fair-dealing, high-minded men as these, always finding the best to aid
him, and combating the worst with daring fearlessness. Surely with the
priest and the merchant and Jondo as my uncle's representative, no harm
could come to the girl whom I knew that I should always love.

And with my mind full of Eloise and her need I sought out Jondo and
listened to his story.

XIV

OPENING THE RECORD

Fighting for leave to live and labor well,
God flung me peace and ease.
--"A SONG OF THE ENGLISH."

I found Jondo in the little piazza opening into the hotel court.

"Where did you leave Krane and Bev?" he asked, as I sat down beside him.

"I didn't leave them; they left me," I answered.

"Oh, you young bucks are all alike. You know just enough to be good to
yourselves. You don't think much about anybody else," Jondo said, with a
smile.

"I think of others, Jondo, and for that reason I want you to tell me
that story about Ferdinand Ramero that you promised to tell me one night
back on the trail."

Jondo gave a start.

"I'd like to forget that man, not talk about him," he replied.

"But it is to help somebody else, not just to be good to myself, that I
want to know it," I insisted, using his own terms. And then I told him
what Eloise had told me in the San Miguel church.

"Are the Ramero's so powerful here that they can control the Church in
their scheme to get what they want?" I asked.

"It would be foolish to underestimate the strength of Ferdinand Ramero,"
Jondo replied, adding, grimly, "It has been my lot to know the best of
men who could make me believe all men are good, and the worst of men who
make me doubt all humanity." He clenched his fists as if to hold himself
in check, and something, neither sigh nor groan nor oath nor prayer, but
like them all, burst from his lips.

"If you ever have a real cross, Gail, thank the Lord for the green
prairies and the open plains, and the danger-stimulus of the old Santa
Fe Trail. They will seal up your wounds, and soften your hard,
rebellious heart, and make you see things big, and despise the narrow
little crooks in your path."

One must have known Jondo, with his bluff manner and sunny smile and
daring spirit, to feel the force, of these brave sad words. I felt
intuitively that I had laid bare a wound of his by my story.

"It is for Eloise, not for my curiosity, that I have come to you," I
said, gently.

"And you didn't come too so