I remembered the weird tales she had told us of her girlhood—­tales that had thrilled me with wonder—­told sometimes in the twilight, sometimes by the kitchen fire on winter nights, sometimes on long, still, midsummer afternoons when the air quivered with heat and the Missouri hung about hot sand-bars, half asleep.

“What do you know about this trip, Aunty Boone?” I asked, eagerly; for although she could neither read nor write, she had a sponge-like absorbing power for keeping posted on all that happened at the fort.

“Cla’n’den”—­the woman never called my uncle by any other name—­“he’s goin’ to Santy Fee, an’ you boys with him, ’cause—­”

She paused and her shining eyes grew dull as they had a way of doing in her thoughtful or prophetic moments.

“He knows what for—­him an’ Jondo.  One of ’em’s storekeeper an’ t’other a plainsman, but they tote together always—­an’ they totin’ now.  You can’t see what, but they totin’, they totin’, just the same.  Now run out to the store.  Things is stirrin’.  Things is stirrin’.”

I bolted my cakes, sodden with maple syrup, drank my mug of milk, and hurried out toward the storehouse.

Fort Leavenworth in the middle ’40’s was sometimes an indolent place, and sometimes a very busy one, depending upon the activity of the Western frontier.  On this raw April morning everything was fairly ajerk with life and motion.  And I knew from child-experience that a body of soldiers must be coming up the river soon.  Horses were rushed to-day where yesterday they had been leisurely led.  Orders were shouted now that had been half sung a week ago.  Military discipline took the place of fatigue attitudes.  There was a banging of doors, a swinging of brooms, a clatter of tin, and a clanging of iron things.  And everywhere went that slapping wind.  And every shallow place in the ground held a chilly puddle.  The government buildings always seemed big and bare and cold to me.  And this morning they seemed drearier than ever, beaten upon by the fitful swish of the rain.

In contrast with these were my uncle’s snug quarters, for warmth was a part of Esmond Clarenden’s creed.  I used to think that the little storeroom, filled with such things as a frontier fort could find use for, was the biggest emporium in America, and the owner thereof suffered nothing, in my eyes, in comparison with A.T.  Stewart, the opulent New York merchant of his day.

As I ran, bareheaded and coatless, across the wide wet space between our home and the storehouse a soldier came dashing by on horseback.  I dodged behind him only to fall sprawling in a slippery pool under the very feet of another horseman, riding swiftly toward the boat-landing.

Neither man paid any attention to me as I slowly picked myself up and started toward the store.  The soldier had not seen me at all.  The other man’s face was dark, and he wore the dress of the Mexican.  It was only by his alertness and skill that his horse missed me, but as he hurried away he gave no more heed to me than if I had been a stone in his path.