king out at the strange, entrancing New Mexican landscape.

"To-morrow we put on our best clothes and enter the city," my uncle
broke the silence. "We have managed to pull through so far, and we
intend to keep on pulling till we unload back at Independence again.
But these are unsafe times and we are in an unsafe country. We are going
to do business and get out of it again as soon as possible. I shall ask
you all to be ready to leave at a minute's notice, if you are coming
back with me!"

"Now you see why I didn't join the army, don't you, Krane?" Bill Banney
said, aside. "I wanted to work under a real general."

Then turning to my uncle, he added:

"I'm already contracted for the round trip, Clarenden."

"You are going to start back just as if there were no dangers to be
met?" Rex Krane inquired.

"As if there were dangers to be _met_, not run from," Esmond Clarenden
replied.

"Clarenden," the young Bostonian began, "you got away from that drunken
mob at Independence with your children, your mules, and your big Daniel
Boone. You started out when war was ragin' on the Mexican frontier, and
never stopped a minute because you had to come it alone from Council
Grove. You shook yourself and family right through the teeth of that
Mexican gang layin' for you back there. You took Little Trailing Arbutus
at Pawnee Rock out of pure sympathy when you knew it meant a fight at
sun-up, six against fifty. And there would have been a bloody one, too,
but for that merciful West India hurricane bustin' up the show. You
pulled us up the Arkansas River, and straddled the Gloriettas, with
every danger that could ever be just whistlin' about our ears. And now
you sit there and murmur softly that 'we are in an unsafe country and
these are unsafe times,' so we'd better be toddlin' back home right
soon. I want to tell _you_ something now."

He paused and looked at Mat Nivers. Always he looked at Mat Nivers, who
since the first blush one noonday long ago, so it seemed, now, never
appeared to know or care where he looked. He must have had such a sister
himself; I felt sure of that now.

"I want to tell _you_," Rex repeated, "that I'm goin' to stay with you.
There's something _safe_ about you. And then," he added, carelessly, as
he gazed out toward the darkening plain below us, "my mother always said
you could tie to a man who was good to children. And you've been good to
this infant Kentuckian here."

He flung out a hand toward Bill