I had turned my ankle in the fall and I could only limp to the storehouse and drop down inside.  I would not cry out, but I could not hold back the sobs as I tried to stand, and fell again in a heap at Jondo’s feet.

“Things were stirrin’” there, as Aunty Boone had said, but withal there was no disorder.  Esmond Clarenden never did business in that way.  No loose ends flapped about his rigging, and when a piece of work was finished with him, there was nothing left to clear away.  Bill Banney, the big grown-up boy from Kentucky, who, out of love of adventure, had recently come to the fort, was helping Jondo with the packing of certain goods.  Mat and Beverly were perched on the counter, watching all that was being done and hearing all that was said.

“What’s the matter, little plainsman?” Jondo cried, catching me up and setting me on the counter.  “Got a thorn in your shoe, or a stone-bruise, or a chilblain?”

“I slipped out there behind a soldier on horseback, right in front of a little old Mexican who was just whirling off to the river,” I said, the tears blinding my eyes.

“Why, he’s turned his ankle!  Looks like it was swelling already,” Mat Nivers declared, as she slid from the counter and ran toward me.

“It’s a bad job,” Jondo declared.  “Just when we want to get off, too.”

“Can’t I go with you to Santa Fe, Uncle Esmond?” I wailed.

“Yes, Gail, we’ll fix you up all right,” my uncle said, but his face was grave as he examined my ankle.

It was a bad job, much worse than any of us had thought at first.  And as they all gathered round me I suddenly noticed the same Mexican standing in the doorway, and I heard some one, I think it was Uncle Esmond, say: 

“Jondo, you’d better take Gail over to the surgeon right away—­” His voice trailed off somewhere and all was blank nothingness to me.  But my last impression was that my uncle stayed behind with the strange Mexican.

In the excitement everybody forgot that I had on neither hat nor coat as they carried me through the raw wet air to the army surgeon’s quarters beyond the soldiers’ barracks.

A chill and fever followed, and for a week there was only pain and trouble for me.  Nothing else hurt quite so deeply, however, as the fear of being left behind when the Clarendens should start for Santa Fe.  I would ask no questions, and nobody mentioned the trip, for which everything was preparing.  I began at last to have a dread of being left in the night, of wakening some morning to find only Mat and myself with Aunty Boone in the little log house.  Uncle Esmond had already been away for three days, but nobody told me where he had gone, nor why he went, nor when he would come back.  It kept me awake at night, and the loss of sleep made me nervous and feverish.

One afternoon about a week after my accident, when Beverly and Mat were putting the room in order and chattering like a couple of squirrels, Beverly said, carelessly: