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.

As I followed the way leading to the creek I passed a group or two of Indian girls--St. Ann's, under the Loretto Sisterhood, was fundamentally a mission school for these--and a trio of young ladies, pretty and coquettish, with daring, mischievous eyes, whose glances made me flush hot to the back of my neck as I stumbled by them on my way to the stream.

The last sun rays were glistening on the placid waters of the Flat Rock, and all the world was softly green, touched with a golden glamour. I paused by a group of bushes to let the spell of the hour have its way with me. I have always loved the beautiful things of earth; as much now as in my childhood days, when I felt ashamed to let my love be known; as now I dare to tell it only on paper, and not to that dear, great circle of men and women who know me best to-day.

The sound of footsteps and the murmur of soft voices fitted into the sweetness of that evening hour as two girls, one of them an Indian, came slowly down a well-worn path from the fields above the Flat Rock Valley. They did not see me as they sat down on some broad stones beside the stream.

I started forward to make myself known, but caught myself mid-step, for here was a picture to make any man pause.

The Indian girl facing me was Little Blue Flower, the Kiowas' captive, whom we had rescued at Pawnee Rock. Her heavy black hair was coiled low on her neck, a headband of fine silverwork with pink coral pendants was bound about her forehead and gleaming against her jetty hair. With her well-poised head, her pure Indian features, her lustrous dark eyes, her smooth brown skin, her cheeks like the heart of those black-red roses that grow only in richest soil--surely there was no finer type of that vanishing race in all the Indian pueblos of the Southwest. But the girl beside her! Was it really so many years ago that I stood by the bushes on the Flat Rock's edge and saw that which I see so clearly now? Then these years have been gracious indeed to me. The sun's level beams fell on the masses of golden waves that swept in soft little ripples back from the white brow to a coil of gold on the white neck, held, like the Indian girl's, with a headband of wrought silver, and goldveined turquoise; it fell on the clear, smooth skin, the pink bloom of the cheek, the red lips, the white teeth, the big dark eyes with their fringe of long lashes beneath straight-penciled dark brows; on the curves of the white throat and the round white arms. Only a master's hand could make you see these two, beautiful in their sharp contrast of deep brown and scarlet against the dainty white and gold.

"Oh, Little Blue Flower, it will not make me change."

I caught the words as I stepped toward the two, and the Indian's soft, mournful answer:

"But you are Miss St. Vrain now. You go away in the morning--and I love you always."

The heart in me stopped just when all its flood had reached my face.

"Miss St. Vrain," I repeated, aloud.

The two sprang up. That afternoon they had been dressed for a girls' frolic in some Grecian fashion. I cannot tell a Watteau pleat from window-curtain. I am only a man, and I do not name draperies well. But these two standing before me were gowned exactly alike, and yet I know that one was purely and artistically Greek, and one was purely and gracefully Indian.

"I beg your pardon. I am Mr. Clarenden," I managed to say.

At the name Little Blue Flower's eyes looked as they did on that hot May night out at Pawnee Rock when she heard Beverly Clarenden's boyish voice ring out, defiantly:

"Uncle Esmond, let's take her, and take our chances."

But the great light that had leaped into the girl's eyes died slowly out as she gazed at me.

"You are not Beverly Clarenden," she said, in a low voice.

"No, I'm Gail, the little one. Bev is up at Fort Leavenworth now," I replied.

She turned away without a word and, gathering her draperies about her, sped up the pathway toward the fields above the creek.

* * * * *

And we two were alone together--the dark-eyed girl of my boyhood vision, deep-shrined in the boy-heart's holy of holies, and I who had waited for her coming. It was the hour of golden sunset and long twilight afterglow on the glistening Flat Rock waters and the green prairies beyond the Neosho.

A sudden awakening came over me, and in one swift instant I understood my boyhood dreams and hopes and visions.

"You will pardon me for coming so abruptly, Miss St. Vrain," I said. "Mother Bridget told me I would find you here."

The girl listened to my stumbling words with eyes full of laughter.

"Don't call me Miss St. Vrain, please. Let me be Eloise, and I can call you Gail. Even with your height and your broad shoulders you haven't changed much. And in all these years I was always thinking of you growing up just as you are. Let's sit down and get acquainted again."

She offered me her hand and we sat down together. I could not speak then, for one sentence was ringing in my ears--"I was always thinking of you." In those years when Beverly and I had put away all thoughts of sweethearts--they could not be a part of the plainsman's life before us--sweethearts such as older boys in school boasted about, "she was always thinking of me." The thought brought a keen hurt as if I had done her some great wrong, and it held me back from words.

She could not interpret my silence, and a look of timidity crept over her young face.

"I didn't mean to be so--so bold with a stranger," she began.

"You aren't bold, and we aren't strangers. I was just too stupid to think anybody else could get out of childhood except old Bev Clarenden and myself," I managed to say at last. "I even forgot Mat Nivers, who is a young lady now, and Aunty Boone, who hasn't changed a kink of her woolly hair. But we couldn't be strangers. Not after that trip across the plains and living at old Fort Bent as we did."

I paused, and the memory of that last night at the fort made me steal a glance at Eloise to see if she, too, remembered.

She was fair to see just then, with the pink clouds mirrored on the placid waters reflected in the pink of her cheeks.

"Do you remember what I called you the first time I saw you?" She looked up with shining eyes.

"You called me a big brown bob-cat, and you said I looked like I'd slept in the Hondo 'royo all my life. I know I looked it, too. I'll forgive you if you will excuse my blunder to-day. What became of that boy, Marcos? Have you ever seen him since you left Santa Fé?" I asked.

The fair face clouded, and a look of longing crept into the big, dark eyes lifted pleadingly a moment to mine. I wanted to take her in my arms right then and look about for something to kill for her sake. Yet I would not, for the gold of all the Mexicos, have touched the hem of her Grecian robe.

"Yes, I have seen Marcos many times. His father went to old Mexico after the war, but the Rameros do not stay long anywhere. Marcos made life miserable for me sometimes." She paused suddenly.

"The Rameros. Then he was the son of the man who was my uncle's enemy. Maybe you did as much for him, too, sometimes. You had the spirit to do it, anyhow," I said, lightly, to hide my real feeling.

"I was a little cat. I'm a lot better now. Let's not go too much into that time. Tell me where you have been and where you are going." Eloise changed the subject easily.

"I've been in Cincinnati, attending a boys' school for three years. I start for Santa Fé in two weeks. My uncle's store is doing a big over land business, and he keeps the ox-teams just fanning one another, coming and going across the prairies. I'm crazy to go and see the open plains again. Cincinnati is a city on stilts, and our little Independence-Westport Landing-Kansas City place, as the Cincinnati of the great American desert, is also pretty bumpy, the last place on earth to put a town--only we can see almost to Santa Fé, New Mexico, from the hilltops. Won't it be great to view that mud-walled town again? Bev is going, too--to kill a few Indians for our winter's meat, he says, in his wicked, blood-thirsty way." So I ran on, glad to be alive in the delicious beauty of that spring evening as we together went back over the days of our young years.

"Gail, may we take another passenger to-morrow?" Eloise asked, suddenly.

"Why, as many as the stage will hold! There's to be a nun and a priest and yourself. I'm chaperon. I could take the priest on my lap if he isn't too bulky," I answered.

"I want to take Po-a-be. I can't tell you why now." The lashes dropped over the brown eyes, and I wondered how she could think that I could refuse her anything.

"Oh, we'll take her on faith and the stage-coach. She can come right to Castle Clarenden and stay till she gets ready to hurdle off to her own 'wickie up'. She has grown into a beautiful Indian woman, though I couldn't call her a squaw."

"She isn't a squaw. I'm glad to hear you say that. I think it will make her very happy to stay at your home for a while. She will miss me a little when we leave here, maybe," Eloise said, looking at me with a grateful smile that sent a tingle to my fingertips.

"Won't you stay, too?" I asked, suddenly realizing that this beautiful girl might slip away as easily as she had come into my life here.

Eloise laughed at my earnestness.

"I couldn't stay long," she said, lightly.

"And why not?" I burst in, eagerly. "What have you in Santa Fé?"

"A little money and a lot of memories," she replied, seriously.

"Oh, I can bring the money up to Kansas for you in an ox-train easily enough, and you could blow up the old mud-box of a town and not hurt a hair on the head of a single memory. You know you can take them anywhere you go. I do mine."

"I'm going to St. Louis, anyhow," Eloise returned, "and you have no sacred memories--boys don't care for things like girls do."

"They don't? They don't? And I have forgotten the little girl who was afraid one moonlit night out in the court at Fort Bent and asked me that I shouldn't ever let Marcos pull her hair. Yes, boys forget."

I laid my hand on her arm and bent forward to look into her face. For just one flash those big dark eyes looked straight at me, with something in their depths that I shall never forget.

Then she moved lightly from me.

"Oh, all children remember, I suppose. I do, anyhow--a thousand things I'd like to forget. It is lovely by the river. Suppose we go down there for a little while. I must not stay out here too long."

I took her arm and we strolled down the quiet path in the twilight sweetness to where the broad Neosho, brim full from the spring rains, swept on between picturesque banks. The afterglow of sunset was flaming gorgeously above the western prairies, and the mists along the Neosho were lavender and mother-of-pearl. And before all this had deepened to purple darkness the full moon would swing up the sky, swathing the earth with a softened radiance. All the beauty of this warm spring night seemed but a setting for this girl in her graceful Greek draperies, with the waving gold of her hair and her dainty pink-and-white coloring.

A new heaven and a new earth had begun for me, and a delicious longing, clean and sweet, that swept every commoner feeling far away. What matter that the life before me be filled with danger, and all the coarse and cruel things of the hard days of the Santa Fé Trail? In that hour I knew the best of life that a young man can know. Its benediction after all these years of change is on me still. Awhile we watched the flashing ripples on the river, and the sky's darkening afterglow. Then we turned to the moonlit east.

"Do you know what the people of Hopi-land call this month?" Eloise asked.

"I don't know Hopi words for what is beautiful," I replied.

"They call it 'the Moon of the Peach Blossom', and they cherish the time in their calendar."

"Then we will be Hopi people," I declared, "for it was in their Moon of the Peach Blossom that you grew up for me from the little girl who called me a bob-cat down in the doorway of the old San Miguel Church in Santa Fé, and from Aunty Boone's 'Little Lees' at old Fort Bent, to the Eloise of St. Ann's by the Kansas Neosho."

The sound of a sweet-toned bell told us that we must not stay longer, and together we followed the path from the Flat Rock up to the academy door. And all the way was like the ways of Paradise to me, for I was in the peach-blossom moon of my own life.

X

THE HANDS THAT CLING

The hands that take
No weight from your sad cross, oh, lighter far
It were but for the burden that they bring!
God only knows what hind'ring things they are--
The hands that cling.
--ESTHER M. CLARK

The next morning three of us waited in the stage before the door of St. Ann's Academy. A thin-faced nun, who was called Sister Anita, sat beside Eloise St. Vrain, her snowy head-dress, with her black veil and somber garments, contrasting sharply with the silver-gray hat and traveling costume of her companion. Hints of pink-satin linings to coat-collar and pocket-flaps, and the pink facing of the broad hat-brim, seemed borrowed from the silver and pink of misty morning skies, with the golden hair catching the glint of all the early sunbeams. There was a tenderness in the bright face, the sadness which parting puts temporarily into young countenances. The girl looked lovingly at the church, and St. Ann's, and the green fields reaching up to the edge of the mission premises.

As we waited, Mother Bridget and Little Blue Flower came slowly out of the academy door. The good mother's arm was around the Indian girl, and her eyes filled with tears as she looked down affectionately at the dark face.

Little Blue Flower, true to her heritage, gave no sign of grief save for the burning light in her big, dry eyes. She listened silently to Mother Bridget's parting words of advice and submitted without response to the embrace and gentle good-by kiss on her brown forehead.

The good woman gazed into my face with penetrating eyes, as if to measure my trustworthiness.

"You will see that no harm comes to my little Po-a-be. The wolves of the forest are not the only danger for the unprotected lambs," she said, earnestly.

"I'll do my best, Mother Bridget," I responded, feeling a swelling pride in my double charge.

Mother Bridget patted Eloise's hand and turned away. She loved all of her girls, but her heart went out most to the Indian maidens whom she led toward her civilization and her sacred creed.

As she turned away, the priest who was to go with us came out of the church door to the stage.

Little Blue Flower sat with the other two women, facing us, her dark-green dress with her rich coloring making as strong a contrast as the nun's black robe against the pink-touched silver-gray gown. And the Indian face, strong, impenetrable, with a faintly feminine softening of the racial features, and the luminous black eyes, gave setting to the pure Saxon type of her companion.

I turned from the three to greet the priest and give him a place beside me. His face seemed familiar, but it was not until I heard his voice, in a courteous good-morning, that I knew him to be the Father Josef who had met us on the way into Santa Fé years before, and who later had shown us the little golden-haired girl asleep on the hard bench in the old mission church of Agua Fria. A page of my boyhood seemed suddenly to have opened there, and I wondered curiously at the meaning of it all. Life, that for three years had been something of a monotonous round of action for a boy of the frontier, was suddenly filling each day with events worth while. I wondered many things concerning Father Josef's presence there, but I had the grace to ask no questions as we five journeyed over the rolling green prairies of Kansas in the pleasant time of year which the Hopi calls the Moon of the Peach Blossom.

The priest appeared hardly a day older than when I had first seen him, and he chatted genially as we rode along.

"We are losing two of our stars," he said, with a gallant little bow. "Miss St. Vrain goes to St. Louis to relatives, I believe, and Little Blue Flower, eventually, to New Mexico. St. Ann's under Mother Bridget is doing a wonderful work among our people, but it is not often that a girl comes here from such a distance as New Mexico."

I tried to fancy what the Indian girl's thoughts might be as the priest said this, but her face, as usual, gave no clue to her mind's activity.

Where the Santa Fé Trail crossed the Wakarusa Father Josef left us to join a wagon-train going west. Sister Anita, who was hurrying back to Kentucky, she said, on some churchly errand, took a steamer at Westport Landing, and the three of us came to the Clarenden home on the crest of the bluff.

We had washed off our travel stains and come out on the veranda when we saw Beverly Clarenden standing in the sunlight, waiting for us. I had never seen him look so handsome as he did that day, dressed in the full regalia of the plains: a fringed and beaded buckskin coat, dark pantaloons held inside of high-topped boots, a flannel shirt, with a broad black silk tie fastened in a big bow at his throat, and his wide-brimmed felt hat set back from his forehead. Clean-shaven, his bright brown hair--a trifle long, after the custom of the frontier--flung back from his brow, his blooming face wearing the happy smile of youth, his tall form easily erect, he seemed the very embodiment of that defiant power that swept the old Santa Fé Trail clean for the feet of its commerce to run swiftly along. I am glad that I never envied him--brother of my heart, who loved me so.

He was not as surprised as I had been to find the grown-up girl instead of the little child. That wasn't Beverly's way.

"I'm mighty glad to meet you again," he said, with jaunty air, grasping Eloise by the hand. "You look just as--shall I say promising, as ever."

"I'm glad to see you, Beverly. You and Gail have been my biggest assets of memory these many years." Eloise was at ease with him in a moment. Somehow they never misunderstood each other.

"Oh, I'm always an asset, but Gail here gets to be a liability if you let him stay around too long."

"Here is somebody else. Don't you remember Little Blue Flower?" Eloise interrupted him.

"Little Blue Flower! Why, I should say I do! And are you that little blossom?"

Beverly's face beamed, and he caught the Indian girl's hand in both of his in a brotherly grasp. He wasn't to blame that nature had made him frank and unimaginative.

"I haven't forgotten the last time I saw your face in a wide crack between two adobe shacks. A 'flower in the crannied wall' in that 'pure water' sand-pile in New Mexico. I'd have plucked you out of the cranny right then, if old Rex Krane hadn't given us our 'forward march!' orders, and an Indian boy, ten feet high and sneaky as a cat, hadn't been lurking in the middle distance to pluck me as a brand for the burning. And now you are a St. Ann's girl, a good little Catholic. How did you ever get away up into Kansas Territory, anyhow?"

Beverly had unconsciously held the girl's hand as he spoke, but at the mention of the Indian boy she drew back and her bright face became expressionless.

Just then Mat Nivers joined us--Mat, whom the Lord made to smooth the way for everybody around her--and we sat down for a visit.

"We are all here, friends of my youthful days," Beverly went on, gaily. "Bill Banney and Jondo are down in the Clarenden warehouse packing merchandise for the Santa Fé trade. Even big black Aunty Boone, getting supper in there, is still a feature of this circus. If only that slim Yankee, Rex Krane, would appear here now. Uncle Esmond tells me he is to be here soon, and if all goes well he will go with us to Santa Fé again. How about it, Mat? Can't you hurry his coming a bit?"

But Mat was staring at the roadway leading to the ravine below us. Her wide gray eyes were full of eagerness and her cheeks were pink with excitement. For, sure enough, there was Rex Krane striding up the hill, with the easy swing of vigorous health. No longer the slender, slouching young idol of my boyhood days, with Eastern cut of garment and devil-may-care dejection of manner, all hiding a loving tenderness for the unprotected, and a daring spirit that scorned danger.

"It's the old settlers' picnic, eh! The gathering of the wild tribes--anything you want to call it, so we smoke the peace pipe."

Rex greeted all of us as we rushed upon him. But the first hands he reached for were the hands of our loving big sister Mat. And he held them close in his as he looked down into her beautiful eyes.

A sudden rush of memories brought back to me the long days on the trail in the middle '40's, and I knew now why he had always looked at Mat when he talked to all of us. And I used to think that he must have had a little sister like her. Now I knew in an instant why Mat could not meet his eyes to-day with that unconcern with which she met them when she was a child to me, and he, all of five years ahead of her, was very grown up. I knew more, for I had entered a new land myself since the hour by the shimmering Flat Rock in the Moon of the Peach Blossom, and I was alive to every tint and odor and musical note for every other wayfarer therein.

That was a glorious week that followed, and one to remember on the long trail days coming to us. I have no quarrel with the happy youth of to-day, but I feel no sense of loss nor spirit of envy when they tell me--all young people are my friends--when they tell me of golf-links and automobile rides, or even the daring hint of airplanes. To the heart of youth the gasolene-motor or the thrill of the air-craft to-day is no more than the Indian pony and the uncertain chance of the crude old canoe on the clear waters of the Big Blue when Kansas City was a village and the Kansas prairies were in their virgin glory.

Bill Banney had come out of the Mexican War, no longer an adventure lover, but a seasoned frontiersman. His life knew few of the gentler touches. He gave it to the plains, where so many lives went, unhonored and unsung, into the building of an enduring empire.

We would have included him in all the frolic of that wonderful week in the Moon of the Peach Blossom--but he gave us no opportunity to do so. And we were young, and the society of girls was a revelation to us. So with the carelessness of youth we forgot him. We forgot many things that week that, in Heaven's name, we had cause enough to remember in the years that followed after.

"There's a theatrical troupe come up from St. Louis to play here to-night," Rex Krane announced, after supper. "Mat, will you let me take you down to see the villain get what's due all villains? Then if we have to kill off Gail and Bev, it will not be so awkward."

"Can't we all go?" Mat suggested.

"Never mind us, Lady Nivers. Little Blue Flower, may I have the pleasure of your company? I need protection to-night," Beverly said, with much ceremony.

Little Blue Flower was sitting next to him, or it might not have begun that way.

"Oh, say yes. He's no poorer company than that company of actors down town," Rex urged.

The Indian girl assented with a smile.

She did not smile often and when she did her eyes were full of light, and her red lips and perfect white teeth were beautiful enough for a queen to envy.

"Little Lees, it seems you are doomed to depend on Gail or jump in the Kaw. I'd prefer the Kaw myself, but life is full of troubles. One more can be endured." Rex had turned to Eloise St. Vrain.

"Seems to me, having first choice, you might have been more considerate of my lot yourself," Eloise declared.

"He was. He saved you from a worse fate when he chose Mat," I broke in.

"May we have a song by the choir?" Beverly interrupted, and with his full bass voice he began to roar our some popular tune of that time.

And it went on as it began, the rambles about the rugged bluffs and picturesque ravines, where to-day the hard-surfaced Cliff Drive makes a scenic highway through the beauty spots of a populous city; the daring canoe rides on the rivers; the gatherings of the young folk in the town; and the long twilight hours on the crest of the bluff overlooking the two great waterways. And as by the first selection, Beverly and Little Blue Flower were companions. Nobody could be unhappy with Bev, least of all the shy Indian girl with a face full of sunshine, now. And I? I walked a pathway strewn with rose petals because the golden-haired Little Lees was beside me. Each day was a frolic day for us, teasing one another and making a joke of life, and for the morrow we took no thought at all.

One evening Eloise St. Vrain and I sat together on the bluff. It was the twilight hour, and all the far valley of the Kaw was full of iridescent misty lights, with gold-tipped clouds of pale lavender above, and the glistening silver of the river below. We could hear Beverly and Little Blue Flower laughing together in a big swing among the maples. Aunty Boone was crooning some African melodies in the bushes half-way down the slope. Rex and Mat had gone to the ravine below to meet Uncle Esmond.

"Little Lees, the first time I ever saw you you were away out there in such a misty light as that, and I saw only your hair and your eyes then, but as clearly as I see them now."

Eloise turned questioningly toward me, and the light in her dark eyes thrilled to the heart of me. In all her stay with us I had hardly spoken earnestly of anything before.

"When was that Gail?" she asked, the frivolous spirit gone from her, too.

"When I was a little boy, one day at Fort Leavenworth. And when I caught sight of you at the door of old San Miguel I knew you," I replied.

The girl turned her face toward the west again and was silent. I felt my cheeks flush hotly. I had made her think I was only a dream-sick fool, when I had told her of the sacredest moment of my life, and I had for the minute foolishly felt that she might understand. How could I know that it was I who could not understand?

At last she looked up with a smile as full of mischief as on that day when she had called me a big brown bob-cat.

"You must have been having a nightmare in your sleep," she declared.

"I think I was," I replied, testily. "Let me tell you something, Little Lees, something really important."

"I don't believe you know one important thing," Eloise replied, "but I'll listen, and then if it is I'll tell you something more important."

"I'm willing to hear it now. Tell me first," I replied, wondering the while how nature, that gives rough-hewn bearded faces to men, could make a face so daintily colored, in its youthful roundness, as hers.

"I'm going to start to St. Louis day after to-morrow at six o'clock in the morning. Isn't that important?"

Was there a real earnestness under the lightly spoken words, or did I imagine it so? If I had only made sure then--but I was young.

"Important! It's a tragedy! I start west in three days, at eight o'clock in the morning," I said, carelessly.

Sometimes the gray shadows fall on us when neither sunlight nor moonlight nor starlight is dimmed by any film of vapor. They fell on me then, and I shivered in my soul. How could I speak otherwise than carelessly and not show what must not be known? And how could the girl beside me know that I was speaking thus to keep down the shiver of that cold shadow? I suppose it must always be the same old story, year after year--

till the leaves of the judgment book unfold.

"What was that important something you were going to tell me? What Mat told me last night when we were watching the moon rise?" Eloise asked.

"That Rex and Mat are going to be married to-morrow evening at early candle-lighting--'early mosquito-biting,' Bev calls it. Rex has loved Mat since the day when he joined our little wagon-train out of a foolish sort of notion that he could protect us children, otherwise his life was useless to him. But something in his own boyhood made him pity all orphan children. I think it was through neglect in childhood he became an invalid at nineteen. He doesn't show the marks of it now."

I paused and looked at the young girl beside me, whose eyes were like stars in the deepening gloom of the evening. It was delicious to have her look at me and listen to me. It was delicious to live in a rose-hued twilight, and I forgot the chill of that gray shadow lurking near.

The next evening was entrancing with the soft air of spring, a night made purposely for brides. The wedding itself was simple in its appointments, as such events must needs be in the frontier years. All day we had worked to decorate the plain stone house, which the deftness of Little Blue Flower and the artistic touch of Little Lees turned into a spring bower, with trailing vines and blossoms everywhere.

Mat's wedding-gown was neither new nor elaborate, for the affair had been too hastily decided on, but Eloise had made it bride-like by draping a filmy veil over Mat's bright brown hair, and Little Blue Flower had brought her long strands of turquoise beads, "old and borrowed and blue," to fulfil the needs of every bride.

In the bridal party Beverly and I walked in front, followed by the two girls in the white Greek robes which they had worn at the school frolic at St. Ann's, and wearing their headbands, the one of silver and turquoise, the other of silver and coral. Then came Rex Krane and Bill Banney. Poor Bill! Nobody guessed that night that the bridal blossoms were flowers on the coffin of his dead hope. And last of all, Esmond Clarenden and Mat Nivers, with shining eyes, leaning on his arm. I had never seen Uncle Esmond in evening dress before, nor dreamed how splendid a figure he could make for a drawing-room in the costume in which he was so much at ease. But the handsomest man of all the large company gathered there that night was Jondo, big, broad-shouldered Jondo, his deep-blue eyes bright with joy for these two. And in the background was Aunty Boone, resplendent in a new red calico besprinkled with her favorite white dots, her head turbaned in a yellow silk bandana, and about her neck a strand of huge green glass beads. Her eyes glistened as she watched that night's events, and her comfortable ejaculations of approval were like the low purr of a satisfied cat. Then came the solemn pledges, the benediction and congratulations. There was merrymaking and singing, cake and unfermented wine of grapes for refreshing, and much good will that night.

When the guests were gone and the lights, save one kitchen candle, were all out, I had slipped from the dining-room with the last burden of dishes, when I paused a minute beside the open kitchen window to let the midnight breeze cool my face.

On the side porch, a little affair made to shelter the doorway, I saw Beverly Clarenden and Little Blue Flower. He was speaking gently, but with his blunt frankness, as he patted the two brown hands clinging to his arm. The Indian girl's white draperies were picturesque anywhere. In this dramatic setting they were startlingly beautiful, and her face, outlined in the dim light, was a thing rare to see. I could not hear her words, but her soft Hopi voice had a tender tone.

I was waiting to let them pass in when I heard Beverly's voice, and I saw him bend over the little maiden, and, putting one arm around her, he drew her close to him and kissed her forehead. I knew it was a brother's sympathetic act--and all men know how dangerous a thing that is; that there are no ties binding brother to sister except the bonds of kindred blood. The girl slipped inside the dining-room door, and a minute later a candle flickered behind her bedroom window-blind in the gable of the house. I waited for Beverly to go, determined never to mention what I had seen, when I caught the clear low voice whose tones could make my pulse thresh in its walls.

"Beverly, Beverly, it breaks my heart--" I lost the remainder of the sentence, but Beverly's words were clear and direct and full of a frank surprise.

"Eloise, do you really care?"

I turned away quickly that I might not hear any more. The rest of that night I sat wide awake and staring at the misty valley of the Kaw, where silvery ripples flashed up here and there against the shadowy sand-bars.

* * * * *

The steamboat for St. Louis left the Westport Landing wharf at six o'clock in the morning, before the mists had lifted over the big yellow Missouri. From our bluff I saw the smoke belch from its stacks as it pulled away and started down-stream; but only Uncle Esmond and Jondo waited to wave good-by to the sweet-faced girl looking back at them from its deck. Beverly had overslept, and Little Blue Flower had left an hour earlier with a wagon-train starting west toward Council Grove. In her room lay the white Grecian robe and the headband of wrought silver with coral pendants. On the little white pin-cushion on the dressing-table the bright pin-heads spelled out one Hopi word that carries all good will and blessing

LOLOMI.

Twenty-four hours later Rex Krane left his bride, and he and Bill Banney and Beverly and I, under command of Jondo, started on our long trip overland to Santa Fé. And two of us carried some memories we hoped to lose when new scenes and certain perils should surround us.

XI

"OUR FRIENDS--THE ENEMY"

And you all know security
Is mortal's chiefest enemy.
SHAKESPEARE.

In St. Louis and Kansas City men of Esmond Clarenden's type were sending out great caravans of goods and receiving return cargoes across the plains--pioneer trade-builders, uncrowned sovereigns of national expansion--against whose enduring power wars for conquest are as flashlight to daylight. And Beverly Clarenden and I, with the whole battalion of plainsmen--"bull-whackers," in the common parlance of the Santa Fé Trail--who drove those caravans to and fro, may also have been State-builders, as Uncle Esmond had declared we would be. Yet we hardly looked like makers of empire in those summer days when we followed the great wagon-trains along the prairies and over the mountain passes.

Two of us had come home from school hilariously eager for the trail service. But the silent plains made men thoughtful and introspective. Days of endless level landscapes under wide-arching skies, and nights in the open beneath the everlasting silent stars, give a man time to get close to himself, to relive his childhood, to measure human values, to hear the voice in the storm-cloud and the song of low-purring winds, to harden against the monotonous glare of sunlight, to defy the burning heat, and to feel--aye, to feel the spell of crystal day-dawns and the sweetness of velvet-shadowed twilights. Beverly and I were typical plainsmen in that we never spoke of these things to each other--that is not the way of the plainsman.

Our company had been organized at Council Grove--three trains of twenty-six wagons each, drawn by three or four spans of mules or yoke of oxen, guarded by eightscore of "bull-whackers." And there were a dozen or more ponies trained for swift riding in cases of emergency. There were also half a dozen private outfits under protection of the large body.

The usual election before starting had made Jondo captain of the whole company. His was the controlling type of spirit that could have bent a battalion or swayed a Congress. For all the commanders and lawmakers of that day were not confined to the army and to Congress. Some of them escaped to the West and became sovereigns of service there. And Jondo had need for an intrepid spirit to rule that group of men, as that journey across the plains proved.

On the day before we left Council Grove he was sitting with the heads of the other wagon-trains under a big oak-tree, perfecting final plans for the journey.

"Gail, I want you to sign some papers here," he said. "It is the agreement for the trip among the three companies owning the trains."

I read aloud the contract setting forth how one Jean Deau, representing Esmond Clarenden, of Kansas City, with Smith and Davis, representing two other companies from St. Louis, together agreed to certain conditions regarding the journey.

Smith and Davis had already signed, and as I took the pen, a white-haired old trapper who was sitting near by burst out:

"Jean Deau! Jean Deau! Who the devil is Jean Deau?"

Jondo did not look up, but the lines hardened about his mouth.

"It's a sound. Don't get in the way, old man. Go ahead, Clarenden," Smith commanded.

Few questions were asked in those days, for most men on the plains had a history, and it was what a man could do here, not what he had done somewhere else, that counted.

So I, representing Esmond Clarenden, signed the paper and the two managers hurried away. But the old trapper sat staring at Jondo.

"Say, I'm gittin' close to the end of the trail, and the divide ain't fur off for me. D'ye mind if I say somethin'?" he asked at last.

Jondo looked up with that smile that could warm any man's heart.

"Say on," he commanded, kindly.

"You aint never signin' your own name nowhere, it sorter seems."

Jondo shook his head.

"Didn't you and this Clarenden outfit go through here 'bout ten years ago one night? Some Mexican greasers was raisin' hell and proppin' it up with a whisky-bottle that night, layin' fur you vicious."

Jondo smiled and nodded assent.

"Well, them fellers comin' in had a bargain with a passel of Kioways to git you plenty if they missed you themselves; to clinch their bargain they give 'em a pore little Hopi Injun girl they'd brung along with a lot of other Mexicans and squaws."

"I had that figured out pretty well at the time," Jondo said, with a smile.

"But, Jean Deau--" the old man began.

"No, Jondo. Go on. I'm busy," Jondo interrupted.

The old man's watery eyes gleamed.

"I just want to say friendly-like, that them Kioways never forgot the trick you worked on 'em, an' the tornydo that busted 'em at Pawnee Rock they laid to your bad medicine. They went clare back to Bent's Fort to fix you. Them and that rovin' bunch of Mexicans that scattered along the trail with 'em in time of the Mexican War. They'd 'a' lost you but fur a little Apache cuss they struck out there who showed 'em to you."

Jondo looked up quickly now. Santan, Beverly's "Satan," whom our captain had defended, flashed to my mind, but I knew by Jondo's face that he did not believe the old trapper's story.

"Them Kioways is still layin' fur you ever' year, I tell you, an' they're bound to git you sooner or later. I'm tellin' ye in kindness."

The old man's voice weakened a little.

"And I'm taking you in kindness," Jondo said. "You may be doing me a great service."

"I shore am. Take my word an' keep awake. Keep awake!"

In spite of his drink-bleared eyes and weakened frame, there was a hint of the commander in him, a mere shadow of the energy that had gone years ago into the wild, solitary life of the trapper who foreran the trail days here.

"One more trip to the ha'nts of the fur-bearin' and it's good-by to the mountain trails and the river courses fur me," he said, as he rose and stalked unsteadily away, and--I never saw him again.

At daybreak the next morning we were off for Santa Fé. Our wagons, loaded with their precious burdens, moved forward six abreast along the old sun-flower bordered trail. Morning, noon, and evening, pitching camp and breaking camp, yoking oxen and harnessing mules, keeping night vigil by shifts, hunting buffalo, killing rattlesnakes, watching for signs of hostile Indians, meeting incoming trains, or solitary trappers, at long intervals, breathing the sweet air of the prairies, and gathering rugged strength from sleep on the wholesome earth--these things, with the jolliest of fellowship and perfect discipline of our captain, Jondo, made this hard, free life of the plains a fascinating one. We were unshaven and brown as Indians. We lost every ounce of fat, but we were steel-sinewed, and fear, that wearing element that disintegrates the soul, dropped away from us early on the trail.

But when the full moon came sweeping up the sky, and all the prairie shadows lay flat to earth under its surge of clear light, in the stillness of the great lonely land, then the battle with home-sickness was not the least of the plains' perils.

One midnight watch of such a night, Jondo sat out my vigil with me. Our eighty or more wagons were drawn up in a rude ellipse with the stock corraled inside, for we were nearing the danger zone. And yet to-night danger seemed impossible in such a peaceful land under such clear moonlight.

"Gail, you were always a far-seeing youngster, even in your cub days," Jondo said, after we had sat silent for a long time. "We are moving into trouble from to-night, and I'll need you now."

"What makes you think so, Jondo?" I asked.

"That train we met going east at noon."

"Mexicans with silver and skins worth double our stuff, what have they to do with us?" I inquired.

"One of the best men I have ever known is a Mexican in Santa Fé. The worst man I have ever known is an American there. But I've never yet trusted a Mexican when you bunch them together. They don't fit into American harness, and it will be a hundred years before the Mexican in our country will really love the Stars and Stripes. Deep down in his heart he will hate it."

"I remember Felix Narveo and Ferdinand Ramero mighty well," I commented.

Jondo stared at me.

"Can't a boy remember things?" I inquired.

"It takes a boy to remember; and they grow up and we forget they have had eyes, ears, feelings, memories, all keener than we can ever have in later years. Gail, the Mexican train comes from Felix Narveo, and Narveo is a man of a thousand. They bring word, however, that the Kiowas are unusually friendly and that we have nothing to fear this side of the Cimarron. They don't feel sure of the Utes and Apaches."

"Good enough!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, only they lie when they say it. It's a trap to get us. No Kiowa on the plains will let a Clarenden train through peacefully, because we took their captive, Little Blue Flower. It's a hatred kept alive in the Kiowas by one man in Santa Fé through his Mexican agents with Narveo's train."

"And that man is Ramero?" I questioned.

"That man is Ramero, and his capacity for hate is appalling. Gail, there's only one thing in the world that is stronger than hate, and that is love."

Jondo looked out over the moonlit plains, his fine head erect, even in his meditative moods.

"When a Mexican says a Kiowa has turned friendly, don't believe him. And when a Kiowa says it himself--kill him. It's your only safe course," Jondo said, presently.

"Jondo, why does Ramero stir up the Indians and Mexicans against Uncle Esmond?" I asked.

"Because Clarenden drove him into exile in New Mexico before it was United States territory," Jondo replied.

"What did he do that for?" I asked.

"Because of what Ramero had done to me," Jondo replied.

"Well, New Mexico is United States territory now. What keeps this Ramero in Santa Fé, if he is there?"

"I keep him there. It's safer to know just where a man like that is. So I put a ring around the town and left him inside of it."

Jondo paused and turned toward me.

"Yonder comes Banney to go on guard now. Gail, I'll tell you all about it some day. I couldn't on a night like this."

The deep voice sent a shiver through me. There was a pathos in it, too manly for tears, too courageous for pity.

The days that followed were hard ones. Word had gotten through the camp that the Indians were very friendly, and that we need not be uneasy this side of the Cimarron country. Smith and Davis agreed with the train captain, Jondo, in taking no chances, but most of the one hundred sixty bull-whackers stampeded like cattle against precaution, and rebelled at his rigid ruling. He had begun to tighten down upon us as we went farther and farther into the heart of a savage domain. The night guard was doubled and every precaution for the stock was demanded, giving added cause for grumbling and muttered threats which no man had the courage to speak openly to Jondo's face. I knew why he had said that he would need me. Bill Banney was always reliable, but growing more silent and unapproachable every day. Rex Krane's mind was on the girl-wife he had left in the stone house on the bluff above the Missouri. Beverly was too cock-sure of himself and too light-hearted, too eager for an Indian fight. Jondo could counsel with Smith and Davis of the St. Louis trains, but only as a last resort would he dictate to them. So he turned to me.

We were nearing Pawnee Rock, but as yet no hint of an Indian trail could we find anywhere. Advance-guards and rear-guards had no news to report when night came, and the sense of security grew hourly. The day had been very warm, but our nooning was shortened and we went into camp early. Everything had gone wrong that day: harness had broken; mules had grown fractious; a wagon had upset on a rough bit of the trail; half a dozen men, including Smith and Davis of the St. Louis trains, had fallen suddenly ill; drinking-water had been warm and muddy; and, most of all, the consciousness of wide-spread opposition to Jondo's strict ruling where there were no signs of danger made a very ugly-spirited group of men who sat down together to eat our evening meal. Bets were openly made that we wouldn't see a hostile redskin this side of Santa Fé. Covert sneers pointed many comments, and grim silence threatened more than everything else. Jondo's face was set, but there was a calmness about his words and actions, and even the most rebellious that night knew he was least afraid of any man among us.

At midnight he wakened me. "I want you to help me, Gail," he said. "The Kiowas will gather for us at Pawnee Rock. They missed us there once because they were looking for a big train, and it was there we took their captive girl. The boys are ready to mutiny to-night. I count on you to stand by me." Stand by Jondo! In my helpless babyhood, my orphaned childhood, my sturdy growing years toward young manhood, Jondo had been father, mother, brother, playmate, guardian angel. I would have walked on red-hot coals for his sake.

"I want you to slip away to-night, when Rex and Bev are on guard, and find out what's over that ridge to the north. Don't come back till you do find out. We'll get to Pawnee Rock to-morrow. I must know to-night. Can you do it? If you aren't back by sunrise, I'll follow your trail double quick."

"I'll go," I replied, proud to show both my courage and my loyalty to my captain.

The night was gray, with a dying moon in the west, and the north ridge loomed like a low black shadow against the sky. There was a weird chanting voice in the night wind, pouring endlessly across the open plains. And everywhere an eyeless, voiceless, motionless land, whereon my pony's hoof-beats were big and booming. Nature made my eyes and ears for the trail life, and matched my soul to its level spaces. To-night I was alert with that love of mastery that made me eager for this task. So I rode forward until our great camp was only a dull blot on the horizon-line, melting into mere nothingness as it grew farther away. And I was alone on the earth. God had taken out every other thing in it, save the sky over my head and the uneven short-grass sod under my feet.

On I went, veering to the northwest from instinct that I should find my journey's end soonest that way. Over the divide which hid the wide valley of the Arkansas, and into the deep draws and low bluffs of a creek with billowy hills beyond, I found myself still instinctively smelling my way. I grew more cautious with each step now, knowing that the chance for me to slip along unseen gave also the chance for an enemy to trail me unseen.

At last I caught that low breathing sound that goes with the sense of nearness to life. Leaving my pony by the stream, I climbed to the top of a little swell, and softly as a cat walks on a carpet, I walked straight into an Indian camp. It was well chosen for outlook near, and security from afar. There was a growing light in the sky that follows the darkness of moonset and runs before the break of dawn. Everything in the camp was dead still. I saw evidences of war-paint and a recent war-dance that forerun an Indian attack. I estimated the strength of the enemy--possibly four hundred warriors, and noted the symbols of the Kiowa tribe. Then, thrilled with pride at my skill and success, I turned to retrace my way to my pony--and looked full into the face of an Indian brave standing motionless in my path. A breath--and two more braves evolved out of gray air, and the three stood stock-still before me. Out of the tail of my eye, I caught sight of a drawn bow on either side of me. I had learned quickness with firearms years ago, but I knew that two swift arrows would cut my life-line before the sound of my ready revolver could break the stillness of the camp. Three pairs of snaky black eyes looked steadily at me, and I stared back as directly into them. Two arrow-points gently touched my ears. Behind me, a tomahawk softly marked a ring around my scalp outside of my hat. I was standing in a circle of death. At last the brave directly before me slowly drew up his bow and pointed it at me; then dropping it, he snapped the arrow shaft and threw away the pieces. Pointing to my cocked revolver, he motioned to me to drop it. At the same time the bows and tomahawks, of the other warriors were thrown down. It was a silent game, and in spite of the danger I smiled as I put down my firearms.

"Can't any of you talk?" I asked. "If you are friendly, why don't you say so?"

The men did not speak, but by a gesture toward the tallest tepee--the chief's, I supposed--I understood that he alone would talk to me.

"Well, bring him out." I surprised myself at my boldness. Yet no man knows in just what spirit he will face a peril.

One of the braves ran to the chief's tent, but the remaining five left me no chance for escape. It was slowly growing lighter. I thought of Jondo and his search at sunrise, and the moments seemed like hours. Yet with marvelous swiftness and stillness a score of Indians with their chief were mounted, and I, with my pony in the center of a solid ring, was being hurried away, alive, with friendly captors daubed with war-paint.

There was a growing light in the east, while the west was still dark. I thought of the earth as throwing back the gray shadowy covers from its morning face and piling them about its feet; I thought of some joke of Beverly's; and I wondered about one of the oxen that had seemed sick in the evening. I tried to think of nothing and a thousand things came into my mind. But of life and death and love and suffering, I thought not at all.

Meantime, Jondo waited anxiously for my coming. Rex and Beverly had gone to sleep at the end of their watch and nobody else in camp knew of my going. At dawn a breeze began to swing in from the north, and with its refreshing touch the weariness and worries of yesterday were swept away. Everybody wakened in a good humor. But Jondo had not slept, and his face was sterner than ever as the duties of the day began.

Before sunrise I began to be missed.

"Where's Gail?" Bill Banney was the first to ask.

"That's Clarenden's job, not mine," another of the bull-whackers resented a command of Jondo's.

"Gail! Gail! Anybody on earth seen Gail Clarenden this morning?" came from a far corner of the camp.

"Have you lost a man, Jondo?" Smith, still sick in his wagon, inquired.

And the sun was filling the eastern horizon with a roseate glow. It would be above the edge of the plains in a little while, and still I had not returned.

Breakfast followed, with many questions for the absent one. There was an eagerness to be off early and an uneasiness began to pervade the camp.

"Jondo, you'll have to dig up Gail now. I saw him putting out northwest about one o'clock," Rex Krane said, aside to the train captain.

"If he isn't here in ten minutes. I'll have to start out after him," Jondo replied.

Ten minutes are long to one who waits. The boys were ready for the camp order. "Catch up!" to start the harnessing of teams. But it was not given. The sun's level rays, hot and yellow, smote the camp, and a low murmur ran from wagon to wagon. Jondo waited a minute longer, then he climbed to the wagon tongue at the head of the ellipse of vehicles, his commanding form outlined against the open space, his fine face illumined by the sunlight.

"Boys, listen to me."

Men listened when Jondo spoke.

"I believe we are in danger, but you have doubted my word. I leave the days to prove who is right. At midnight I sent Gail Clarenden to find out what is beyond that ridge--a band of men running parallel with us that shadows us day by day. If he is not here in ten minutes, we must go after him."

A hush fell on the camp. The oxen switched at the first nipping insects of the morning, and the ponies and mules, with that horse-sense that all horsemen have observed in them at times, stood as if waiting for a decision to be made.

Beverly Clarenden was first to speak.

"If anybody goes after Gail, it's me, and I'll not stop till I get him," he cried, all the brotherly love of a lifetime in his ringing voice.

"And me!" "And me!" "And me!" came from a dozen throats. Plainsmen were always the truest of comrades in the hour of danger. Nobody questioned Jondo's wisdom now. All thought was for the missing man.

Rex Krane had leaped up on the wagon next to Jondo's and stood gazing toward the northwest. At this outburst of eagerness he turned to the crowd in the corral.

"You wait five minutes and Gail will be here. He's gettin' into sight out yonder now," he declared.

Another shout, a rush for the open, and a straining of eyes to make sure of the lone rider coming swiftly down the trail I had followed out at midnight. And amid a wild swinging of hats and whoops of joy I rode into camp, hugged by Beverly and questioned by everybody, eager for my story from the time I left the camp until I rode into it again.

"They took me to Pawnee Rock before they let me know anything, except that my scalp would hang to the old chief's war-spear if I tried one eye-wink to get away from them. But they let me keep my gun, and I took it for a sign," I told the company. "They had a lot of ceremony getting seated, and then, without any smoking-tobacco or peace-pipe, they gave their message."

"Who said the Kiowas wasn't friendly? They already sent us word enough," one man broke in.

Jondo's face, that had been bright and hopeful, now grew grave.

"They said they mean us no harm. They were grateful to Uncle Sam for the favors he had given them. That the prairies were wide, and there was room for all of us on it," I continued. "In proof, they said that we would pass that old rock to-day unharmed where once they would have counted us their enemies. And they let me go to bring you all this word. They are going northeast into the big hunting-ground, and we are safe."

No man could take defeat better than Jondo.

"I am glad if I was wrong in my opinion," he said. "Fifteen years on that trail have made me cautious. I shall still be cautious if I am your captain. They did not smoke the peace-pipe. In my judgment the Kiowas lied. Two or three days will prove it. Choose now between me and my unchanged opinion, and some new train captain."

"Oh, every man makes some bad guesses, Jondo. We'll keep you, of course, and it's a joke on you, that's all." So ran the comment, and we hurriedly broke camp and moved on.

But with all of our captain's anxiety Pawnee Rock stood like a protecting shield above us when we camped at its base, and the long bright days that followed were full of a sense of security and good cheer as we pulled away for the Cimarron crossing of the Arkansas River, miles ahead.

All day Jondo rode wide of the trail, sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other, watching for signs of an enemy. And the bluff, jovial crowd of bull-whackers laughed together at his holding on to his opinion out of sheer stubbornness.

On the second night he asked for a triple guard and nobody grumbled, for everybody really liked the big plainsman and they could afford to be good-natured with him, now that he was unquestioningly in the wrong.

The camp was in a little draw running down to the river, bordered by a mere ripple of ground on either side, growing deeper as it neared the stream and flattening out toward the level prairie in its upper portion. In spite of the triple guard, Jondo did not sleep that night; and, strangely enough, I, who had been dull to fear in the hands of the Indians two nights before, felt nervous and anxious, now when all seemed secure.

Just at daybreak a light shower with big bullet-like drops of rain pattered down noisily on our camp and a sudden flash of lightning and a thunderbolt startled the sleepy stock and brought us to our feet, dazed for an instant. Another light volley of rain, another sheet of lightning and roar of thunder, and the cloud was gone, scattering down the Arkansas Valley. But in that flash all of Jondo's cause for anxiety was justified. The widening draw was full of Kiowas, hideous in war-paint, and the ridges on either side of us were swarming with Indians beating dried skins to frighten and stampede our stock, and all yelling like fiends, while a perfect rain of arrows swept our camp. With the river below us full of holes and quicksands, our enemies had only to hold the natural defense on either side while they drove us in a harrowing wedge back to the water. If our ponies and mules should break from the corral they would rush for the river or be lost in the widening space back from the deeper draw, where a well-trained corps of thieves knew how to capture them. I had estimated the Kiowas' strength at four hundred, two nights before, which was augmented now by a roving band of Dog Indians--outcasts from all tribes, who knew no law of heaven or hell that they must obey. And so we stood, shocked wide awake, with the foe four to one, man for man against us.

Men remember details acutely in the face of danger. As I write these words I can hear the sound of Jondo's voice that morning, clear and strong above the awful din, for nature made him to command in moments of peril. In a flash we were marshalled, one force to guard the corral, one to seize and hold either bank and one to charge on the advance of the Indians down the draw. We were on the defensive, as our captain had planned we should be, and every man of us realized bitterly now how much he had done for us, in spite of our distrust of his judgment.

On came the yelling horde, with rifle-rip and singing arrow. And the sharp cry of pain and the fierce oath told where these shots had sped home. Four to one, with every advantage of well-laid plan of action against an unsuspecting sleeping force, the odds and gods were with them. Dark clouds hung overhead, but the eastern sky was aflame, casting a lurid glare across the edges of the draw as a stream of savages with painted faces and naked bedaubed bodies poured down against the corral. In an instant the chains and ropes holding the stock were severed, and our mules and oxen and ponies stampeded wildly. By some adroit movement they were herded over the low bank, and a cloud of dust hid the entire battleground as the animals, mad with fright and goaded by arrows, tossed against one another, stumbled blindly until they had cleared the ridge. A shriek of savage glee and the thunder of hoofs on the hard earth told how well the thing had been done and how furiously our animals were being whirled away.

"Go, get 'em, Gail! Stay by 'em! Run!"

Jondo's voice sounded far away, but my work was near. With a dozen bull-whackers I made a dash out of the draw and, circling wide, we rode like demons to outflank the cloud of dust that hid our precious property. On we swept, fleet and sure, in a mad burst of speed to save our own. We were gaining now, and turning the cloud toward the river. Another spurt, and we would have them checked, faced about, subdued. I saw the end, and as the boys swung forward I urged them on.

"To the river. To the river. Head 'em south!" I cried.

And Rex Krane, like a centaur, swirled by me to do the thing I ordered. Behind me rode Beverly Clarenden bareheaded, his face aglow with power. As I looked back the dust engulfed him for a moment, and then I heard an arrow sing, and a sharp cry of pain. The dust had lifted and Beverly and a huge Indian, the tallest I have ever seen, were grappling together, a scalping-knife gleaming in the morning light. I dashed forward and felled the savage with the butt of my revolver. He leaped to his feet and sprang at me just as Beverly, with unerring aim, sent a blaze of fire between us. As the savage fell again, my cousin seized his pony; and with an arrow still swinging to his arm, dashed into the chase, and left it only when the stock, with the loss of less than a fourth, was driven up the river's sandy bank and over the swell into the camp inclosure.

Meantime, Jondo at the front of his men charged into the very center of the savage battle-line as, furious for blood, they threshed across the narrow draw--the disciplined arm and courageous heart against a blood-thirsty foe. A charge, a falling back, another surge to win the lost ground, a steady holding on and sure advance, and then Jondo, with one triumphant shout of victory, struck the last fierce blow that sent the Kiowas into full flight toward the northwest, and the day was won.

Out by the river, a sudden dullness seized me. I lifted my eyes to see Beverly free and Rex directing the charge; cattle, mules, and ponies turned back toward safety, and something crawling and writhing about my feet; Jondo's great shout of victory far away, it seemed, miles and miles to the north; a cloud of dust sweeping toward me; the crimson east aflame like the Day of judgment; the dust cloud rolling nearer; the yellow sands and slow-moving waters of the Arkansas; and six silent stalwart Kiowa braves, with snaky black eyes, looking steadily at me. Shadows, and the dust cloud upon me. Then all was night.