, 1905-02-01
''BOY -
CONTINUED from Page n

Wen rest here till night comes, or
wei be cut off, and then We'll start.
To the north and east, Sevadra said
But as the sun went down like a red
hot plate n half dozen horsemen SEEM
ed to plunge in upon them, springlng
up from the horizon, gradually resolv-
ing into blue clothes and army caps,
and so into friends, if strangers. Ihey
explained the presence of Il detachment
quartered at Zuni and sent out to quell
a threatened restlessness among the
Navajos. 1t appeared the train had
been under surveillance all the way
along by various Indians whose lines
they had Travelled through. So the
word had been passed along from one
to another, and finally a friendly Naya-
10 had told 1t to a Zuni herding sheep.
On the almost certain chance of finding
the company given out" a relief par
ty had been sent, these keeping on at
the word that two more were still In
the desert.
AS he listened to the tale it was
borne in upon Captain Robinson how
he and his had been kept, as it were,
In the very hollow of a Great Hand
through a trail of unseen dangers, and,
opening his heart, he laid upon its altar
a VOW which grew in after days into
resolve and her to purpose, as one
may grow a passion flower from a
dropped seed. He vowed hat if in the
past he had been an Indifferent, god
less man, each day of the future should
find him at some moment standing
with barred head in acknowledgment of
God.
With one last, blissful wallow in the
marsh, old Lucy was saddled, Boy was
boosted to her back, and, the captain
and a soldier riding double, the cayal-
cade rode away, brave in its numbers.
The waiting train was overtaken and
greetings given, II strange young
nan wringing the captains hand with
effusion in the early dawn and compel
ling Boy to shrink from his proffered
embrace. Was it-could it belt was
the blond young trader from Zuni,
who, impatient on the wings of love,
had left his post and come to snatch
Adelaide from the dangers he fain
would have spared her at the first.
And, weak and worn, Adelaide had
put her tired head on his shoulder, and
he had gathered her limp form to him
self. When, under guard of soldiers,
the shrunken train of two wagons left
for Albuquerque, Adelaide stayed be-
hind, content to be the wife of a COM
parative stranger and the only white
woman in Zuni.
Next day the captains wife was
busy sewing as she tended the child,
who, with good food, had grown better
and brighter.
Making something new mother?"
the captain asked.
mo; letting down the hen of one
of Boys dresses she answered, thus
briefly introducing him to a crisis.
Another pang smote the captain, and
he was not astonished when some one
told him by and by about the white
lock bleaching his temples, for, too,
the youngest child grew too sick to
care about the beaded moccasins that
had been her pride, as having been EN-
broidered by IA squaw and bartered
from a brave (the cowardD. And when,
at Albuquerque, Sevadra's wife and
daughter came to their campfire again
their panied faces spoke the universal
language of sympathy, for the child
was dead-from the want and exposure
1t had suffered.
lone in Zuni and one in Albu-
%querque!' mourned the captain, and
for a moment he stood. with hat in hand,
before his God, who had both preserved
and taken away; then, with stout heart
still unconquered, by another route set
his face toward California, with her
long horned cattle.
AS for Boy, she picked up her skirts
now and then that she might fling
her heels in the old way, but a new and
strange demeanor had fallen upon her,
which her father sadly called the
fight of time"
When to the green valley in Califor-
MIA there came a letter from the Iowa
river bottoms reading, Come back
to the old home, to your eldest broth
er's gold wedding; let us all stand
together by the graves in the Gene
terry again. the captain lifted his
srandchild to his knee-Boy's baby
and remembered the past. Then,
taking pen and paper, he wrote in a
trembling hand, My regrets"
A brave man is one whose bluff
hasn't been called.
A Mark Twain anccuote.