“If you get into trouble, Mr. Bev, I come, hot streaks, to help you.”

She could not come “hot streaks” now, for Beverly had deserted.  But there was Jondo.

I wrote at once to him, inclosing the crumpled note, and then, as one who walks with neither sight nor feeling any more, I rode the plains and did a man’s part in that Eighteenth Cavalry campaign of ’67.  The days went slowly by, bringing the long, bright autumn beauty to the plains and turning all the elms to gold along the creek at Burlingame.  Time took away the sharp edge from our grief and shame, and left the dull pain that wears deeper and deeper, unnoticed by us; and all of us who had loved Beverly lived on and were cheerful for one another’s sake.

When Jondo—­as only Jondo could—­bore the news of my letter to Esmond Clarenden, he made no reply, but sat like an image of stone.  Rex Krane broke down and sobbed as if his heart would break.  But Mat, calm, poised, and always merciful, merely said: 

“We must wait awhile.”

It was many days before she broke the news to Eloise St. Vrain, who only smiled and said: 

“Gail is mistaken.  Beverly couldn’t desert.”

It was when the word came to Aunty Boone that the storm broke.  They told me afterward that her face was terrible to see, and that her eyes grew dull and narrow.  She went out to the bluff’s edge and sat staring up the valley of the Kaw as if to see into the hidden record of the coming years.

One October day, when the Kranes and Eloise sat with my uncle and Jondo in the soft afternoon air, looking out at the beauty of the Missouri bluffs, Aunty Boone loomed up before them suddenly.

“I got somebody’s fortune, just come clear before me,” she declared, in her soft voice.  “Lemme see you’ hand, Little Lees!”

Eloise put her shapely white hand upon the big, black paw.

Aunty Boone patted it gently, the first and last caress she ever gave to any of us.

“You’ goin’ to get a letter from a dark man.  You’ goin’ to take a long journey.  And somebody goin’ with you.  An’ the one tellin’ this is goin’ away, jus’ one more voyage to desset sands again, and see Africy and her own kingdom.  Whoo-ee!”

Never before, in all the years that we had known her, had she expressed a wish for her early home across he seas.  Her voice trailed off weirdly, and she gazed at the Kaw Valley for a long moment.  Then she said, in a low tone that thrilled her listeners with its vibrant power: 

“Bev ain’t no deserter.  He’s gone out!  Jus’ gone out.  Whoo-ee!”

She disappeared around the corner of the house and stood long in the little side porch where Beverly had kissed Little Blue Flower one night in the “Moon of the Peach-Blossom,” and Eloise had found them there, and I had unwittingly heard what was said.

“Is there no variation in palmistry?” Rex Krane asked.  “I never knew a gypsy in all my life who read a different set of prophecies.  It’s always the dark man—­I’m light (darn the luck)—­and a journey and a letter.  But I thought maybe an African seer, a sort of Voodo, hoodoo, bugaboo, would have it a light man and a legacy and company coming, instead of you taking a journey, Eloise.”