is
girl ride away from me without one good-by word or glance. I had heard
her message to me through Little Blue Flower. I had suffered and
outgrown all but the scar. And now one touch of her hand, one smile, one
look from her beautiful eyes, and all the barrier of the years fell
down. I wondered vaguely now about Beverly's wish to turn Dog Indian if
things became too monotonous. I wondered about many things, but I could
not think anything.

"I have no present plans. Father Josef and Esmond Clarenden thought it
would be well for me to come up to Kansas and look at green prairies
instead of red mesas for a while; to rest my eyes, and get my strength
again--which I have never lost," Eloise said, with a smile. "And Jondo
says--"

She did not tell me what Jondo had said, for Beverly and Mat and the two
rollicking boys joined us just then and we talked of many things of the
earlier years.

I cannot tell how that June slipped by, nor how Eloise, in the full
bloom of her young womanhood, with the burdens lifted from her heart and
hands, was no more the clinging, crushed Eloise who had sat beside me in
the church of San Miguel, but a self-reliant and deliciously
companionable girl-woman. With Beverly she was always gay, matching him,
mood for mood; and if sometimes I caught the fleeting edge of a shadow
in her eyes, it was gone too soon to measure. I did not seek her company
alone, because I knew that I could not trust myself. Over and over,
Jondo's words, when he had told me the story of Mary Marchland, came
back to me:

"And although they loved each other always, they never saw each other
again."

Nobody, outside of those touched by it, knew Jondo's story, except
myself. He was Theron St. Vrain's brother, yet Eloise never called him
uncle, and, except for the one mention of her father's grave, she did
not speak of him. He was not even a memory to her. And both men's names
were forever stained with the black charge against them.

One evening in late June, Uncle Esmond called me into council.

"Gail, Rex leaves to-morrow for the new store at Burlingame, Kansas. It
is two days out on the Santa Fe Trail. Bev will go with him and stay for
a while. I want you to drive through with Mat and the children and
Eloise a day or two later."

"Eloise?" I looked up in surprise.

"Yes; she will visit with Mat for a while. She has had some trying years
that have taxed her heavily. The best medicine for such is the song of
the prair