e 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 Fe--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 t