Vanguards of the Plains | Page 4

we couldn't remember. And now he's going down there himself, and he's going to take you boys with him. That's what Bev is trying to get out, or keep back."
"Whoopee-diddle-dee!" Beverly shouted, throwing himself backward and kicking up his heels.
I jumped up and capered about in glee at the thought of such a journey. But my heart-throb of childish delight was checked, mid-beat.
"Won't Mat go, too?" I asked, with a sudden pain at my throat. Mat Nivers was a part of life to me.
The smile fell away from the girl's lips. Her big, sunshiny gray eyes and her laughing good nature always made her beautiful to Beverly and me.
"I don't want to go and leave Mat," I insisted.
"Oh, I do," Beverly declared, boastingly. "It would be real nice and jolly without her. And what could a little girl do 'way out on the prairies, and no mother to take care of her, while we were shooting Indians?"
He sprang up and took aim at the fort with an imaginary bow and arrow. But there was a hollow note in his voice as if it covered a sob.
"She can shoot Indians as good as you can, Beverly Clarenden, and, besides, there isn't anybody to mother her here but Jondo, and I reckon he'll go with us, won't he?" I urged.
Mothering was not in my stock of memories. The heart-hunger of the orphan child had been eased by the gentleness of Jondo, the championship of Mat Nivers, and the sure defense of Esmond Clarenden, who said little to children, and was instinctively trusted by all of them.
With Beverly's banter the smile came back quickly to Mat's eyes. It was never lost from them long at a time.
"Beverly Clarenden, you keep your little mouth shut and your big ears open," she began, laughingly. "I know the whole sheboodle better 'n any of you, and I'm not teasing and whimpering both at the same time, neither. Bev doesn't know anything except what I've told him, and I wasn't through when you got here, Gail. There is going to be a big war in Texas, and our soldiers are going to go, and to win, too. Just look up at that flag there, and remember now, boys, that wherever the Stars and Stripes go they stay."
"Who told you all that?" Beverly inquired.
"The stars up in the sky told me that last night," Mat replied, pulling down the corners of her mouth solemnly. "But Uncle Esmond hasn't anything to do with the war, nor soldiers, only like he has been doing here," the girl went on. "He's a store-man, a merchant, and I guess he's just about as good as a general--a colonel, anyhow. But he's too short to fight, and too fat to run."
"He isn't any coward," Beverly objected.
"Who said he was?" Mat inquired. "He's one of them usefulest men that keeps things going everywhere."
"I saw a real Mexican come up out of the ravine awhile ago and go straight over toward Uncle Esmond's store. What do you suppose he came here for? Is he a soldier from down there?" I asked.
"Oh, just one Mexican don't mean anything anywhere, but the war in Mexico has something to do with our going to Santa F��, even if Uncle Esmond is just a nice little store-man. That's all a girl knows about things," Beverly insisted.
Mat opened her big eyes wide and looked straight at the boy.
"I don't pretend to know what I don't know, but I'll bet a million billion dollars there is something else besides just all this war stuff. I can't tell it, I just feel it. Anyhow, I'm to stay here with Aunty Boone till you come back. Girls can be trusted anywhere, but it may take the whole Army of the West, yet, to follow up and look after two little runty boys. And let me tell you something, Bev, something I heard Aunty Boone say this morning." She said: "Taint goin' to be more 'n a minnit now till them boys grows up an' grows together, same size, same age. They been little and big, long as they goin' to be. Now you know what you're coming to."
Mat was digging in the ground with a stick, and she flipped a clod at Beverly with the last words. Both of us had once expected to marry her when we grew up, unless Jondo should carry her away as his bride before that time. He was a dozen years older than Mat, who was only fourteen and small for her age. A flush always came to her cheeks when we talked of Jondo in that way. We didn't know why.
We sat silent for a little while. A vague sense of desolateness, of the turning-places of life, as real to children as to older folk, seemed