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Updated: May 12, 2025
I sat alone, staring out at the shadowy court and, above it, the blue night-sky of New Mexico inlaid with stars, until a rush of feet in the hall and a shout of inquiry told me that Beverly Clarenden was hunting for me.
I've been a Vanguard of the Plains since then, bull-whacker for the ox-teams that hauled the commerce of the West; cavalryman in hard-wearing Indian campaigns that defended the frontier; and merchant, giving measure for measure always, like that grand man who taught me the worth of business Esmond Clarenden." "On the parade-ground? How there?" Eloise asked.
The girl's face grew pale, then deadly white, and her big, dark eyes were opened wide as she dropped the letter and looked at the faces about her. "It is from Father Josef," she gasped. "He writes of Little Blue Flower somewhere in Hopi-land. He asks me to go to Santa Fé at once for her sake. And it says, too " The voice faltered and Eloise turned to Esmond Clarenden.
Jim was the most flabbergasted of any, Barbie looked a little bit frightened; but Jessamie sez: "If Happy Hawkins sez 'at you're the Earl of Clarenden, why you might as well give up. He has inside information on every given subject, an' things don't never happen until he's had his finger in it somewhere." Jessamie allus was a good feller. An' that's the way it turned out.
In the lonely, beautiful land, through long bright days and starlit nights, I began to see things bigger than my own selfish measure had reckoned. I thought of Esmond Clarenden and his large scheme of business; Felix Narveo, the true-hearted friend; and of Father Josef and his life of devotion. And I lived with Jondo every day.
Still, I'd played fair all the while, an' I 'lowed 'at the Earl o' Clarenden could stand it, and I needed the money a heap more'n some who might 'a' won it. When old Bill Sykes came in to report to me I was wearin' a plug hat on the back o' my head an' sportin' a white vest an' a red necktie, so I looked enough like the real thing to make it easy for him to act his part.
Look at these bluffs and hiding-places, will you! A handful of Indians could scoop our whole body up and pitch us into the Prairie Dog Creek, and not be missed from a set in a war-dance," Beverly insisted. "Keep it strictly in the Clarenden family, Gail, but our honorable commander is a fool and a coward, if he is a United States major." "You speak as one expecting a promotion, Bev," I suggested.
Jondo and Esmond Clarenden did not delay a minute in protecting the camp and setting it in order, taking inventory of the lost and searching for the missing. Three of our number, with one of the ponies, were missing. Aunty Boone had crouched in a protected angle at the base of the bluff, and when we found her she was calmly smoking her pipe. "Yo' skeered of this little puff?" she queried.
But nothing in her looks betrayed recognition or curiosity as she bestirred herself to reclaim the articles for which the check was a voucher of ownership, and to help him into them. Ten seconds later Trencher, a personality transformed, stood quite at his ease on the top step of the flight outside the entrance to the Clarenden looking into Broadway.
I had bothered him all I could in the tellin' an' yet he had kept his temper an' handed out the facts; an' I wanted to go over 'em forward an' hack till I could get the full hang of 'em. It was wonderful queer how a ridin' man like me had brushed shoulders, as you might say, with the Earl of Clarenden, an' I was beginnin' to think that old Mrs. Fate was stirrin' things up a shade extra.
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