But we forgot the girl in our eagerness to bound down the gang-plank and hug the man who meant all that home and love could mean to us.  In our three growing years we had almost eliminated Mat Nivers, save as a happy memory, for mails were slow in those days and we were poor letter-writers; and we had wondered how to meet her properly now.  But when the tall, slender girl on the wharf came forward and we looked into the wide gray eyes of our old-time playmate whom, as little boys, we had both vowed to marry, we forgot everything in our overwhelming love for our comrade-in-arms, our jolliest friend and counselor.

“Oh, Mat, you miserable thing!” Beverly bubbled, hugging her in his arms.

“You are just bigger and sweeter than ever.  I mistook you for Aunty Boone at first,” I chimed in, kissing her on each cheek.  And we all bundled away in an old-fashioned, low-swung carriage, happy as children again, with no barrier between us and the dear playmate of the past.

The new home, on the high crest overlooking the Missouri valley, nestled deep in the shade of maple and elm trees, a mansion, compared to that log house of blessed memory at Fort Leavenworth.  A winding road led up the steep slope from a wooded ravine where a trail ran out from the little city by the river’s edge.  Vistas of sheer cliff and stretches of the muddy on-sweeping Missouri and the full-bosomed Kaw, with scrubby timbered ravines and growing groves of forest trees, offered themselves at every turn.  And from the top of the bluff the world unrolled in a panorama of nature’s own shaping and coloring.

The house was built of stone, with vines climbing about its thick walls, and broad veranda.  And everywhere Mat’s hands had put homey touches of comfort and beauty.  An hundredfold did she return to Esmond Clarenden all the care and protection he had given to her in her orphaned childhood.  And, after all, it was not military outposts, nor railroads, nor mail-lines alone that pushed back the wilderness frontier.  It was the hand of woman that also builded empire westward.

“Mat’s got her wish at last,” I said, as we sat with Uncle Esmond after dinner under a big maple tree and looked out at the far yellow Missouri, churning its spring floods to foam against the snags along its high-water bound.

“What’s Mat’s wish?” Uncle Esmond asked.

“To have a good home and stay there.  She wished that one night, years ago back in old Fort Bent.  Don’t you remember, Bev, when we were out in the court, and how scared blue we all were when the moon went under a cloud, and that Indian boy, Santan, was creeping between us and the home base?”

“No, I don’t remember anything except that we were in Fort Bent.  Got in by the width of a hair ahead of some Mexicans and Indians, and got out again after a jolly six weeks.  What’s the real job for us now, Uncle Esmond?”

Uncle Esmond was staring out toward the Kaw valley, rimmed by high bluffs in the distance.