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 Fe 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 Fe 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. Somethin