“And did he?” Eloise asked, eagerly.

“No.  He said honor was something with him still.  I thought he meant to tell me of himself and you.  Forgive me.  I do not want any confidences not freely given.  But now I know it was the struggle in which he went down that night that he wanted to tell me about.  He said first, ’I’m homesick.  I’d like to see Little Lees.’  And his eyes were full of sympathy as he looked at me.”

“Did he say anything more?” Eloise’s voice was almost a whisper.

“That was all.  I thought that night I should hunt a lonely trail—­when he went home to claim—­happiness.  But now I feel that I could live beside him always—­to have him safe with us again.”

As I turned to look at Eloise something was in her big, dark eyes—­something that disappeared at once.  I caught only a fleeting glimpse of it, and I could not understand why a thrill of something near to happiness should sweep through me.  It was but the shadow of what might have been for me and was not.

“Do you recall our prophecies here that night when we were children?” Eloise asked.

“Yes, every one.  Mat wanted a home, Bev to fight the Indians, and you wanted me to keep Marcos Ramero in his place.  I tried to do it,” I replied.

And both of us recalled, but did not speak of, the warm, childish kiss of Little Lees upon my lips, and how we gripped hands in the shadows when the moon went cold and grey.  Life was so simple then.

“It may be, if our problems and our tragedies crowd into our younger years, they clear the way for all the bright, unclouded years to follow,” Eloise said, as we rose to go back to the camp-fire.

“I hope they will leave us strong to meet the bright, unclouded years,” I answered her.

On the next day the cavalrymen left us for a time, and we went on alone southward toward our journey’s end.

Autumn on the mountain slopes, and in the mesa-girdled valleys of New Mexico hung rainbow-tinted lights by day, with star-beam pointed paths trailing across the blue night-sky.  And all the rugged beauty of a picturesque land, basking in lazy warmth, out-breathing sweet, pure air, made the old trail to Santa Fe an enchanting highway to me, despite the burden of a grief that weighed me down.  For I could not shut from my mind the pitiful call of Little Blue Flower that had come to Eloise, nor all the uncertainty surrounding my cousin somewhere in the Southwest wanting us.

The little city of adobe walls seemed not to have changed a hair’s turn in the six years since I had seen it last.  Out beyond the sandy arroyo again Father Josef waited for us.  The same strong face and dark eyes, full of fire, the same erect form and manly bearing were his.  Except for a few streaks of gray in his close-cropped hair the years had wrought no change in him, save that his countenance betokened the greater benediction of a godly life upon it.  As we rode slowly to the door of San Miguel I fell behind.  The years since that day when the saucy little girl had called me a big, brown, bob-cat here came back upon my mind, and, though my hope had vanished, still I loved the old church.