"Two weeks! We are ready to start right after supper," we declared.
"Oh, I have other matters first," Uncle Esmond said. "Beverly, you must
go up to Fort Leavenworth and arrange a lot of things with Banney for
this trip. He's to go, too, because military escort is short this
season."
"Suits me!" Beverly declared. "Old Bill Banney and I always could get
along together. And this infant here?"
"I'm going to send Gail down to the Catholic Mission, in Kansas. You
remember little Eloise St. Vrain, of course?" Uncle Esmond asked.
"We do!" Beverly assured him. "Pretty as a doll, gritty as a sand-bar,
snappy as a lobster's claw--she dwells within my memory yet."
All girls were little children to us, for the scheme of things had not
included them in our affairs.
I threw a handful of grass in the boy's face, and Uncle Esmond went on.
"She's been at St. Ann's School at the Osage Mission down on the Neosho
River for two or three years, and now she is going to St. Louis. In
these troublesome times on the border, if I have a personal interest, I
feel safer if some big six-footer whom I can trust comes along as an
escort from the Neosho to the Missouri," Uncle Esmond explained.
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