In the wagon beside Mat Nivers was the little girl whose face had been clear in the mystic vision of my day-dreams on the April morning when I had gone out to watch for the big fish on the sand-bars; the morning when I had felt the first heart-throb of desire for the trail and the open plains whereon my life-story would later be written.

We carried no merchandise now.  Everything bent toward speed and safety.  Our ponies and mules were all fresh ones—­secured for this journey two hours after we had come into Santa Fe—­save for the big sturdy dun creature that Uncle Esmond, out of pure sentiment, allowed to trail along behind the wagons toward his native heath in the Missouri bottoms.

We had crossed the Gloriettas and climbed over the Raton Pass rapidly, and now we were nearing the upper Arkansas, where the old trail turns east for its long stretch across the prairies.

As far as the eye could see there was no living thing save our own company in all the desolate plain aquiver with heat and ashy dry.  The line of low yellow bluffs to the southeast hardly cast a shadow save for a darker dun tint here and there.

At midday we drooped to a brief rest beside the sun-baked trail.

“You all jus’ one color,” Aunty Boone declared.  “You all like the dus’ you made of ‘cep’ Little Lees an’ me.  She’s white and I’m black.  Nothin’ else makes a pin streak on the face of the earth.”

Aunty Boone flourished on deserts and her black face glistened in the sunlight.  Deep in the shadow of the wagon cover the face of Eloise St. Vrain—­“Little Lees,” Aunty Boone had named her—­bloomed pink as a wild rose in its frame of soft hair.  She had become Aunty Boone’s meat and drink from the moment the strange African woman first saw her.  This regard, never expressed in caress nor word of tenderness, showed itself in warding from the little girl every wind of heaven that might visit her too roughly.  Not that Eloise gave up easily.  Her fighting spirit made her rebel against weariness and the hardships of trail life new to her.  She fitted into our ways marvelously well, demanding equal rights, but no favors.  By some gentle appeal, hardly put into words, we knew that Uncle Esmond did not want us to talk to her about herself.  And Beverly and Mat and I, however much we might speculate among ourselves, never thought of resisting his wishes.

Eloise was gracious with Mat, but evidently the boy Marcos had made her wary of all boys.  She paid no attention to Beverly and me at first.  All her pretty smiles and laughing words were for Uncle Esmond and Jondo.  And she was lovely.  Never in all these long and varied years have I seen another child with such a richness of coloring, nor such a mass of golden hair rippling around her forehead and falling in big, soft curls about her neck.  Her dark eyes with their long black lashes gave to her face its picturesque beauty, and her plump, dimpled arms and sturdy little form bespoke the wholesome promise of future years.