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Beverly and I clung together, and, holding a hand of each, Mat Nivers crouched beside us, herself strong in this second test of courage as she had been in the camp that night at Council Grove. I have never been afraid of storms and I can never understand why timid folk should speak of them as of a living, self-directing force bent purposely on human destruction.
And now you sit there and murmur softly that 'we are in an unsafe country and these are unsafe times, so we'd better be toddlin' back home right soon. I want to tell you something now." He paused and looked at Mat Nivers. Always he looked at Mat Nivers, who since the first blush one noonday long ago, so it seemed, now, never appeared to know or care where he looked.
It was only the eyes, dark eyes, somewhere this side of misty mountain peaks, and maybe the halo of hair that had been in my vision on that day when Beverly and Mat Nivers and I sat on the parade-ground facing a sudden turn in our life trail. I stared at the eyes now, only half conscious that the girl was laughing at me. "You big brown bob-cat!
I was just too stupid to think anybody else could get out of childhood except old Bev Clarenden and myself," I managed to say at last. "I even forgot Mat Nivers, who is a young lady now, and Aunty Boone, who hasn't changed a kink of her woolly hair. But we couldn't be strangers. Not after that trip across the plains and living at old Fort Bent as we did."
For somehow their faces made me think of Beverly's face out on the parade-ground that morning, when he had lifted it and looked at Mat Nivers; and their voices, deep bass as they were, sounded like Beverly's voice whispering between his sobs, before he went to sleep. Both men smiled and said nothing.
Shut your little mouth and open your big ears, and I'll tell you something. Maybe I'd better not tell you all at once, though. It might make you dizzy," he added, teasingly. "And maybe you better had," Mat Nivers said, calmly. "Maybe you'd better tell him yourself, if you feel that way," Beverly retorted.
And last of all, Esmond Clarenden and Mat Nivers, with shining eyes, leaning on his arm. I had never seen Uncle Esmond in evening dress before, nor dreamed how splendid a figure he could make for a drawing-room in the costume in which he was so much at ease.
"Got a thorn in your shoe, or a stone-bruise, or a chilblain?" "I slipped out there behind a soldier on horseback, right in front of a little old Mexican who was just whirling off to the river," I said, the tears blinding my eyes. "Why, he's turned his ankle! Looks like it was swelling already," Mat Nivers declared, as she slid from the counter and ran toward me. "It's a bad job," Jondo declared.
I can see the dusty wagons and our tired mules with drooping heads. I can see the earnest, anxious faces of Esmond Clarenden and Jondo; Beverly and Bill Banney hardly grasping Jondo's meaning; Rex Krane, half asleep on the edge of the trail. I can see Mat Nivers, brown and strong, and Aunty Boone oozing sweat at every pore.
I had caught Mat Nivers napping many a time, but never in my life had I seen anything half so sweet as this sleeping girl in the beauty of her innocence. And I knew at a glance that this was the same girl whom I had seen before at the door of the old Church of San Miguel. "Same as grown-ups when the sermon is dull. Thank you, Father Josef. It's a pretty picture. We must be goin' now."
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