Vanguards of the Plains | Page 6

From that time we were no longer little and big to each other--we were
comrades.
It must have been nearly midnight when I crept out of bed and slipped
into the big room where Uncle Esmond and Jondo sat by the fireplace,
talking together.
"Hello, little night-hawk! Come here and roost," Jondo said, opening

his arms to me.
I slid into their embrace and snuggled my head against his broad
shoulder, listening to all that was said. Three months later the little boy
had become a little man, and my cuddling days had given place to the
self-reliance of the fearless youngster of the trail.
"Why do you make this trip now, Esmond?" Jondo asked at length,
looking straight into my uncle's face.
"I want to get down there right now because I want to get a grip on
trade conditions. I can do better after the war if I do. It won't last long,
and we are sure to take over a big piece of ground there when it is over.
And when that is settled commerce must do the real building-up of the
country. I want to be a part of that thing and grow with it. Why do you
go with me?"
My uncle looked directly at Jondo, although he asked the question
carelessly.
"To help you cross the plains. You know the redskins get worse every
trip," Jondo answered, lightly.
I stared at both of them until Jondo said, laughingly:
"You little owl, what are you thinking about?"
"I think you are telling each other stories," I replied, frankly.
For somehow their faces made me think of Beverly's face out on the
parade-ground that morning, when he had lifted it and looked at Mat
Nivers; and their voices, deep bass as they were, sounded like Beverly's
voice whispering between his sobs, before he went to sleep.
Both men smiled and said nothing. 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. It is no wonder that I remember that April day as
if it were but yesterday. Such days come only to childhood, and
oftentimes when no one of older years can see clearly enough to
understand the bigness of their meaning to the child who lives through
them.

All of my life I had heard stories of the East, of New York and St.
Louis, where there were big houses and wonderful stores. And of
Washington, where there was a President, and a Congress, and a
strange power that could fill and empty Fort Leavenworth at will. I had
heard of the Great Lakes, and of cotton-fields, and tobacco-plantations,
and sugar-camps, and ships, and steam-cars. I had pictured these things
a thousand times in my busy imagination and had longed to see them.
But from that day they went out of my life-dreams. Henceforth I
belonged to the prairies of the West. No one but myself took account of
this, nor guessed that a life-trend had had its commencement in the
small events of one unimportant day.

II
A DAUGHTER OF CANAAN
One stone the more swings to her place In that dread Temple of Thy
worth; It is enough that through Thy grace I saw naught common on
Thy earth.
The next morning I was wakened by the soft voice of Aunty Boone, our
cook, saying:
"You better get up! Revilly blow over at the fort long time ago. Wonder
it didn't blow your batter-cakes clear away. Mat and Beverly been up
since 'fore sunup."
Aunty Boone was the biggest woman I have ever seen. Not the tallest,
maybe--although she measured up to a height of six feet and two
inches--not the fattest, but a woman with the biggest human frame,
overlaid with steel-hard muscles. Yet she was not, in her way, clumsy
or awkward. She walked with a free stride, and her every motion
showed a powerful muscular control. Her face was jet-black, with keen
shining eyes, and glittering white teeth. In my little child-world she was
the strangest creature I had ever known. In the larger world whither the
years of my manhood have led me she holds the same place.
She had been born a princess of royal blood, heir to a queenship in her
tribe in a far-away African kingdom. In her young womanhood, so the
tale ran, the slave-hunter had found her and driven her aboard a
slave-ship bound for the American coast. He never