fairy-story, isn't it, Gail?" Beverly said
to me one evening, as we rounded a low hill and followed a deep little
creek down to a shallow fording-place. "All we want is a real princess
and a real giant. Look at these big trees all you can, for Jondo says
pretty soon we won't see trees at all."

"Maybe we'll have Indians instead of giants," I suggested. "When do you
suppose we'll begin to see the real _bad_ Indians; not just Osages and
Kaws and sneaky little Otoes and Pot'wat'mies like we've seen all our
lives?"

"Sooner than we expect," Beverly replied. "Could Mat Nivers ever be a
real princess, do you reckon?"

"I know she won't," I said, firmly, the vision of that fateful day at
Fort Leavenworth coming back as I spoke--the vision of level green
prairies, with gray rocks and misty mountain peaks beyond. And
somewhere, between green prairies and misty peaks, a sweet child face
with big dark eyes looking straight into mine. I must have been a
dreamer. And in my young years I wondered often why things should be so
real to me that nobody else could ever understand.

"I used to think long ago at the fort that I'd marry Mat some day,"
Beverly said, reminiscently, as if he were looking across a lapse of
years instead of days.

"So did I," I declared. "But I don't want to now. Maybe our princess
will be at the end of the trail, Bev, a real princess. Still, I love Mat
just as if she were my sister," I hastened to add.

"So do I," Beverly responded, heartily.

A little grain of pity for her loss of prestige was mingling with our
subconscious feeling of a need for her help in the day of the giant, if
not in the reign of the princess.

We were trudging along behind our wagon toward the camping-place for the
night, which lay beyond the crossing of the stream. We had lived much
out of doors at Fort Leavenworth, but the real out of doors of this
journey was telling on us already in our sturdy, up-leaping strength, to
match each new hardship. We ate like wolves, slept like dead things, and
forgot what it meant to be tired. And as our muscles hardened our minds
expanded. We were no longer little children. Youth had set its seal upon
us on the day when our company had started out from Independence toward
the great plains of the Middle West. Little care had we for the
responsibility and perils of such a journey; and because our thoughts
were buoyant our bodies were vigorous.

Our camp that night was under wide-spreading elm-tr