Presently Esmond Clarenden came back to the camp-fire.

“Gail, the pony we lost in that storm at Pawnee Rock has come back to us.  It was standing outside the corral, waiting to get in, just as if it had lost us for a couple of hours.  It is in good condition, too.”

“How could it ever get here?” I exclaimed.

“Any one of a dozen ways,” my uncle replied.  “It may have run far that stormy morning when it broke out of the corral, and possibly some party coming over the Cimarron Trail picked it up and roved on this way.  There is no telling how it got here, since it keeps still itself about the matter.  Losing and finding and losing again is the law of events on the plains.”

“But why should it find us right here to-night, like it had been led back?” I insisted.

“That’s the miracle of it, Gail.  It is always the strange thing that really happens here.  In years to come, if you ever tell the truth about this trip, it will not be believed.  When this isn’t the frontier any longer, the story of the trail will be accounted impossible.”

Everything seemed impossible to me as I sat there staring at the dying fire.  Presently I remembered what I had seen while my uncle was away.

“Little Blue Flower has run away,” I said, “and I saw the Mexican that came to Fort Leavenworth the day before I twisted my ankle.  He slipped by here just a minute ago.  I know, for I saw his face when the logs flared up.”

Esmond Clarenden gave a start.  “Gail, you have the most remarkable memory for faces of any child I ever knew,” he said.

“Did he follow us, too, like the pony, or did he ride the pony after us?” I asked.  “He’s just everywhere we go, somehow.  Did I ever see him before he came to the fort, or did I dream it?”

“You are a little dreamer, Gail,” my uncle said, kindly.  “But dreams don’t hurt, if you do your part whenever you are needed.”

“Bev and Bill Banney make fun of dreams,” I said.

“Yes, they don’t have ’em; but Bev and Bill are ready when it comes to doing things.  They are a good deal alike, daring, and a bit reckless sometimes, with good hard sense enough to keep them level.”

“Don’t I do, too?” I inquired.

“Yes, you do and dream, both.  That’s all the better.  But you mustn’t forget, too, that sometimes the things we long for in our dreams we must fight for, and even die for, maybe, that those who come after us may be the better for our having them.  What was it you said about Little Blue Flower?” Uncle Esmond had forgotten her for the moment.

“She’s gone to Santa Fe, I reckon.  Is she bad, Uncle Esmond?  Tell me all about things,” I urged.

“We are all here spying out the land, Mexican, Indian, trader, freighter, adventurer, invalid,” Uncle Esmond replied.  “I don’t know what started the little Indian girl off, unless she just felt Indian, as Jondo would say; but I may as well tell you, Gail, that it may have been the Mexican who got our pony for us.  He is a strange fellow, walks like a cat, has ears like a timber wolf, and the cunning of a fox.”