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Updated: May 12, 2025
As our wagons halted at the sandy borders of an arroyo the brown-clad form of a priest rose up from the shade of a group of scrubby piñon-trees beside the trail. Esmond Clarenden lifted his hat in greeting. "Are you going our way? We can give you a ride," he paused to say. The man's face was very dark, but it was a young, strong face, and his large, dark eyes were full of the fire of life.
The three men being under the care of a physician, and the remainder of the crew burdened with other tasks, she was not again disturbed. Some time later she appeared at the landing below Fort Leavenworth, and strode up the slope to the deserted square where Esmond Clarenden stood before his little store alone in the deepening twilight.
Small reason was there then to hope that a city, great and gracious, would one day cover those rough ravines and grace those slopes and hilltops in the angle between the Missouri and the Kaw. Aunty Boone had resented leaving Fort Leavenworth when the Clarenden business made the young city at the Kaw's mouth more desirable for a home.
I remember later that Uncle Esmond and Jondo and Rex Krane went to the Clarenden store, and that Mat was helping Aunty Boone inside, while Beverly let the two little Kranes take him down the slope to see some baby squirrels or something. And Eloise and I were left alone beneath the trees, where once we had sat together long ago in the "Moon of the Peach Blossom."
There were Esmond Clarenden and Jondo, in the prime of middle life, the one a little bald, and more than a little stout; the other's heavy hair was streaked with gray, but the erect form and tremendous physical strength told how well the plains life had fortified the man of fifty for the years before him.
"Clarenden," the young Bostonian began, "you got away from that drunken mob at Independence with your children, your mules, and your big Daniel Boone. You started out when war was ragin' on the Mexican frontier, and never stopped a minute because you had to come it alone from Council Grove. You shook yourself and family right through the teeth of that Mexican gang layin' for you back there.
"You cuddle right down there, Gail Clarenden, if you want to get well at all. If you're real careful you'll be all right in a day or two. Let's wait for Uncle Esmond to come home before we start any worries." It was in her voice, girl or woman, that comforting note that could always soothe me. "Mat, won't you try to get them to let me go?" I pleaded.
"Then came an awful day out at Agua Fria, and Father Josef took me in his arms as he would take a baby, and sang me to sleep with the songs my mother loved to sing. I think it must have been midnight when I wakened. It was dreary and cold, and Esmond Clarenden and Ferdinand Ramero were there, and Father Josef and Jondo."
My name is Krane, Rex Krane, and in spite of such a floopsy name I hail from Boston, U.S.A." There was a hopeless sagging about the young man's mouth, redeemed only by the twinkle in his eye. Esmond Clarenden gave him a steady measuring look. He estimated men easily, and rarely failed to estimate truly.
A boy's memory is keen, and all the hours of that other journey hither, with their eager anticipation and youthful curiosity, and love of surprise and adventure, came back to Beverly Clarenden and me as we pulled along the last lap of the trail. "Was it really so long ago, Bev, that we came in here, all eyes and ears?" I asked my cousin. "No, it was last evening.
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