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Updated: June 1, 2025
In the gray dawn after that midnight ride to Agua Fria a little Indian girl had slipped like a brown shadow across the Plaza. Stopping at the door of the Exchange Hotel, she leaned against the low slab of petrified wood that for many a year served as a loafer's roost before the hotel doorway. Inside the building Jondo caught the clear twitter of a bird's song at daybreak, twice repeated.
For Aunty Boone was right when she said, "They tote together." "We must snake these wagons through town, as though we didn't belong together, but we mustn't get too far apart, either. And remember now, Clarenden, if anybody has to stop and visit with 'em, I'll do it myself," Jondo said. "Why can't we ride the ponies? We can go faster and scatter more," I urged, as we hastily broke camp.
Then, as children will, we began to speculate on what should follow for us. "When I get older I'm going to be a freighter like Jondo, Bill and me. We'll kill every Indian who dares to yell along the trail. I'm going back to Santa Fé and kill that boy that stared at me like he was crazy one day at Agua Fria."
Then creeping to the crest, they looked down on the Indian camp lying in a little dry valley of a lost stream whose course ran underground beneath them. Lying flat on the ground, each with his head behind a low bush on the top of the swell, the men read the valley with searching eyes. Then Jondo, with Bill at his heels, slid swiftly down the slope. "Gail Clarenden isn't there.
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.
I shall still be cautious if I am your captain. They did not smoke the peace-pipe. In my judgment the Kiowas lied. Two or three days will prove it. Choose now between me and my unchanged opinion, and some new train captain." "Oh, every man makes some bad guesses, Jondo. We'll keep you, of course, and it's a joke on you, that's all." So ran the comment, and we hurriedly broke camp and moved on.
We scrambled down, shattering the dry earth after us as we went. Jondo gently lifted the body and turned it face upward. It was Ferdinand Ramero. The big plainsman did not cry out, nor drop his hold, but his face turned gray, and only the dying man saw the look in the blue eyes gazing into his.
"In proof, they said that we would pass that old rock to-day unharmed where once they would have counted us their enemies. And they let me go to bring you all this word. They are going northeast into the big hunting-ground, and we are safe." No man could take defeat better than Jondo. "I am glad if I was wrong in my opinion," he said. "Fifteen years on that trail have made me cautious.
And Jondo was another Uncle Esmond. In spite of the black shadow on his name, he walked the prairies like a prince always. I could not be like him if I were a deserter. Up-stream death was waiting for me; down-stream, disgrace. I turned and followed up the river's course, but the strength that forced me to it was greater than that which made me brave on battle-fields.
"What makes you think so?" I asked, eagerly. "What Jondo said about his feeling Indians, I guess, but he reads these prairie trails as easy as Robinson Crusoe read Friday's footprints in the sand, and he hasn't read anything in 'em yet. Indians don't fight at night, anyhow. That's one good thing. Get hold of that rope, Bev, and pull her up tight," Bill replied.
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