I feel it yet, and the soft touch of her hand as it lay in mine
a moment.
I think we chatted all together for a while. I had a wound at Malvern
Hill that used to make me dizzy. That, or an older wound, made my pulse
frantic now. I know that it was a rare June day, and the breeze off the
river came pouring caressingly over the bluff. I remember later that
Uncle Esmond and Jondo and Rex Krane went to the Clarenden store, and
that Mat was helping Aunty Boone inside, while Beverly let the two
little Kranes take him down the slope to see some baby squirrels or
something. And Eloise and I were left alone beneath the trees, where
once we had sat together long ago in the "Moon of the Peach Blossom."
For me, all the strength of the years wherein I had built a wall around
my longing love, all my manly loyalty to my cousin's claims, were swept
away, as I have seen the big Missouri floods, joined by the lesser Kaw,
sweep out bridges, snapping like sticks before their power.
"Eloise, it seems a hundred years since I saw you and Little Blue Flower
ride away up the San Christobal River trail out of my sight," I said.
"It has been a long time, but we are not yet old.
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