"Father and mother are very well," he said, speaking slowly and very
distinctly in a low voice; there was only the slightest trace of an
accent. "They grew younger when Juanita and I came home."

"How is Juanita?" inquired Tom with a deep and courteous interest.

Juarez smiled with a flash of his strong, white teeth.

"Ah, Juanita, she too is well. Very pretty girl. Tall and very strong,
but no more than that like an Indian. Her eyes are blue and hair black,
and her skin it is not bad either. Juanita she likewise is a child. She
sent her love and thanks to the three boys who rescued her. How is that
for high?"

We laughed. His grafting of a slang phrase on his precise English was
amusing.

"My mother love Juanita very much. She is much comfortable for her. I
tell father and mother I stay for awhile on the farm, but by and by
leave and go with Jim and Tom and Jo. Out in the mountains, over the
plains, follow the trail once more. See?"

"Yes, perfectly, Juarez," I said.

"I tell my own people I cannot sleep under a roof. I die, no air. I
cannot drive fat, slow horses to town. I cannot pitch hay into a wagon
or dig up the potato from the ground. No, No! They understand. I have
one letter for you all from father and mother."

He extracted it from the inside of his shirt where it was fastened. We
read it, sitting on the top of our ship's cabin. It contained many
messages of good will for us and of affection.

They said that they were perfectly reconciled to having their son Juarez
traveling with us. That they realized that he could not be contented on
a farm after having spent nearly all his life among the Indians. Also we
must be sure to visit them before we returned East.

It was a good letter and we appreciated every word of it. We seemed
united with the outside world once more, and we felt doubly fortified
to have our tried comrade, Juarez, with us. There had been, as you
remember, a natural friendship between Juarez and Jim. But now, Juarez
accepted both Tom and me as comrades, something he had not done before,
which we remembered, if you do not.

In appearance, Juarez was no longer the Indian, except for the lithe
grace of his movements and his tireless endurance. There was also a
certain dignity of reticence that he had derived from them. His dark
hair was neatly cut and he wore a grey flannel shirt and blue trousers.
The greatest change was in his eyes. They were of a mild brown and had
lost that black