“I knowed the morning we picked up Little Blue Flower, back at Pawnee Rock, we was pickin’ up trouble for the rest of the trail.  I see it then.  You can trust a nigger ’cause they never no ’count, but you don’t know what you gettin’ when you trust an Indian.  But, Cla’nden, that Apache Indian, Santan, ain’t goin’ to trouble you no more.  When the world ain’t no fit place for folks they needs helpin’ out of it, and I sees to it they gets it, too.  Whoo-ee!” She paused and leaned against the crooked cypress.  Half turning her face toward us, she continued in a clear, soft voice: 

“That man they call Ramero down in Santy Fee—­I knowed him when he was just Fred Ramer back in the rice-fields country.  His father, old man Ramer, tried to kill me once, ’cause he said I knowed too much.  I helped him into kingdom come right then and saved a lot of misery.  They blamed some other folks, I guess, but they never hunted me up at all.  Good-by, Clan’den, and you, too, Felix, and Dick Verra.  I’ve knowed you all these years, but nobody takes no ‘count of niggers’ knowin’s.  Good-by, Little Lees, and all you boys.  I’ll see you again pretty soon, I’m goin’ back to my desset now.  It’s over yonder just a little way.  Jondo—­but you won’t be John Doe then.  Whoo-ee!”

Aunty Boone slowly settled down beside the cypress, with her face toward her beloved “desset,” and when we went to her a little later, her eyes, still looking eastward, saw nothing earthly any more forever.

Jondo’s face seemed glorified as he caught Aunty Boone’s last words, and his voice was sweet and clear as he looked up at Eloise bending over him.

“Thank God!  It is all made right at last.  Eloise, the charge of murder against your father’s name would have broken the heart of the woman that I always loved—­your mother.  One of us had to bear the shame.  I took the guilt on myself for her sake—­and for yours.  I have walked the trails of my life a nameless man, but I have kept my soul clean in God’s sight, and I know His name will soon be written on my forehead over there.”

He gazed out toward the glorious beauty of the view beyond him, then closed his eyes, and, bravely as he had lived, so bravely he went forth on the Long Trail, leaving a name sweet with the perfume of self-sacrifice and love.

We did not speak of him to Beverly, for our boy had suddenly grown restless, and his blood was threshing furiously in his veins, and he was in pain, but only briefly.

Presently he said, “Let us be alone a little.”  The others drew away.

“Lean down, Gail.  I want to tell you something.”  He smiled sweetly upon me as I bent over him.

“I tried to tell you back on the Smoky Hill, but I’d promised not to.  And honor was something to me still.  But I’m going pretty soon.  So listen!  I loved Eloise always—­always.  But she never cared for me.  She was only my good chum.  I’ve been too happy-hearted all my days, though, Gail, to make a cross of anything that would break me down.  Men differ so, you know, and I never was a dreamer like you.  Turn me a little, won’t you, so that I can see that awful beauty down there.”