But in my waking hours, in spite of the gravity of conditions that
troubled Esmond Clarenden, in spite of the terrible tidings of daily
killings on the unprotected plains, I forgot everything except the girl
beside me as I went with her and Mat and the children to the new home in
the village of Burlingame beside the Santa Fe Trail.
Eloise St. Vrain had come up to Kansas to let the green prairies shut
out the memory of tall red mesas. About the little town of Burlingame
the prairies were waiting for her eyes to see. It nestled beside a deep
creek under the shelter of forest trees, with the green prairie lapping
up to its edges on every side. The trail wound round the shoulder of a
low hill, and, crossing the stream, it made the main street of the
town, then wandered on westward to where a rim of ground shut the view
of its way from the settlement under the trees by the creek. A stanch
little settlement it was, and, like many Kansas towns of the '60's, with
big, but never-to-be realized, ambition to become a city. Into its life
and up-building Rex Krane was to throw his good-natured Yankee
shrewdness, and Mat her calm, generous spirit; vanguards they were,
among the home-makers of a great State.
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