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The sweetness of that gentle voice I hear sometimes to-day in the low notes of song-birds, and the gentle swish of refreshing summer showers. Ferdinand Ramero lifted his cold blue eyes and looked at the man bending over him. "Leave me here forgotten " "Not of God. His Mercy endureth forever," Jondo replied. But there was no repentance, no softening of the hard, imperious heart.
All her pretty smiles and laughing words were for Uncle Esmond and Jondo. And she was lovely. Never in all these long and varied years have I seen another child with such a richness of coloring, nor such a mass of golden hair rippling around her forehead and falling in big, soft curls about her neck.
"The U.S. Army, en route for perdition, via Santa Fé, is camping in the big timbers down-stream now. Jondo and Esmond Clarenden will leave you boys and girls here till it's safe to take you out again. And I and Daniel Boone, vestal god and goddess of these hearth-fires, will keep you from harm till that time.
Meantime, Jondo waited anxiously for my coming. Rex and Beverly had gone to sleep at the end of their watch and nobody else in camp knew of my going. At dawn a breeze began to swing in from the north, and with its refreshing touch the weariness and worries of yesterday were swept away. Everybody wakened in a good humor.
"Oh, we are all here but Mat: Clarenden, Jondo, Aunty Boone, and Little Lees; and a squad of half a dozen cavalry men are ready to go with us." Rex drawled in his old Yankee fashion, hiding an aching heart underneath his jovial greeting. "All of us!" I exclaimed. "Yes. Here they all come!" Rex retorted. They all came, but I saw only one, veiling the joy in my eyes as best I could.
I thought of Eloise and his longing to see her on the night before; of his struggle to tell me something. I knew now what that something was. Poor boy! He was not a boy, he was a man strong, fearless, happy-hearted. How could the plains make cowards out of such as he? They had made a man of Jondo, who had all excuse to play the coward.
But when I went to my bed again Jondo tucked the covers about me and Uncle Esmond came and bade me good night. "I guess you have the makings of a plainsman," he said, with a smile, as he patted me on the head. "The beginnings, anyhow," Jondo added. "He can see pretty far already." For a long time I lay awake, thinking of all that Uncle Esmond and Jondo had said to me.
That evening while Mat and Beverly went to look after some fishing-lines they had set Mat and Bev were always going fishing and Jondo was down at the store, the officer in command of the fort came in. He paid no attention to me lying there, all eyes and ears whenever shoulder-straps were present.
And with my mind full of Eloise and her need I sought out Jondo and listened to his story. Fighting for leave to live and labor well, God flung me peace and ease. I found Jondo in the little piazza opening into the hotel court. "Where did you leave Krane and Bev?" he asked, as I sat down beside him. "I didn't leave them; they left me," I answered. "Oh, you young bucks are all alike.
Jondo, who had kept my toddling feet from stumbling, who had taught me to ride and swim and shoot, who had made me wise in plains lore, and manly and clean among the rough and vulgar things of the Missouri frontier. Jondo, whose big, cool hand had touched my feverish face, whose deep blue eyes had looked love into my eyes when I lay dying on Pawnee Rock! A man without a name!
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