“The stars up in the sky told me that last night,” Mat replied, pulling down the corners of her mouth solemnly.  “But Uncle Esmond hasn’t anything to do with the war, nor soldiers, only like he has been doing here,” the girl went on.  “He’s a store-man, a merchant, and I guess he’s just about as good as a general—­a colonel, anyhow.  But he’s too short to fight, and too fat to run.”

“He isn’t any coward,” Beverly objected.

“Who said he was?” Mat inquired.  “He’s one of them usefulest men that keeps things going everywhere.”

“I saw a real Mexican come up out of the ravine awhile ago and go straight over toward Uncle Esmond’s store.  What do you suppose he came here for?  Is he a soldier from down there?” I asked.

“Oh, just one Mexican don’t mean anything anywhere, but the war in Mexico has something to do with our going to Santa Fe, even if Uncle Esmond is just a nice little store-man.  That’s all a girl knows about things,” Beverly insisted.

Mat opened her big eyes wide and looked straight at the boy.

“I don’t pretend to know what I don’t know, but I’ll bet a million billion dollars there is something else besides just all this war stuff.  I can’t tell it, I just feel it.  Anyhow, I’m to stay here with Aunty Boone till you come back.  Girls can be trusted anywhere, but it may take the whole Army of the West, yet, to follow up and look after two little runty boys.  And let me tell you something, Bev, something I heard Aunty Boone say this morning.”  She said:  “Taint goin’ to be more ’n a minnit now till them boys grows up an’ grows together, same size, same age.  They been little and big, long as they goin’ to be.  Now you know what you’re coming to.”

Mat was digging in the ground with a stick, and she flipped a clod at Beverly with the last words.  Both of us had once expected to marry her when we grew up, unless Jondo should carry her away as his bride before that time.  He was a dozen years older than Mat, who was only fourteen and small for her age.  A flush always came to her cheeks when we talked of Jondo in that way.  We didn’t know why.

We sat silent for a little while.  A vague sense of desolateness, of the turning-places of life, as real to children as to older folk, seemed to press suddenly down upon all three of us.  Ours was not the ordinary child-life even of that day.  And that was a time when children had no world of their own as they have to-day.  Whatever developed men and women became a part of the younger life training as well.  And while we were ignorant of much that many children then learned early, for we had lived mostly beside the fort on the edge of the wilderness, we were alert, and self-dependent, fearless and far-seeing.  We could use tools readily:  we could build fires and prepare game for cooking; we could climb trees, set traps, swim in the creek, and ride horses.  Moreover, we were bound to one another by the force of isolation and need for playmates.  Our imagination supplied much that our surroundings denied us.  So we felt more deeply, maybe, than many city-bred children who would have paled with fear at dangers that we only laughed over.