n: "What does that
mean?" (nodding his head in the direction of the telegraph pole).

"Why, it means just this," said the station man, "the people who hung
that man last night had the nerve to put him right in front of this
place, by G--. What would the passengers think of this town, sir, as
they went by? Why, the reputation of Valentine would be ruined! Yes,
sir, we cut him down and moved him up a pole or two. He was a hard case,
though," he added.

CHAPTER XXXI. SANTA FE

I made haste to present Captain Summerhayes with the shoulder-straps of
his new rank, when he joined me in New York.

*****

The orders for Santa Fe reached us in mid-summer at Nantucket. I knew
about as much of Santa Fe as the average American knows, and that was
nothing; but I did know that the Staff appointment solved the problem of
education for us (for Staff officers are usually stationed in cities),
and I knew that our frontier life was over. I welcomed the change, for
our children were getting older, and we were ourselves approaching the
age when comfort means more to one than it heretofore has.

Jack obeyed his sudden orders, and I followed him as soon as possible.

Arriving at Santa Fe in the mellow sunlight of an October day, we were
met by my husband and an officer of the Tenth Infantry, and as we drove
into the town, its appearance of placid content, its ancient buildings,
its great trees, its clear air, its friendly, indolent-looking
inhabitants, gave me a delightful feeling of home. A mysterious charm
seemed to possess me. It was the spell which that old town loves to
throw over the strangers who venture off the beaten track to come within
her walls.

Lying only eighteen miles away, over a small branch road from Llamy
(a station on the Atchison and Topeka Railroad), few people take the
trouble to stop over to visit it. "Dead old town," says the commercial
traveller, "nothing doing there."

And it is true.

But no spot that I have visited in this country has thrown around me
the spell of enchantment which held me fast in that sleepy and historic
town.

The Governor's Palace, the old plaza, the ancient churches, the
antiquated customs, the Sisters' Hospital, the old Convent of Our Lady
of Loretto, the soft music of the Spanish tongue, I loved them all.

There were no factories; no noise was ever heard; the sun shone
peacefully on, through winter and summer alike. There was no cold,
no heat, but a delightful year-