Vanguards of the Plains: A Romance of the Old Santa Fé TrailMcCarter, Margaret Hill
History
Vanguards of the Plains: A Romance of the Old Santa Fé Trail
McCarter, Margaret Hill
Santa Fe National Historic Trail -- Fiction; West (U.S.) -- History -- Fiction
The next morning three of us waited in the stage before the door of St.
Ann's Academy. A thin-faced nun, who was called Sister Anita, sat beside
Eloise St. Vrain, her snowy head-dress, with her black veil and somber
garments, contrasting sharply with the silver-gray hat and traveling
costume of her companion. Hints of pink-satin linings to coat-collar and
pocket-flaps, and the pink facing of the broad hat-brim, seemed borrowed
from the silver and pink of misty morning skies, with the golden hair
catching the glint of all the early sunbeams. There was a tenderness in
the bright face, the sadness which parting puts temporarily into young
countenances. The girl looked lovingly at the church, and St. Ann's, and
the green fields reaching up to the edge of the mission premises.
As we waited, Mother Bridget and Little Blue Flower came slowly out of
the academy door. The good mother's arm was around the Indian girl, and
her eyes filled with tears as she looked down affectionately at the dark
face.
Little Blue Flower, true to her heritage, gave no sign of grief save for
the burning light in her big, dry eyes. She listened silently to Mother
Bridget's parting words of advice and submitted without response to the
embrace and gentle good-by kiss on her brown forehead.
The good woman gazed into my face with penetrating eyes, as if to
measure my trustworthiness.
"You will see that no harm comes to my little Po-a-be. The wolves of the
forest are not the only danger for the unprotected lambs," she said,
earnestly.
"I'll do my best, Mother Bridget," I responded, feeling a swelling pride
in my double charge.
Mother Bridget patted Eloise's hand and turned away. She loved all of
her girls, but her heart went out most to the Indian maidens whom she
led toward her civilization and her sacred creed.
As she turned away, the priest who was to go with us came out of the
church door to the stage.
Little Blue Flower sat with the other two women, facing us, her
dark-green dress with her rich coloring making as strong a contrast as
the nun's black robe against the pink-touched silver-gray gown. And the
Indian face, strong, impenetrable, with a faintly feminine softening of
the racial features, and the luminous black eyes, gave setting to the
pure Saxon type of her companion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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