Jondo looked up quickly now.  Santan, Beverly’s “Satan,” whom our captain had defended, flashed to my mind, but I knew by Jondo’s face that he did not believe the old trapper’s story.

“Them Kioways is still layin’ fur you ever’ year, I tell you, an’ they’re bound to git you sooner or later.  I’m tellin’ ye in kindness.”

The old man’s voice weakened a little.

“And I’m taking you in kindness,” Jondo said.  “You may be doing me a great service.”

“I shore am.  Take my word an’ keep awake.  Keep awake!”

In spite of his drink-bleared eyes and weakened frame, there was a hint of the commander in him, a mere shadow of the energy that had gone years ago into the wild, solitary life of the trapper who foreran the trail days here.

“One more trip to the ha’nts of the fur-bearin’ and it’s good-by to the mountain trails and the river courses fur me,” he said, as he rose and stalked unsteadily away, and—­I never saw him again.

At daybreak the next morning we were off for Santa Fe.  Our wagons, loaded with their precious burdens, moved forward six abreast along the old sun-flower bordered trail.  Morning, noon, and evening, pitching camp and breaking camp, yoking oxen and harnessing mules, keeping night vigil by shifts, hunting buffalo, killing rattlesnakes, watching for signs of hostile Indians, meeting incoming trains, or solitary trappers, at long intervals, breathing the sweet air of the prairies, and gathering rugged strength from sleep on the wholesome earth—­these things, with the jolliest of fellowship and perfect discipline of our captain, Jondo, made this hard, free life of the plains a fascinating one.  We were unshaven and brown as Indians.  We lost every ounce of fat, but we were steel-sinewed, and fear, that wearing element that disintegrates the soul, dropped away from us early on the trail.

But when the full moon came sweeping up the sky, and all the prairie shadows lay flat to earth under its surge of clear light, in the stillness of the great lonely land, then the battle with home-sickness was not the least of the plains’ perils.

One midnight watch of such a night, Jondo sat out my vigil with me.  Our eighty or more wagons were drawn up in a rude ellipse with the stock corraled inside, for we were nearing the danger zone.  And yet to-night danger seemed impossible in such a peaceful land under such clear moonlight.

“Gail, you were always a far-seeing youngster, even in your cub days,” Jondo said, after we had sat silent for a long time.  “We are moving into trouble from to-night, and I’ll need you now.”

“What makes you think so, Jondo?” I asked.

“That train we met going east at noon.”

“Mexicans with silver and skins worth double our stuff, what have they to do with us?” I inquired.

“One of the best men I have ever known is a Mexican in Santa Fe.  The worst man I have ever known is an American there.  But I’ve never yet trusted a Mexican when you bunch them together.  They don’t fit into American harness, and it will be a hundred years before the Mexican in our country will really love the Stars and Stripes.  Deep down in his heart he will hate it.”