"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 Fe! '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 Fe 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 pinon 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 n.o.body 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 gra.s.s 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 p.a.w.nee Rock out of pure sympathy when you knew it meant a fight at sun-up, six against fifty. And there would have been a b.l.o.o.d.y 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 G.o.d's country and the land of Plymouth Rocks and p.a.w.nee 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 Fe, 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 la.s.s, albeit the gulf was far less deep and impa.s.sable.

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 Fe, 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 p.a.w.nee 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."