The fair face clouded, and a look of longing crept into the big, dark eyes lifted pleadingly a moment to mine.  I wanted to take her in my arms right then and look about for something to kill for her sake.  Yet I would not, for the gold of all the Mexicos, have touched the hem of her Grecian robe.

“Yes, I have seen Marcos many times.  His father went to old Mexico after the war, but the Rameros do not stay long anywhere.  Marcos made life miserable for me sometimes.”  She paused suddenly.

“The Rameros.  Then he was the son of the man who was my uncle’s enemy.  Maybe you did as much for him, too, sometimes.  You had the spirit to do it, anyhow,” I said, lightly, to hide my real feeling.

“I was a little cat.  I’m a lot better now.  Let’s not go too much into that time.  Tell me where you have been and where you are going.”  Eloise changed the subject easily.

“I’ve been in Cincinnati, attending a boys’ school for three years.  I start for Santa Fe in two weeks.  My uncle’s store is doing a big over land business, and he keeps the ox-teams just fanning one another, coming and going across the prairies.  I’m crazy to go and see the open plains again.  Cincinnati is a city on stilts, and our little Independence-Westport Landing-Kansas City place, as the Cincinnati of the great American desert, is also pretty bumpy, the last place on earth to put a town—­only we can see almost to Santa Fe, New Mexico, from the hilltops.  Won’t it be great to view that mud-walled town again?  Bev is going, too—­to kill a few Indians for our winter’s meat, he says, in his wicked, blood-thirsty way.”  So I ran on, glad to be alive in the delicious beauty of that spring evening as we together went back over the days of our young years.

“Gail, may we take another passenger to-morrow?” Eloise asked, suddenly.

“Why, as many as the stage will hold!  There’s to be a nun and a priest and yourself.  I’m chaperon.  I could take the priest on my lap if he isn’t too bulky,” I answered.

“I want to take Po-a-be.  I can’t tell you why now.”

The lashes dropped over the brown eyes, and I wondered how she could think that I could refuse her anything.

“Oh, we’ll take her on faith and the stage-coach.  She can come right to Castle Clarenden and stay till she gets ready to hurdle off to her own ‘wickie up’.  She has grown into a beautiful Indian woman, though I couldn’t call her a squaw.”

“She isn’t a squaw.  I’m glad to hear you say that.  I think it will make her very happy to stay at your home for a while.  She will miss me a little when we leave here, maybe,” Eloise said, looking at me with a grateful smile that sent a tingle to my fingertips.

“Won’t you stay, too?” I asked, suddenly realizing that this beautiful girl might slip away as easily as she had come into my life here.

Eloise laughed at my earnestness.

“I couldn’t stay long,” she said, lightly.