Eloise smiled.

“You musn’t envy me my good fortune, Rex,” she declared.  “Aunty Boone says she is going back to Africa, too.  You’ll need a new cook, Uncle Esmond.  Let me apply for the place right now.”

My uncle smiled affectionately on her.

“I could give you a trial, as I gave her.  I remember I told her if she could cook good meals I’d keep her; if not, she’d leave.  Do you want to take the risk?”

“That’s where you’ll get your journey of the prophecy, Eloise,” Jondo suggested.

“Well, you leave out the best part of it all,” Mat broke in.  “She added that Beverly isn’t a deserter, he’s just ‘gone out.’  Why don’t you believe it all, serious or frivolous?”

A shadow lifted from the faces there as a glimpse of hope came slowly in.

“And as to letters, Eloise,” Uncle Esmond said, “I must beg your pardon.  I have one here for you that I had forgotten.  It came this morning.”

“See if it isn’t from a dark man, inviting you to take a journey,” Rex suggested.

“It must be, it’s from Santa Fe,” Eloise said, opening the letter eagerly.

Aunty Boone had come back again and was standing by the corner of the veranda, half hidden by vines, watching Eloise with steady eyes.  The girl’s face grew pale, then deadly white, and her big, dark eyes were opened wide as she dropped the letter and looked at the faces about her.

“It is from Father Josef,” she gasped.  “He writes of Little Blue Flower somewhere in Hopi-land.  He asks me to go to Santa Fe at once for her sake.  And it says, too—­” The voice faltered and Eloise turned to Esmond Clarenden.  “It says that Beverly is there somewhere and he wants you.  Read it, Uncle Esmond.”

As Eloise rose and laid the letter in my uncle’s hand, Aunty Boone, hidden by the vines, muttered in her soft, strange tone: 

“He’s jus’ gone out.  Thank Jupiter!  He’s jus’ gone out.  I’m goin’, hot streaks, to help him, too.  Then I go to my own desset where I’m honin’ o to be, an’ stay there till the judgment Day.  Whoo-ee!”

In the early morning of a rare October day upon the plains I sat on my cavalry horse beside Fort Hays, waiting for one last word from my superior officer, Colonel Moore.  He was my uncle’s friend, and he had been kind to the Clarenden boys, as military kindness runs.

“You are honorably discharged,” he said.  “Take these letters to Fort Dodge.  You will meet your friends there, and have some safeguard from there on, by order of General Sheridan.  God bless you, Gail.  You have ridden well.  I wish you a safe journey, and I hope you’ll find your cousin soon.  He was a splendid boy until this happened.  He may be cleared some day.”

“He is splendid still to me in spite of everything,” I replied.

“Yes, yes,” my colonel responded.  “Never a Clarenden disgraced the name before.  That is why General Sheridan is granting you a squad to help you.  It is a great thing to have a good name.  Good-by.”