“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 I cannot tell you, that only the Rameros know, and hold like a sword over my head.  If I marry Marcos his father will destroy all evidence of it and I shall have a handsome, talented, rich husband.”  Eloise bowed her head and clasped her hands, crushed by the misery of her lot.

“And if you refuse to marry this scoundrel?” I asked, bluntly.

“Then I will be a penniless outcast.  The Rameros are powerful here, and the Church will be with them, for it will get my inheritance.  I am helpless and alone and I don’t know what to do.”

I think I had never known what anger meant before.  This beautiful girl, homeless, and about to be robbed of her fortune, reared in luxury, with no chance for developing self-reliance and courage, was being hemmed in and forced to a marriage by threats of poverty and a secret something against which she was powerless.  All the manhood in me rallied to her cause, and she was an hundredfold dearer to me now, in her helplessness.

“Eloise, I’m a horny-handed driver of a bull-team on the Santa Fe Trail, but you will let me help you if I can.  So far as your money is concerned, there’s a lot of it on earth, even if the Church should grab up your little bit because Ferdinand Ramero says your father’s will permits it.  There are evil representatives in every Church, no matter what its name may be, Catholic, Protestant, Indian, or Jew, but Father Josef up there is bigger than his priestly coat, and you can trust that size anywhere.  And as to the knowledge of this ‘something’ known just to Ferdinand Ramero, if he is the only one who knows it, it is too small to get far, if it were turned loose.  And any man who would use such infamous means to get what he wants is too small to have much influence if he doesn’t get it.  This is a big, wide, good world, Little Lees, and the father of Marcos Ramero, with all his power and wealth, has a short lariat that doesn’t let him graze wide.  Jondo holds the other end of that lariat, and he knows.”

Eloise listened eagerly, but her face was very white.

“Gail, you don’t know the Ramero blood.  I am helpless and terrified with them in spite of their suave manners and flattering words.  Why did Father Josef bring me back here if the Church is not with them?  And then that awful shadow of some hidden thing that may darken my life.  I know their cruel, pitiless hearts.  They stop at nothing when they want their way.  I have known them to do the most cold-blooded deeds.”