Jondo's voice trailed off into silence and I knew what his hurt was--that he was the man whom Mary Marchland had loved, from whom Fred Ramer, by his cruel machinations, had separated her--"_and although they loved each other always, they never saw each other again_." Poor Jondo! What a man among men this unknown freighter of the plains might have been--and what a loss to the plains in the best of the trail years if Jondo had never dared its dangers for the safety of the generations to come. But the thought of Eloise, driven out momentarily by Jondo's story, came rushing in again. "You said you put a ring around Ramero to keep him in Santa Fé. Can't we get Eloise outside of it?" I urged, anxiously. "Maybe I should have said that Father Josef put it around him for me," Jondo replied. "He confessed his crimes fully to the Church. He couldn't get by Father Josef. Here he is much honored and secure and we let him alone. The disgrace he holds the secret of--he alone--is that the father of Eloise killed his father, the crime for which the foster-brother fell. Ramero as guardian of Eloise and her property legally could have kept her here. Only a man like Clarenden would have dared to take her away, though he had the pleading call of her mother's last wish. Gail, I have told you the heart-history of half a dozen men. If this had stopped with us we could forgive after a while, but it runs down to you and Beverly and Eloise and Marcos, who will carry out his father's plans to the letter. So the battle is all to be fought over again. Let me leave you a minute or two. I'll not be gone long." I sat alone, staring out at the shadowy court and, above it, the blue night-sky of New Mexico inlaid with stars, until a rush of feet in the hall and a shout of inquiry told me that Beverly Clarenden was hunting for me. Meantime the girl in Mexican dress, who had come out of the church with Father Josef when he came to greet Eloise and me, had passed unnoticed through the Plaza and out on the way leading to the northeast. Here she came to the blind adobe wall of La Garita, whose olden purpose one still may read in the many bullet-holes in its brown sides. Here she paused, and as the evening shadows lengthened the dress and wall blended their dull tones together. Beverly Clarenden, who had gone with Rex Krane up to Fort Marcy that evening, had left his companion to watch the sunset and dream of Mat back on the Missouri bluff, while he wandered down La Garita. He did not see the Mexican woman standing motionless, a dark splotch against a dun wall, until a soft Hopi voice called, eagerly, "Beverly, Beverly." The black scarf fell from the bright face, and Indian garb--not Po-a-be, the student of St. Ann's and the guest of the Clarenden home, with the white Grecian robe and silver headband set with coral pendants, as Beverly had seen her last in the side porch on the night of Mat's wedding, but Little Blue Flower, the Indian of the desert lands, stood before him.