mory, for mails were slow in those days and we were poor
letter-writers; and we had wondered how to meet her properly now. But
when the tall, slender girl on the wharf came forward and we looked into
the wide gray eyes of our old-time playmate whom, as little boys, we
had both vowed to marry, we forgot everything in our overwhelming love
for our comrade-in-arms, our jolliest friend and counselor.

"Oh, Mat, you miserable thing!" Beverly bubbled, hugging her in his
arms.

"You are just bigger and sweeter than ever. I mistook you for Aunty
Boone at first," I chimed in, kissing her on each cheek. And we all
bundled away in an old-fashioned, low-swung carriage, happy as children
again, with no barrier between us and the dear playmate of the past.

The new home, on the high crest overlooking the Missouri valley, nestled
deep in the shade of maple and elm trees, a mansion, compared to that
log house of blessed memory at Fort Leavenworth. A winding road led up
the steep slope from a wooded ravine where a trail ran out from the
little city by the river's edge. Vistas of sheer cliff and stretches of
the muddy on-sweeping Missouri and the full-bosomed Kaw, with scrubby
timbered ravines and growing groves of forest trees, offered themselves
at every turn. And from the top of the bluff the world unrolled in a
panorama of nature's own shaping and coloring.

The house was built of stone, with vines climbing about its thick walls,
and broad veranda. And everywhere Mat's hands had put homey touches of
comfort and beauty. An hundredfold did she return to Esmond Clarenden
all the care and protection he had given to her in her orphaned
childhood. And, after all, it was not military outposts, nor railroads,
nor mail-lines alone that pushed back the wilderness frontier. It was
the hand of woman that also builded empire westward.

"Mat's got her wish at last," I said, as we sat with Uncle Esmond after
dinner under a big maple tree and looked out at the far yellow Missouri,
churning its spring floods to foam against the snags along its
high-water bound.

"What's Mat's wish?" Uncle Esmond asked.

"To have a good home and _stay there_. She wished that one night, years
ago back in old Fort Bent. Don't you remember, Bev, when we were out in
the court, and how scared blue we all were when the moon went under a
cloud, and that Indian boy, Santan, was creeping between us and the home
base?"

"No, I don't remember anything except that we wer