicans were on their way

to Independence, Missouri, ostensibly to seek the protection of the

United States Government and to settle on the frontier there, but really

to seize these children in my absence, and carry them into the heart of

old Mexico, I decided at once that they would be safer with me in New

Mexico than without me in Missouri.

"In the night I passed this Mexican gang at Council Grove, waiting to

seize me in the morning. At Pawnee Rock a storm scattered a band of

Kiowa Indians to whom these same Mexicans had given a little Indian

slave girl as a reward for attacking our train if the Mexicans should

fail to get us themselves. Through every peril that threatens that long

trail we came safely because the hand of the Lord preserved us."

Esmond Clarenden paused, and the priest bowed a moment in prayer.

"If I have dared fate in this journey," the merchant went on, "it was

not to be foolhardy, nor for mere money gains, but to keep my own with

me, and to rescue the daughter of Mary St. Vrain, of Santa Fé, and take

her to a place of safety. It was her mother's last pleading call, as

you, Father Josef, very well know, since you yourself heard her last

words and closed her dead eyes. Under the New Mexican law, the

guardianship of her property rests with others. Mine is the right to

protect her and, by the God of heaven, I mean to do it!"

Esmond Clarenden's voice was deep and powerful now, filling the old

church with its vehemence.

Up by the altar, the little girl sat up suddenly and looked about her,

terrified by the dim light and the strange faces there.

"Don't be afraid, Eloise."

How strangely changed was this gentle tone from the vehement voice of a

moment ago.

The little girl sprang up and stared hard at the speaker. But no child

ever resisted that smile by which Esmond Clarenden held Beverly and me

in loving obedience all the days of our lives with him.

Shaking with fear as she caught sight of Ferdinand Ramero, the girl

reached out her hands toward the merchant, who put his arm protectingly

about her. The big, dark eyes were filled with tears; the head with its

sunny ripples of tangled hair leaned against him for a moment. Then the

fighting spirit came back to her, so early in her young life had the

need for defending herself been forced upon her.

"Where have I been? Where am I going?" she demanded.

"You are going with me now," Uncle Esmond said, softly.

"And never have to fight Marcos any more? Oh, good, good, good! Let's go

now!"

She frowned darkly at Ferdinand Ramero, and, clutching tightly at Esmond

Clarenden's hands, she began pulling him toward the open door.

"Eloise," Father Josef said, "you are about to go away with this good

man who will be a father to you. Be a good child as your mother would

want you to be." His musical voice was full of pathos.

Eloise dropped her new friend's hand and sprang down the aisle.

"I will be good, Father Josef," she said, squeezing his dark hand

between her fair little palms. Then, tossing back the curls from her

face, she reached up a caressing hand to his cheek.

Father Josef stooped and kissed her white forehead, and turned hastily

toward the altar.

"Esmond Clarenden!" It was Ferdinand Ramero who spoke, his sharp, bitter

voice filling the church.

"By order of this priest Eloise St. Vrain is yours to protect so long as

you stay within these walls. The minute you leave them you reckon with

me."

Father Josef whirled about quickly, but the man made a scoffing gesture.

"I brought this child here for protection this morning. But for that

sickly Yankee and two inquisitive imps of boys she would have been safe

here. I acknowledge sanctuary privilege. Use it as long as you choose in

the church of Agua Fria. Set but a foot outside these walls and I say

again you reckon with me."

His tall form thrust itself menacingly before the little man and his

charge clinging to his arm.

"Set but a foot outside these walls and _you_ will reckon with _me_."

It was Jondo's clear voice, and the big plainsman, towering up suddenly

behind Ferdinand Ramero, filled the doorway.

"You meant to hide in the old Church of San Miguel because it is so near

to the home where you have kept this little girl. But Gail Clarenden

blocked your game and found your house and this child in the church door

before our wagon-train had reached the end of the trail. You found this

church your nearest refuge, meaning to leave it again early in the

morning. I have waited here for you all day, protected by the same means

that brought word to Santa Fé this morning. Come out now if you wish.

You dare not follow me to the States, but I dare to come to your land.

Can you meet me here?" Jondo was handsome in his sunny moods. In his

anger he was splendid.

Ferdinand Ramero dropped to a seat beside Father Josef.

"I have told you I cannot face that man. I will stay here now," he said,

in a low voice to the priest. "But I do not stay here always, and I can

send where I do not follow," he added, defiantly.

Esmond Clarenden was already on his horse with his little charge, snugly

wrapped, in his arms.

Father Josef at the portal lifted his hand in sign of blessing.

"Peace be with you. Do not tarry long," he said. Then, turning to Jondo,

he gazed into the strong, handsome face. "Go in peace. He will not

follow. But forget not to love even your enemies."

In the midnight dimness Jondo's bright smile glowed with all its

courageous sweetness.

"I finished that fight long ago," he said. "I come only to help others."

Long these two, priest and plainsman, stood there with clasped hands,

the gray night mists of the Santa Fé Valley round about them and all the

far stars of the midnight sky gleaming above them.

Then Jondo mounted his horse and rode away up the trail toward Santa Fé.

VIII

THE WILDERNESS CROSSROADS

I will even make a way in the wilderness.

--ISAIAH.

Bent's fort stood alone in the wide wastes of the upper Arkansas valley.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific shores there was in America no more

isolated spot holding a man's home. Out on the north bank of the

Arkansas, in a grassy river bottom, with rolling treeless plains

rippling away on every hand, it reared its high yellow walls in solitary

defiance, mute token of the white man's conquering hand in a savage

wilderness. It was a great rectangle built of adobe brick with walls six

feet through at the base, sloping to only a third of that width at the

top, eighteen feet from the ground. Round bastions, thirty feet high, at

two diagonal corners, gave outlook and defense. Immense wooden doors

guarded a wide gateway looking eastward down the Arkansas River. The

interior arrangement was after the Mexican custom of building, with

rooms along the outer walls all opening into a big _patio_, or open

court. A cross-wall separated this court from the large corral inside

the outer walls at the rear. A portal, or porch, roofed with thatch on

cedar poles, ran around the entire inner rectangle, sheltering the rooms

somewhat from the glare of the white-washed court. A little world in

itself was this Bent's Fort, a self-dependent community in the solitary

places. The presiding genius of this community was William Bent, whose

name is graven hard and deep in the annals of the eastern slopes of the

Rocky Mountain country in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century.

Hither in the middle '40's the wild trails of the West converged:

northward, from the trading-posts of Bent and St. Vrain on the Platte;

south, over the Raton Pass from Taos and Santa Fé; westward, from the

fur-bearing plateaus of the Rockies, where trappers and traders brought

their precious piles of pelts down the Arkansas; and eastward, half a

thousand miles from the Missouri River frontier--the pathways of a

restless, roving people crossed each other here. And it was toward this

wilderness crossroads that Esmond Clarenden directed his course in that

summertime of my boyhood years.

The heat of a July sun beat pitilessly down on the scorching plains. The

weary trail stretched endlessly on toward a somewhere in the yellow

distance that meant shelter and safety. Spiral gusts of air gathering

out of the low hills to the southeast picked up great cones of dust and

whirled them zigzagging across the brown barren face of the land. Every

draw was bone dry; even the greener growths along their sheltered

sides, where the last moisture hides itself, wore a sickly sallow hue.

Under the burden of this sun-glare, and through these stifling

dust-cones, our little company struggled sturdily forward.

We had left Santa Fé as suddenly and daringly as we had entered it, the

very impossibility of risking such a journey again being our, greatest

safeguard. Esmond Clarenden was doing the thing that couldn't be done,

and doing it quickly.

In the gray dawn after that midnight ride to Agua Fria a little Indian

girl had slipped like a brown shadow across the Plaza. Stopping at the

door of the Exchange Hotel, she leaned against the low slab of petrified

wood that for many a year served as a loafer's roost before the hotel

doorway. Inside the building Jondo caught the clear twitter of a bird's

song at daybreak, twice repeated. A pause, and then it came again,

fainter this time, as if the bird were fluttering away through the Plaza

treetops.

In that pause, the gate in the wall had opened softly, and Aunty Boone's

sharp eyes peered through the crack. The girl caught one glimpse of the

black face, then, dropping a tiny leather bag beside the stone, she sped

away.

A tall young Indian boy, prone on the ground behind a pile of refuse in

the shadowy Plaza, lifted his head in time to see the girl glide along

the portal of the Palace of the Governors and disappear at the corner of

the structure. Then he rose and followed her with silent moccasined

feet.

And Jondo, who had hurried to the hotel door, saw only the lithe form of

an Indian boy across the Plaza. Then his eye fell on the slender bag

beside the stone slab. It held a tiny scrap of paper, bearing a message:

_Take long trail QUICK. Mexicans follow far_. Trust bearer anywhere.

JOSEF.

An hour later we were on our way toward the open prairies and the Stars

and Stripes afloat above Fort Leavenworth.

In the wagon beside Mat Nivers was the little girl whose face had been

clear in the mystic vision of my day-dreams on the April morning when I

had gone out to watch for the big fish on the sand-bars; the morning

when I had felt the first heart-throb of desire for the trail and the

open plains whereon my life-story would later be written.

We carried no merchandise now. Everything bent toward speed and safety.

Our ponies and mules were all fresh ones--secured for this journey two

hours after we had come into Santa Fé--save for the big sturdy dun

creature that Uncle Esmond, out of pure sentiment, allowed to trail

along behind the wagons toward his native heath in the Missouri bottoms.

We had crossed the Gloriettas and climbed over the Raton Pass rapidly,

and now we were nearing the upper Arkansas, where the old trail turns

east for its long stretch across the prairies.

As far as the eye could see there was no living thing save our own

company in all the desolate plain aquiver with heat and ashy dry. The

line of low yellow bluffs to the southeast hardly cast a shadow save for

a darker dun tint here and there.

At midday we drooped to a brief rest beside the sun-baked trail.

"You all jus' one color," Aunty Boone declared. "You all like the dus'

you made of 'cep' Little Lees an' me. She's white and I'm black. Nothin'

else makes a pin streak on the face of the earth."

Aunty Boone flourished on deserts and her black face glistened in the

sunlight. Deep in the shadow of the wagon cover the face of Eloise St.

Vrain--"Little Lees," Aunty Boone had named her--bloomed pink as a wild

rose in its frame of soft hair. She had become Aunty Boone's meat and

drink from the moment the strange African woman first saw her. This

regard, never expressed in caress nor word of tenderness, showed itself

in warding from the little girl every wind of heaven that might visit

her too roughly. Not that Eloise gave up easily. Her fighting spirit

made her rebel against weariness and the hardships of trail life new to

her. She fitted into our ways marvelously well, demanding equal rights,

but no favors. By some gentle appeal, hardly put into words, we knew

that Uncle Esmond did not want us to talk to her about herself. And

Beverly and Mat and I, however much we might speculate among ourselves,

never thought of resisting his wishes.

Eloise was gracious with Mat, but evidently the boy Marcos had made her

wary of all boys. She paid no attention to Beverly and me at first. All

her pretty smiles and laughing words were for Uncle Esmond and Jondo.

And she was lovely. Never in all these long and varied years have I seen

another child with such a richness of coloring, nor such a mass of

golden hair rippling around her forehead and falling in big, soft curls

about her neck. Her dark eyes with their long black lashes gave to her

face its picturesque beauty, and her plump, dimpled arms and sturdy

little form bespoke the wholesome promise of future years.

But the life of the trail was not meant for such as she, and I know now

that the assurance of having saved her from some greater misfortune

alone comforted Uncle Esmond and Jondo in this journey. For Aunty Boone

was right when she declared, "They tote together always."

As we grouped together under that shelterless glare, getting what

comfort we could out of the brief rest, Jondo sprang up suddenly, his

eyes aglow with excitement.

"What's the matter? Because if it isn't, this is one hot day to pretend

like it is," Rex Krane asserted.

He was lying on the hot earth beside the trail, his hat pulled over his

face. Beverly and Bill Banney were staring dejectedly across the

landscape, seeing nothing. I sat looking off toward the east, wondering

what lay behind those dun bluffs in the distance.

"Something is wrong back yonder," Jondo declared, making a half-circle

with his hand toward the trail behind us.

My heart seemed to stop mid-beat with a kind of fear I had never known

before. Aunty Boone had always been her own defender. Mat Nivers had

cared for me so much that I never doubted her bigger power. It was for

Eloise, Aunty Boone's "Little Lees," that my fear leaped up.

I can close my eyes to-day and see again the desolate land banded by the

broad white trail. I can see the dusty wagons and our tired mules with

drooping heads. I can see the earnest, anxious faces of Esmond Clarenden

and Jondo; Beverly and Bill Banney hardly grasping Jondo's meaning; Rex

Krane, half asleep on the edge of the trail. I can see Mat Nivers, brown

and strong, and Aunty Boone oozing sweat at every pore. But these are

only the setting for that little girl on the wagon-seat with white face

and big dark eyes, under the curl-shadowed forehead.

Jondo stared hard toward the hills in the southeast. Then he turned to

my uncle with grim face and burning eyes; His was a wonderful voice,

clear, strong and penetrating. But in danger he always spoke in a low

tone.

"I've watched those dust-whirls for an hour. The wind isn't making all

of them. Somebody is stirring them up for cover. Every whirl has an

Indian in it. It's all of ten miles to Bent's. We must fight them off

and let the others run for it, before they cut us off in front. Look at

that!"

The exclamation burst from the plainsman's lips.

That was my last straight looking. The rest is ever a kaleidoscope of

action thrilled through with terror. What I saw was a swiftly moving

black splotch coming out of the hills, with huge dust-heaps flying here

and there before it. Then a yellow cloud spiral blinded our sight as a

gust of hot wind swept round us. I remember Jondo's stern face and

blazing eyes and his words:

"Mexicans behind the Indians!"

And Uncle Esmond's voice:

"Narveo said they would get us, but I hoped we had outrun them."

The far plains seemed spotted with Indians racing toward us, and coming

at an angle from the southeast a dozen Mexicans swept in to cut us off

from the trail in front.

I remember a quick snatching of precious things in boxes placed for such

a moment as this, a quick snapping of halter ropes around the ponies'

necks, a gleaming of gun-barrels in the hot sunlight; a solid cloud of

dust rolling up behind us, bigger and nearer every second; and the

urgent voice of Jondo: "Ride for your lives!"

And the race began. On the trail somewhere before us was Bent's Fort. We

could only hope to reach it soon. We did not even look behind as we tore

down that dusty wilderness way.

At the first motion Aunty Boone had seized Eloise St. Vrain with one

hand and the big dun mule's neck-strap with the other.

"Go to the devil, you tigers and cannibals!" She roared with the growl

of a desert lioness, shaking her big black fist at the band of Mexicans

pouring out of the hills.

And dun mule and black woman and white-faced, terror-stricken child

became only a dust-cloud far in front of us. Mat and Beverly and I

leaped to the ponies and followed the lead of the African woman. Nearest

to us was Rex Krane, always a shield for the younger and less able. And

behind him, as defense for the rear and protection for the van, came

Esmond Clarenden and Bill Banney, with Jondo nearest the enemy, where

danger was greatest.

I tell it calmly, but I lived it in a blind whirl. The swift hoof-beat,

the wild Indian yells, the whirl of arrows and whiz of bullets, the

onrush to outrun the Mexicans who were trying to cut us off from the

trail in front. Lived it! I lived ages in it. And then an arrow cut my

pony's flank, making him lurch from the trail, a false step, the pony

staggering, falling. A sharp pain in my shoulder, the smell of fire, a

shriek from demon throats, the glaring sunlight on the rocking plain,

searing my eyes in a mad whirlpool of blinding light, the fading

sounds--and then--all was black and still.

* * * * *

When I opened my eyes again I was lying on a cot. Bare adobe walls were

around me, and a high plastered roof resting on cedar poles sheltered

that awful glare from my eyes. Through the open door I could see the

rain falling on the bare ground of the court, filling the shallow places

with puddles.

I tried to lift myself to see more as shrieks of childish laughter

caught my ear, but there was a sickish heat in my dry skin, an evil

taste in my throat, and a sharp pain in my left shoulder; and I fell

back again.

Another shriek, and Eloise St. Vrain came before my doorway, pattering

with bare white feet out into the center of the _patio_ puddles and

laughing at the dashing summer shower. Her damp hair, twisted into a

knot on top of her head, was curling tightly about her temples and neck,

her eyes were shining; her wet clothes slapping at her bare white

knees--a picture of the delicious happiness of childhood. A little child

of three or four years was toddling after her. He was brown as a berry,

and at first I thought he was a little Indian. I could hear Mat and

Beverly splashing about safe and joyous somewhere, and I forgot my fever

and pain and the dread of that awful glare coming again to sear my

burning eyeballs as I watched and listened. A louder shriek as the

little child ran behind Eloise and gave her a vigorous shove for one so

small.

"Oh, Charlie Bent, see what you've done," Mat cried; and then Beverly

was picking up "Little Lees," sprawling, all mud-smeared and happy, in

the very middle of the court.

The child stood looking at her with shining black eyes full of a wicked

mischief, but he said not a word.

Just then a dull grunt caught my ear, and I half-turned to see a cot

beyond mine. An Indian boy lay on it, looking straight at me. I stared

back at him and neither of us spoke. His head was bandaged and his cheek

was swollen, but with my memory for faces, even Indian faces, I knew him

at once for the boy who had followed us into Agua Fria and out of it

again.

Just then the frolickers came to the door and peered in at me.

"Are you awake?" Eloise asked.

Then seeing my face, she came romping in, followed by Mat and Beverly

and little Charlie Bent, all wet and hilarious. They gave no heed to the

Indian boy, who pretended to be asleep. Once, however, I caught him

watching Beverly, and his eyes were like dagger points.

"We are having the best times. You must get well right away, because we

are going to stay." They all began to clatter, noisily.

Rex Krane appeared at the door just then and they stopped suddenly.

"Clear out of here, you magpies," he commanded, and they scuttled away

into the warm rain and the puddles again.

"Do you want anything, Gail?" Rex asked, bending over me.

I drew his head down with my right arm.

"I want that Indian out of here," I whispered.

"Out he goes," Rex returned, promptly, and almost before I knew it the

boy was taken away. When we were alone the tall young man sat down

beside me.

"You want to ask me a million questions. I'll answer 'em to save you

the trouble," he began, in his comfortable way.

"You are wounded in your shoulder. Slight, bullet, that's Mexican; deep,

arrow, that's Indian. But you are here and pretty much alive and you

will be well soon."

"And Uncle Esmond? Jondo? Bill?" I began, lifting myself up on my well

arm.

"Keep quiet. I'll answer faster. Everybody all right. Clarenden and

Jondo leave for Independence the minute you are better, and a military

escort permits."

I dropped down again.

"The U.S. Army, en route for perdition, via Santa Fé, is camping in the

big timbers down-stream now. Jondo and Esmond Clarenden will leave you

boys and girls here till it's safe to take you out again. And I and

Daniel Boone, vestal god and goddess of these hearth-fires, will keep

you from harm till that time. Bill's joining the army for sure now, and

our happy family life is ended as far as the Santa Fé Trail is

concerned. I'm a well man now, but not quite army-well yet, they tell

me."

"Tell me about this." I pointed to my shoulder.

"All in good time. It was a nasty mess of fish. A dozen Mexicans and as

many Indians had followed us all the way from the sunny side of the

Gloriettas. You and Bev and Mat had got by the Mexics. Daniel Boone and

'Little Lees' were climbing the North Pole by that time. The rest of us

were giving battle straight from the shoulder; and someway, I don't know

how, just as we had the gang beat back behind us--you had a sniff of a

bullet just then--an Indian slipped ahead in the dust. I was tendin' to

mite of an arrow wound in my right calf, and I just caught him in time,

aimin' at Bev; but he missed him for you. I got him, though, and clubbed

his scalp a bit loose."

Rex paused and stared at his right leg.

"How did that boy get here, Rex? Is he a friendly Indian?" I asked.

"Oh, Jondo brought him in out of the wet. Says the child was made to

come along, and as soon as he could get away from the gang he had to run

with up here; he came right into camp to help us against them. Fine

young fellow! Jondo has it from them in authority that we can trust him

lyin' or tellin' the truth. _He's all right._"

"How did he get hurt?" I inquired, still remembering in my own mind the

day at Agua Fria.

"He'd got into our camp and was fightin' on our side when it happened,"

Rex replied.

"Some of them shot at him, then?" I insisted. "No, I beat him up with

the butt of my gun for shootin' you," Rex said, lazily.

"At me! Why don't you tell Jondo?"

"I tried to," Rex answered, "but I can't make him see it that way. He's

got faith in that redskin and he's going to see that he gets back to New

Mexico safely--after while."

"Rex, that's the same boy that was down in Agua Fria, the one Bev

laughed at. He's no good Indian," I declared.

"You are too wise, Gail Clarenden," Rex drawled, carelessly. "A boy of

your brains had ought to be born in Boston. Jondo and I can't agree

about him. His name, he says, is Santan. There's one 'n' too many. If

you knock off the last one it makes him Santa--'holy'; but if you knock

out the middle it's Satan. We don't knock out the same 'n', Jondo and

me."

Just then the little child came tumbling noisily into the room.

"Look here, youngun. You can't be makin' a racket here," Rex said.

The boy stared at him, impudently.

"I will, too," he declared, sullenly, kicking at my cot with all his

might.

Rex made no reply but, seizing the child around the waist, he carried

him kicking and screaming outside.

"You stay out or I'll spank you!" Rex said, dropping him to the ground.

The boy looked up with blazing eyes, but said nothing.

"That's little Charlie Bent. His daddy runs this splendid fort. His

mother is a Cheyenne squaw, and he's a grim clinger of a half-breed.

Some day he'll be a terror on these plains. It's in him, I know. But

that won't interfere with us any. And you children are a lot safer here

than out on the trail. Great God! I wonder we ever got you here!" Rex's

face was very grave. "Now go to sleep and wake up well. No more thinkin'

like a man. You can be a child again for a while."

Those were happy days that followed. Safe behind the strong walls of old

Fort Bent, we children had not a care; and with the stress and strain of

the trail life lifted from our young minds, we rebounded into happy

childhood living. Every day offered a new drama to our wonder-loving

eyes. We watched the big hide-press for making buffalo robes and furs

into snug bales. We climbed to the cupola of the headquarters department

and saw the soldiers marching by on their way to New Mexico. We saw the

Ute and the Red River Comanche come filing in on their summer

expeditions from the mountains. We saw the trade lines from the far

north bearing down to this wilderness crossroads with their early fall

stock for barter.

Our playground was the court off which all the rooms opened. And however

wild and boisterous the scenes inside those walls in that summer of

1846, in four young lives no touch of evil took root. Stronger than the

six-feet width of wall, higher than the eighteen feet of adobe brick

guarding us round about, was the stern strength of the young Boston man

interned in the fort to protect us from within, as the strength of that

structure defended us from without.

And yet he might have failed sometimes, had it not been for Aunty Boone.

Nobody trifled with her.

"You let them children be. An give 'em the run of this shack," she

commanded of the lesser powers whose business was to domineer over the

daily life there. "The man that makes trouble wide as a needle is across

is goin' to meet me an' the Judgment Day the same minute."

"When Daniel gets on her crack-o'-doom voice, the mountains goin' to

skip like rams and the little hills like lambs, an' the Army of the West

won't be necessary to protect the frontier," Rex declared. But he knew

her worth to his cause, and he welcomed it.

And so with her brute force and his moral strength we were unconsciously

intrenched in a safety zone in this far-isolated place.

With neither Uncle Esmond nor Jondo near us for the first time in our

remembrance, we gained a strength in self-dependence that we needed. For

with the best of guardianship, there are many ways in which a child's

day may be harried unless the child asserts himself. We had the years of

children but the sturdy defiance of youth. So we were happy within our

own little group, and we paid little heed to the things that nobody else

could forestall for us.

Outside of our family, little Charlie Bent, the half-breed child of the

proprietor of the fort, was a daily plague. He entered into all of our

sports with a quickness and perseverance and wilfulness that was

thoroughly American. He took defeat of his wishes, and the equal measure

of justice and punishment, with the silent doggedness of an Indian; and

on the edge of babyhood he showed a spirit of revenge and malice that

we, in our rollicking, affectionate lives, with all our teasing and

sense of humor, could not understand; so we laughed at his anger and

ignored his imperious demands.

Behind him always was his Cheyenne mother, jealously defending him in

everything, and in manifold ways making life a burden--if we would

submit to the making, which we seldom did.

And lastly Santan, the young boy who had deserted his Mexican masters

for Jondo's command, contrived, with an Indian's shrewdness, never to

let us out of his sight. But he gave us no opportunity to approach him.

He lived in his own world, which was a savage one, but he managed that

it should overlap our world and silently grasp all that was in it.

Beverly had persistently tried to be friendly for a time, for that was

Beverly's way. Failing to do it, he had nick-named the boy "Satan" for

all time.

"We found Little Blue Flower a sweet little muggins," Beverly told the

Indian early in our stay at the fort. "We like good Indians like her.

She's one clipper."

Santan had merely looked him through as though he were air, and made no

reply, nor did he ever by a single word recognize Beverly from that

moment.

The evening before we left Fort Bent we children sat together in a

corner of the court. The day had been very hot for the season and the

night was warm and balmy, with the moonlight flooding the open space,

edging the shadows of the inner portal with silver. There was much noise

and boisterous laughter in the billiard-room where the heads of affairs

played together. Rex Krane had gone to bed early. Out by the rear gate

leading to the fort corral, Aunty Boone was crooning a weird African

melody. Crouching in the deep shadows beside the kitchen entrance, the

Indian boy, Santan, listened to all that was said.

To-night we had talked of to-morrow's journey, and the strength of the

military guard who should keep us safe along the way. Then, as children

will, we began to speculate on what should follow for us.

"When I get older I'm going to be a freighter like Jondo, Bill and me.

We'll kill every Indian who dares to yell along the trail. I'm going

back to Santa Fé and kill that boy that stared at me like he was crazy

one day at Agua Fria."

In the shadows of the porchway, I saw Santan creeping nearer to us as

Beverly ran on flippantly:

"I guess I'll marry a squaw, Little Blue Flower, maybe, like the Bents

do, and live happily ever after."

"I'm going to have a big fine house and live there all the time," Mat

Nivers declared. Something in the earnest tone told us what this long

journey had meant to the brave-hearted girl.

"I'm going to marry Gail when I grow up," Eloise said, meditatively. "He

won't ever let Marcos pull my hair." She shook back the curly tresses,

gold-gleaming in the moonlight, and squeezed my hand as she sat beside

me.

"What will you be, Gail?" Mat asked.

"I'll go and save Bev's scalp when he's gunning too far from home," I

declared.

"Oh, he'll be 'Little Lees's' husband, and pull that Marcos cuss's nose

if he tries to pull anybody's curls. Whoo-ee! as Aunty Boone would say,"

Beverly broke in.

I kept a loving grip on the little hand that had found mine, as I would

have gripped Beverly's hand sometimes in moments when we talked together

as boys do, in the confidences they never give to anybody else.

A gray shadow dropped on the moon, and a chill night wind crept down

inside the walls. A sudden fear fell on us. The noises inside the

billiard room seemed far away, and all the doors except ours were

closed. Santan had crept between us and the two open doorways leading to

our rooms. What if he should slip inside. A snake would have seemed

better to me.

A silence had fallen on us, and Eloise still clung to my hand. I held it

tightly to assure her I wasn't afraid, but I could not speak nor move.

Aunty Boone's crooning voice was still, and everything had grown weird

and ghostly. The faint wailing cry of some wild thing of the night

plains outside crept to our ears, making us shiver.

"When the stars go to sleep an' the moon pulls up the gray covers, it's

time to shut your eyes an' forget." Aunty Boone's soft voice broke the

spell comfortingly for us. "Any crawlin' thing that gits in my way now,

goin' to be stepped on."

At the low hissing sound of the last sentence there was a swift

scrambling along the shadows of the porch, and a door near the kitchen

snapped shut. The big shining face of the African woman glistened above

us and the court was flooded again with the moon's silvery radiance. As

we all sprang up to rush for our rooms, "Little Lees" pulled me toward

her and gently kissed my cheek.

"You never would let Marcos in if he came to Fort Leavenworth, would

you?" she whispered.

"I'd break his head clear off first," I whispered back, and then we

scampered away.

That night I dreamed again of the level plains and Uncle Esmond and

misty mountain peaks, but the dark eyes were not there, though I watched

long for them.

The next day we left Fort Bent, and when I passed that way again it was

a great mass of yellow mounds, with a piece of broken wall standing

desolately here and there, a wreck of the past in a solitary land.

II

BUILDING THE TRAIL

IX

IN THE MOON OF THE PEACH BLOSSOM

Love took me softly by the hand,

Love led me all the country o'er,

And showed me beauty in the land,

That I had never seen before.

--ANONYMOUS.

You might not be able to find the house to-day, nor the high bluff

whereon it stood. So many changes have been wrought in half a century

that what was green headland and wooded valley in the far '50's may be

but a deep cut or a big fill for a new roadway or factory site to-day.

So diligently has Kansas City fulfilled the scriptural prophecy that

"every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be

made low."

Where the great stream bends to the east, the rugged heights about its

elbow, Aunty Boone, in those days, was wont to declare, did not offer

enough level ground to set a hen on. Small reason was there then to hope

that a city, great and gracious, would one day cover those rough ravines

and grace those slopes and hilltops in the angle between the Missouri

and the Kaw.

Aunty Boone had resented leaving Fort Leavenworth when the Clarenden

business made the young city at the Kaw's mouth more desirable for a

home. But Esmond Clarenden foresaw that a military post, when the

protection it offers is no longer needed, will not, in itself, be a

city-builder. The war had brought New Mexico into United States

territory; railroads were slowly creeping westward toward the

Mississippi River; steamboats and big covered wagons were bringing

settlers into Kansas, where little cabins were beginning to mark the

landscape with new hearth-stones. Congress was wrangling over the great

slavery question. The Eastern lawmakers were stupidly opposing the

efforts of Missouri statesmen to extend mail routes westward, or to

spend any energy toward developing that so-called worthless region which

they named "the great American desert." And the old Santa Fé Trail was

now more than ever the highway for the commerical treasures of the

Rocky Mountains and the great Southwest.

It was the time of budding things. In the valley of the Missouri the

black elm boughs, the silvery sycamores and cottonwoods, and the vines

on the gray rock-faced cliffs were veiled in shimmering draperies of

green, with here and there a little group of orchard trees faintly pink

against the landscape's dainty verdure.

Beverly Clarenden and I stood on the deck of a river steamer as it made

the wharf at old Westport Landing, where Esmond Clarenden waited for us.

And long before the steamer's final bump against the pier we had noted

the tall, slender girl standing beside him. We had been away three

years, the only schooling outside of Uncle Esmond's teaching we were

ever to have. We were big boys now, greatly conscious of hands and feet

in our way, "razor broke," Aunty Boone declared, brimful of hilarity and

love of adventure, and eager for the plains life, and the dangers of the

old trail by which we were to conquer or be conquered. In the society of

women we were timid and ill at ease. Aside from this we were

self-conceited, for we knew more of the world and felt ourselves more

important on that spring morning than we ever presumed to know or dared

to feel in all the years that followed.

"Who is she, Gail, that tall one by little fat Uncle Esmond?" Beverly

questioned, as we neared the wharf.

"You don't reckon he's married, Bev? He's all of twenty-four or five

years older than we are, and we aren't calves any more." I replied,

scanning the group on the wharf.

But we forgot the girl in our eagerness to bound down the gang-plank and

hug the man who meant all that home and love could mean to us. In our

three growing years we had almost eliminated Mat Nivers, save as a happy

memory, for mails were slow in those days and we were poor

letter-writers; and we had wondered how to meet her properly now. But

when the tall, slender girl on the wharf came forward and we looked into

the wide gray eyes of our old-time playmate whom, as little boys, we

had both vowed to marry, we forgot everything in our overwhelming love

for our comrade-in-arms, our jolliest friend and counselor.

"Oh, Mat, you miserable thing!" Beverly bubbled, hugging her in his

arms.

"You are just bigger and sweeter than ever. I mistook you for Aunty

Boone at first," I chimed in, kissing her on each cheek. And we all

bundled away in an old-fashioned, low-swung carriage, happy as children

again, with no barrier between us and the dear playmate of the past.

The new home, on the high crest overlooking the Missouri valley, nestled

deep in the shade of maple and elm trees, a mansion, compared to that

log house of blessed memory at Fort Leavenworth. A winding road led up

the steep slope from a wooded ravine where a trail ran out from the

little city by the river's edge. Vistas of sheer cliff and stretches of

the muddy on-sweeping Missouri and the full-bosomed Kaw, with scrubby

timbered ravines and growing groves of forest trees, offered themselves

at every turn. And from the top of the bluff the world unrolled in a

panorama of nature's own shaping and coloring.

The house was built of stone, with vines climbing about its thick walls,

and broad veranda. And everywhere Mat's hands had put homey touches of

comfort and beauty. An hundredfold did she return to Esmond Clarenden

all the care and protection he had given to her in her orphaned

childhood. And, after all, it was not military outposts, nor railroads,

nor mail-lines alone that pushed back the wilderness frontier. It was

the hand of woman that also builded empire westward.

"Mat's got her wish at last," I said, as we sat with Uncle Esmond after

dinner under a big maple tree and looked out at the far yellow Missouri,

churning its spring floods to foam against the snags along its

high-water bound.

"What's Mat's wish?" Uncle Esmond asked.

"To have a good home and _stay there_. She wished that one night, years

ago back in old Fort Bent. Don't you remember, Bev, when we were out in

the court, and how scared blue we all were when the moon went under a

cloud, and that Indian boy, Santan, was creeping between us and the home

base?"

"No, I don't remember anything except that we were in Fort Bent. Got in

by the width of a hair ahead of some Mexicans and Indians, and got out

again after a jolly six weeks. What's the real job for us now, Uncle

Esmond?"

Uncle Esmond was staring out toward the Kaw valley, rimmed by high

bluffs in the distance.

"I don't know about Mat having her wish," he said, thoughtfully, "but

never mind. Trade is booming and I'm needing help on the trail this

spring. Jondo starts west in two weeks."

Beverly and I sprang up. Six feet of height, muscular, adventure-loving,

fearless, we had been made to order for the Santa Fé Trail. And if I was

still a dreamer and caught sometimes the finer side of ideals, where

Beverly Clarenden saw only the matter-of-fact, visible things, no

shrewder, braver, truer plainsman ever walked the long distances of the

old Santa Fé Trail than this boy with his bright face and happy-go-lucky

spirit unpained by dreams, untrammeled by fancies.

"Two weeks! We are ready to start right after supper," we declared.

"Oh, I have other matters first," Uncle Esmond said. "Beverly, you must

go up to Fort Leavenworth and arrange a lot of things with Banney for

this trip. He's to go, too, because military escort is short this

season."

"Suits me!" Beverly declared. "Old Bill Banney and I always could get

along together. And this infant here?"

"I'm going to send Gail down to the Catholic Mission, in Kansas. You

remember little Eloise St. Vrain, of course?" Uncle Esmond asked.

"We do!" Beverly assured him. "Pretty as a doll, gritty as a sand-bar,

snappy as a lobster's claw--she dwells within my memory yet."

All girls were little children to us, for the scheme of things had not

included them in our affairs.

I threw a handful of grass in the boy's face, and Uncle Esmond went on.

"She's been at St. Ann's School at the Osage Mission down on the Neosho

River for two or three years, and now she is going to St. Louis. In

these troublesome times on the border, if I have a personal interest, I

feel safer if some big six-footer whom I can trust comes along as an

escort from the Neosho to the Missouri," Uncle Esmond explained.

And then we spoke of other things: the stream of emigration flowing into

the country, the possibilities of the prairies, the future of the city

that should hold the key to the whole Southwest, and especially of the

chance and value of the trail trade.

"It's the big artery that carries the nation's life-blood here," Esmond

Clarenden declared. "Some day when the West is full of people, and

dowered with prosperity, it may remember the men who built the highway

for the feet of trade to run in. And the West may yet measure its

greatness somewhat by the honesty and faithfulness of the merchant of

the frontier, and more by the courage and persistence of the boys who

drove the ox-teams across the plains. Don't forget that you yourselves

are State-builders now."

He spoke earnestly, but his words meant little to me. I was looking out

toward the wide-sweeping Kaw and thinking of the journey I must make,

and wondering if I should ever feel at ease in the society of women.

Wondering, too, what I should say, and how I should really take care of

"Little Lees," who had crossed the plains with us almost a decade ago;

the girl who had held my hand tightly one night at old Fort Bent when

the shadow had slipped across the moon and filled the silvery court with

a gray, ghostly light.

That night the old heart-hunger of childhood came back to me, the

visions of the day-dreaming little boy that were almost forgotten in the

years that had brought me to young manhood. And clearly again, as when I

heard Uncle Esmond's voice that night on the tableland above the valley

of the Santa Fé, I heard his gentle words:

"Sometimes the things we long for in our dreams we must fight for, and

even die for, that those who come after us may be the better for our

having them."

But these thoughts passed with the night, and in my youth and

inexperience I took on a spirit of fatherly importance as I went down to

St. Ann's to safeguard a little girl on her way through the Kansas

territory to the Missouri River.

It had been a beautiful day, and there was a freshness in the soft

evening breeze, and an up-springing sweetness from the prairies. A

shower had passed that way an hour before, and the spirit of growing

things seemed to fill the air with a voiceless music.

Just at sunset the stage from the north put me down in front of St.

Ann's Academy in the little Osage Mission village on the Neosho.

A tall nun, with commanding figure and dignified bearing, left the

church steps across the road and came slowly toward me.

"I am looking for Mother Bridget, the head of this school," I said,

lifting my hat.

"I am Mother Bridget." The voice was low and firm. One could not imagine

disobedience under her rule.

"I come from Mr. Esmond Clarenden, to act as escort for a little girl,

Eloise St. Vrain, who is to leave here on the stage for Kansas City

to-morrow," I hesitatingly offered my letter of introduction, which

told all that I had tried to say, and more.

The woman's calm face was gentle, with the protective gentleness of the

stone that will not fail you when you lean on it. One felt sure of

Mother Bridget, as one feels sure of the solid rock to build upon. She

looked at me with keen, half-quizzical eyes. Then she said, quietly:

"You will find the little girl down by Flat Rock Creek. The Indian girl,

Po-a-be, is with her. There may be several Indian girls down there, but

Po-a-be is alone with little Eloise."

I bowed and turned away, conscious that, with this good nun's sincerity,

she was smiling at me back of her eyes somehow.