"This is my
home now."
"Your new Mexican homes are thick-walled, and you live all on the
inside," I said, as we paused at the doorway. "They make me think of the
lower invertebrates, hard-shelled, soft-bodied animals. Up on the Kansas
prairies and the Missouri bluffs we have a central vetebra--the family
hearth-stone--and we live all around it. That is the people who have
them do. There isn't much home life for a freighter of the plains
anywhere. Good by, Little Lees." I took her offered hand. "I'm glad you
have let me be your friend, a hard-shelled bull-whacker like me."
The street was full of shadows and the evening air was chill as the door
closed on that sweet face and cloud of golden hair. But the pressure of
warm white fingers lingered long in my sense of touch as I retraced my
steps to the trail's end. At the church door I saw Father Josef still
waiting, as if watching for somebody.
All that Eloise had told me ran through my mind, but I felt sure that
neither financial nor churchly influence in Santa Fe could be turned to
evil purposes so long as men like Felix Narveo and Father Josef were
there. And then I thought of Esmond Clarenden, himself neither Mexican
nor Roman Catholic, who, nevertheless, drew to himself such
fair-dealing, high-minded men as these, always finding the best to aid
him, and combating the worst with daring fearlessness.
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