'll be in the Plazzer in two or three minutes."

The drivers flourished their whips, the mules caught their spirit, and
with bump and lurch and rattle we swung down the narrow crack between
adobe walls that ended before the old Exchange Hotel at the corner of
the Plaza.

This open square in the center of the city was shaded by trees and
littered with refuse. The Palace of the Governors fronted it along the
entire north side, a long, low, one-story structure whose massive adobe
walls defy the wearing years. Compared to the kingly palaces of my
imagination, this royal dwelling seemed a very commonplace thing, and
the wide portal, or veranda, that ran along its front looked like one of
the sheds about the barracks at the fort rather than an entranceway for
rulers. Yet this was the house of a ruler hostile to that flag to which
I had thrown a good-by kiss, up at Fort Leavenworth.

On the other three sides of the Plaza were other low adobe buildings,
for the business of the city faced this central square.

A crowd was gathered there when we reached it. Somebody standing before
the Palace of the Governors was haranguing in fiery Spanish, if gesture
and oral vehemence are true tokens.

As our wagons rumbled up to the corner of the square the crowd broke up
with a shout.

"Los Americanos! Los Carros!"

The cry went up everywhere as the rabble left the speaker to flock about
us--men, women, children, Mexican, Spanish, Indian, with now and then a
Saxon face among them. Our outfit was as well appointed as such a
journey's end permitted. We were in our best clothes--clean-shaven
gentlemen, well-dressed boys, and one girl, neat and comely in a
dark-blue gown of thin stuff with white lace at throat and wrist; and
last, and biggest of all, Aunty Boone, in a bright-green lawn with
little white dots all over it.

As I sat on my pony beside my uncle's wagon, I caught sight of the slim
figure of Little Blue Flower, well back in the shade of the Plaza. She
was watching Beverly, who sat in Jondo's wagon, staring at the crowd and
seeing no one in particular. A minute later a tall young Indian boy
stepped in front of her, and when he moved away she was gone.

Many men came forward to greet Esmond Clarenden, and there were many
inquiries regarding his goods and many exclamations of surprise that he
had come alone with so valuable a cargo.

It was the first time that Beverly and I had seen him among his equals.
At Fort Leavenworth,