en. By the holy Jerusalem, the military lost one grand
commander when you chose a college instead of West Point, and the East
lost one well-bred gentleman from its circles of commerce and culture
when you elected to do business on the old Santa Fe Trail instead of
Broadway. But I reckon the West will need just such men as you long
after the frontier fort has become a central point in the country's
civilized area. And, blast you, Clarenden, blast your very picture! No
man can help liking you. Not even the devil if he had the chance. Not
one man in ten thousand would dare to make that trip right now. You've
got the courage of a colonel and the judgment of a judge. Go to Santa
Fe! We may meet you coming back. If we do, and you need us, command us!"

He gave a courteous salute, and the two began to talk of other things;
among them the purposes that were bringing young men westward.

"So Banney, right out of old blue-grassy Kentucky, is going to back out
of here and go with you," the colonel remarked.

"I've hired him to drive one team. It's a lark for him, but the army
would be a lark just the same," Esmond Clarenden declared. "He says he
is to kill rattlesnakes and Mexicans, while Jondo kills Indians and I
sit tight on top of the bales of goods to keep the wind from blowing
them away. And the boys are to be made bridle-wise, _plains-broke_ for
future freighting. That's all that life means to him right now."

I do not know what else was said, nor what I heard and what I dreamed
after that. If this journey meant a lark to a grown-up boy, it meant a
pilgrimage through fairyland to a young boy like myself.

And so the new life opened to us; and if the way was fraught with
hardship and danger, it also taught us courage and endurance. Nor must
we be measured by the boy life of to-day. Children lived the grown-up
life then. It was all there was for them to live.

The yellow Missouri boiled endlessly along by the foot of the bluff. The
flag flapped broadly in the strong breeze that blew in from the west;
the square log house--the only home we had ever known--looked forlornly
after us, with its two front windows with blinds half drawn, like two
half-closed, watching eyes; the cottonwoods and elms, the tiny
storehouse--everything--grew suddenly very dear to us. The fort
buildings throwing long shadows in the early morning, the level-topped
forests east of the Missouri River, and the budding woodland that
overdraped the ravines