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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.
That priest, footing it out by that dry creek-thing they call a 'royo?" "Oh no, no! He and Jondo made up together, and Jondo's nobody's bad man even in a story. It will be that Ferdinand Ramero," I insisted. "But, say, Bev, Jondo wrote a new name on the register this evening, or somebody wrote it for him, maybe. It wasn't his own writing. 'Jean Deau. I saw it in big, round, back-slanting letters.
Jondo's voice trailed off into silence and I knew what his hurt was that he was the man whom Mary Marchland had loved, from whom Fred Ramer, by his cruel machinations, had separated her "and although they loved each other always, they never saw each other again." Poor Jondo!
As I sat on my pony beside my uncle's wagon, I caught sight of the slim figure of Little Blue Flower, well back in the shade of the Plaza. She was watching Beverly, who sat in Jondo's wagon, staring at the crowd and seeing no one in particular. A minute later a tall young Indian boy stepped in front of her, and when he moved away she was gone.
Louis trains, had fallen suddenly ill; drinking-water had been warm and muddy; and, most of all, the consciousness of wide-spread opposition to Jondo's strict ruling where there were no signs of danger made a very ugly-spirited group of men who sat down together to eat our evening meal. Bets were openly made that we wouldn't see a hostile redskin this side of Santa Fé.
"And me!" "And me!" came from a dozen throats. Plainsmen were always the truest of comrades in the hour of danger. Nobody questioned Jondo's wisdom now. All thought was for the missing man. Rex Krane had leaped up on the wagon next to Jondo's and stood gazing toward the northwest. At this outburst of eagerness he turned to the crowd in the corral. "You wait five minutes and Gail will be here.
We knew that Jondo's wound was mortal, and Father Josef and Eloise and Rex Krane sat beside him, as the brave eyes looked out across the sublimity of earthly beauty toward the far land no eye hath seen, facing, unafraid, the outward-leading trail. But Beverly was in the prime of young manhood, and we felt sure of him, as Esmond Clarenden and Sister Gloria; and I ministered to his wants.
What a man among men this unknown freighter of the plains might have been and what a loss to the plains in the best of the trail years if Jondo had never dared its dangers for the safety of the generations to come. But the thought of Eloise, driven out momentarily by Jondo's story, came rushing in again. "You said you put a ring around Ramero to keep him in Santa Fé.
Then lifting his right hand as if in blessing, and slowly dropping it until the forefinger pointed toward the west, he passed on his way. Jondo's brown cheek flushed and the lines about his mouth grew hard. "Take my place, Bev," he said, as he left his wagon and joined Esmond Clarenden. The two spoke earnestly together. Then Jondo mounted Beverly's pony.
A shriek of savage glee and the thunder of hoofs on the hard earth told how well the thing had been done and how furiously our animals were being whirled away. "Go, get 'em, Gail! Stay by 'em! Run!" Jondo's voice sounded far away, but my work was near.
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