“Well, you are going to a perilous place, over a most perilous trail, in a most perilous time of national affairs, to meet such treacherously villainous men as New Mexico offers in her market-places right now?  And all for the sake of the commerce of the plains?  Why do you take such chances to do business with such people, Clarenden?”

Esmond Clarenden had been staring at the burning logs in the big fireplace during this conversation.  He turned now and faced the young army officer squarely as he said in that level tone that we children had learned long ago was final: 

“Colonel, I’d go straight to hell and do business with the devil himself if I had any business dealings with him.”

The colonel’s face fell.  Slowly he relighted his cigar, and leaned back again in his chair, and with that diplomacy that covers a skilful retreat he said, smilingly: 

“If any man west of the Missouri River ever could do that it would be you, Clarenden.  By the holy Jerusalem, the military lost one grand commander when you chose a college instead of West Point, and the East lost one well-bred gentleman from its circles of commerce and culture when you elected to do business on the old Santa Fe Trail instead of Broadway.  But I reckon the West will need just such men as you long after the frontier fort has become a central point in the country’s civilized area.  And, blast you, Clarenden, blast your very picture!  No man can help liking you.  Not even the devil if he had the chance.  Not one man in ten thousand would dare to make that trip right now.  You’ve got the courage of a colonel and the judgment of a judge.  Go to Santa Fe!  We may meet you coming back.  If we do, and you need us, command us!”

He gave a courteous salute, and the two began to talk of other things; among them the purposes that were bringing young men westward.

“So Banney, right out of old blue-grassy Kentucky, is going to back out of here and go with you,” the colonel remarked.

“I’ve hired him to drive one team.  It’s a lark for him, but the army would be a lark just the same,” Esmond Clarenden declared.  “He says he is to kill rattlesnakes and Mexicans, while Jondo kills Indians and I sit tight on top of the bales of goods to keep the wind from blowing them away.  And the boys are to be made bridle-wise, plains-broke for future freighting.  That’s all that life means to him right now.”

I do not know what else was said, nor what I heard and what I dreamed after that.  If this journey meant a lark to a grown-up boy, it meant a pilgrimage through fairyland to a young boy like myself.

And so the new life opened to us; and if the way was fraught with hardship and danger, it also taught us courage and endurance.  Nor must we be measured by the boy life of to-day.  Children lived the grown-up life then.  It was all there was for them to live.