So came the Indian girl’s interpretation of the case, but the conclusion was the message meant for me.  I wondered vaguely, as I sat there, if the vision had come to Beverly years ago as it had come to me:  three men—­the soldier on his cavalry mount, Jondo, the plainsman, on his big black horse, and between the two, Esmond Clarenden, neither mounted nor on foot, but going forward somehow, steady and sure.  And beyond these three, this side of misty mountain peaks, the cloud of golden hair, the sweet face, with dark eyes looking into mine.  I had not been a dreamer, I had been a fool.

Through Beverly I learned the next day that Ferdinand Ramero had come into Santa Fe late at night and had left early the next morning.  Marcos Ramero, faultlessly dressed, lounged about the gambling-halls, and strolled through the sunny Plaza, idly and insolently, as was his custom.  But Gloria Ramero, to whom Marcos long ago ceased to be more than coldly courteous, had left the city at once for the San Christobal Valley, to devote herself to the care of the beautiful woman whom her brother Felix Narveo in his college days had admired so much.

As for Jondo, years ago when we had met Father Josef out by the sandy arroyo, he had left us to follow the good man somewhere, and had not come back to the Exchange Hotel until nightfall.  Something had come into his face that day that never left it again.  And now that something had deepened in the glance of his eye and the firm-set mouth.  It was through that meeting with Father Josef that he had first heard of the supposed death of Mary Marchland St. Vrain, and it was through the priest in the chapel he had heard that she was still alive.

Neither Beverly nor Bill Banney nor Rex Krane knew what I had heard in the church concerning Jondo’s early career, and I never spoke of it to them.  But to all of us, outside of that intensified something indefinable in his face, he was unchanged.  He met my eye with the open, frank glance with which he met the gaze of all men.  His smile was no less engaging and his manner remained the same—­fearless, unsuspicious, definite in serious affairs, good-natured and companionable in everything.  I could not read him now, by one little line, but back of everything lay that withering, grievous thought—­he was a murderer.  Heaven pity the boy when his idol falls, and if he be a dreaming idealist the hurt is tenfold deeper.

And yet—­the trail was waiting there to teach me many things, and Jondo’s words rang through the aisles of my brain: 

“If you ever have a real cross, Gail, thank the Lord for the open plains and the green prairies, and the danger stimulus of the old Santa Fe Trail.  They will seal up your wounds, and soften your hard, rebellious heart, and make you see things big, and despise the little crooks in your path.”