“You told me that Uncle Esmond forced Ferdinand Ramero out of the country on account of a wrong done to you, Jondo,” I reminded the big plainsman.

“He did,” Jondo replied.  “I told you that we all loved Mary Marchland.  Fred Ramer broke under his loss of her, and became the devil’s own tool of hate and revenge, and what generally gets tied up with these sooner or later, a passion for money and irregular means of getting it.  Money is as great an asset for hate as for love, and Fred sold his soul for it long ago.  Clarenden came to the frontier and lost himself in the building of the plains commerce, and his heart he gave to the three orphan children to whom he gave a home.  When New Mexico came under our flag Narveo came with it, a good citizen and a loyal patriot.  He married a Mexican woman of culture and lives a contented life.  Dick Verra went into the Church.  I came to the plains, and the stimulus of danger, and the benediction of the open sky, and the healing touch of the prairie winds, and the solemn stillness of the great distances have made me something more of a man than I should have been.  Maybe I was hurt the worst.  Clarenden thought I was.  Sometimes I think Dick Verra got the best of all of us.”

Jondo’s voice trailed off into silence and I knew what his hurt was—­that he was the man whom Mary Marchland had loved, from whom Fred Ramer, by his cruel machinations, had separated her—­“and although they loved each other always, they never saw each other again.”  Poor Jondo!  What a man among men this unknown freighter of the plains might have been—­and what a loss to the plains in the best of the trail years if Jondo had never dared its dangers for the safety of the generations to come.

But the thought of Eloise, driven out momentarily by Jondo’s story, came rushing in again.

“You said you put a ring around Ramero to keep him in Santa Fe.  Can’t we get Eloise outside of it?” I urged, anxiously.

“Maybe I should have said that Father Josef put it around him for me,” Jondo replied.  “He confessed his crimes fully to the Church.  He couldn’t get by Father Josef.  Here he is much honored and secure and we let him alone.  The disgrace he holds the secret of—­he alone—­is that the father of Eloise killed his father, the crime for which the foster-brother fell.  Ramero as guardian of Eloise and her property legally could have kept her here.  Only a man like Clarenden would have dared to take her away, though he had the pleading call of her mother’s last wish.  Gail, I have told you the heart-history of half a dozen men.  If this had stopped with us we could forgive after a while, but it runs down to you and Beverly and Eloise and Marcos, who will carry out his father’s plans to the letter.  So the battle is all to be fought over again.  Let me leave you a minute or two.  I’ll not be gone long.”

I sat alone, staring out at the shadowy court and, above it, the blue night-sky of New Mexico inlaid with stars, until a rush of feet in the hall and a shout of inquiry told me that Beverly Clarenden was hunting for me.