when she died nor
where she was buried. Ferdinand Ramero had charge of her property. He
controlled everything after she went away, and I have always lived in
fear of his word. I am helpless when he commands, for he has a strange
power over minds; and as to Marcos--you know what a little cat I was. I
had to be to live with him. It wasn't until we were all at Bent's Fort
that I got over my fear of you and Beverly. The day you threw Marcos out
of here was the first time I ever had a champion to defend me."

I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her what I dared not think she
would let me say. So I listened in sympathetic silence.

"Then came an awful day out at Agua Fria, and Father Josef took me in
his arms as he would take a baby, and sang me to sleep with the songs my
mother loved to sing. I think it must have been midnight when I wakened.
It was dreary and cold, and Esmond Clarenden and Ferdinand Ramero were
there, and Father Josef and Jondo."

And then she told me, as she remembered them, the happenings of that
night at Agua Fria, the same story that Jondo told me later. But until
that evening I had known nothing of how Eloise had come to us.

"You know the rest," Eloise went on "I have had a boarding-school life,
and no real friends, except the Clarenden family, outside of these
schools."

"You poor little girl! One of the same Clarenden family is ready to be
your friend now," I said, tenderly, remembering keenly how Uncle Esmond
and Jondo had loved and protected three orphan children.

"The Rameros think nobody but a Ramero can do that now. Marcos is very
much changed. He has been educated in Europe, is handsome, and courtly
in his manners, and as his father's heir he will be wealthy. He came
to-night to ask me, to urge and plead with me, to marry him." Eloise
paused.

"Do you need the defense of a bull-whacker of the plains against these
things?" I asked.

"Oh, I could depend on myself if it were only Marcos. He comes with
polished ways and pleasing words," Eloise replied. "It is his father's
iron fist back of him that strikes at me through his graciousness. He
tells me that all the St. Vrain money, which he controls by the terms of
my father's will, he can give to the Church, if he chooses, and leave me
disinherited."

"We don't mind that a bit as a starter up in Kansas. Come out on our
prairies and try it," I suggested.

"But, Gail, that isn't all. There is something worse, dreadfully worse,
that