I think we chatted all together for a while.  I had a wound at Malvern Hill that used to make me dizzy.  That, or an older wound, made my pulse frantic now.  I know that it was a rare June day, and the breeze off the river came pouring caressingly over the bluff.  I remember later that Uncle Esmond and Jondo and Rex Krane went to the Clarenden store, and that Mat was helping Aunty Boone inside, while Beverly let the two little Kranes take him down the slope to see some baby squirrels or something.  And Eloise and I were left alone beneath the trees, where once we had sat together long ago in the “Moon of the Peach Blossom.”  For me, all the strength of the years wherein I had built a wall around my longing love, all my manly loyalty to my cousin’s claims, were swept away, as I have seen the big Missouri floods, joined by the lesser Kaw, sweep out bridges, snapping like sticks before their power.

“Eloise, it seems a hundred years since I saw you and Little Blue Flower ride away up the San Christobal River trail out of my sight,” I said.

“It has been a long time, but we are not yet old.  You seem the same.  And as for me, I feel as if the clock had stopped awhile and had suddenly started to ticking anew.”

It was wonderful to sit beside her and hear her voice again.  I did not dare to ask about her mother, but I am sure she read my thoughts, for she went on: 

“My mother is gone now.  She was as happy as a child and never had a sorrow on her mind after her dreadful fever, although the doctors say she might have been restored if I had only been with her then.  But it is all ended now.”

Eloise paused with saddened face, and looked out toward the Missouri River, boiling with June rains and melted snows.

“It is all right now,” she went on, bravely.  “Sister Gloria—­you know who she was—­stayed with me to the last.  And I have a real mound of earth in the cemetery beside my father.”  The last two words were spoken softly.  “Sister Gloria is in the convent now.  Marcos is a common gambler.  His father disappeared and left him penniless.  Esmond Clarenden says that his father died out on the plains somewhere.”

“And Father Josef?” I inquired.

“Is still the same strong friend to everybody.  He spends much time among the Hopi people.  I don’t know why, for they are hopelessly heathen.  Their own religion has so many beautiful things to offset our faith that they are hard to convert.”

“And Little Blue Flower—­what became of her?” I asked.  “Is she a squaw in some hogan or pueblo, after all that the Sisterhood of St. Ann’s did for her?”

A shadow fell on the bright face beside me.

“Let’s not talk of her to-day.”  There was a pleading note in Eloise’s voice.  “Life has its tragedies everywhere, but I sometimes think that none of them—­American, English, Spanish, French, Mexican, nor any others of our pale-faced people, have quite such bitter acts as the Indian tragedy among a gentle race like the people of Hopi-land.”