leep 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 need