"Won't you stay, too?" I asked, suddenly realizing that this beautiful
girl might slip away as easily as she had come into my life here.
Eloise laughed at my earnestness.
"I couldn't stay long," she said, lightly.
"And why not?" I burst in, eagerly. "What have you in Santa Fe?"
"A little money and a lot of memories," she replied, seriously.
"Oh, I can bring the money up to Kansas for you in an ox-train easily
enough, and you could blow up the old mud-box of a town and not hurt a
hair on the head of a single memory. You know you can take them anywhere
you go. I do mine."
"I'm going to St. Louis, anyhow," Eloise returned, "and you have no
sacred memories--boys don't care for things like girls do."
"They don't? They don't? And I have forgotten the little girl who was
afraid one moonlit night out in the court at Fort Bent and asked me that
I shouldn't ever let Marcos pull her hair. Yes, boys forget."
I laid my hand on her arm and bent forward to look into her face. For
just one flash those big dark eyes looked straight at me, with something
in their depths that I shall never forget.
Then she moved lightly from me.
"Oh, all children remember, I suppose.
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