That night Beverly Clarenden and I were in fairyland.

"It's the princess, Bev, the princess we were looking for," I joyously
asserted. "And, oh, Bev, she is beautiful, but snappy-like, too. She
called me a 'big brown bob-cat', and then she apologized, just as nice
as could be."

"And this little Marcos cuss, he'll be the ogre," Beverly declared. "But
who'll we have for the giant? That priest, footing it out by that dry
creek-thing they call a 'royo?"

"Oh no, no! He and Jondo made up together, and Jondo's nobody's bad man
even in a story. It will be that Ferdinand Ramero," I insisted. "But,
say, Bev, Jondo wrote a new name on the register this evening, or
somebody wrote it for him, maybe. It wasn't his own writing. 'Jean
Deau.' I saw it in big, round, back-slanting letters. Why did he do
that?"

"Well, I reckon that's his real name in big, round, back-slanting
letters down here," Beverly replied. "It's French, and we have just been
spelling it like it sounds, that's all."

"Well, maybe so," I commented, and when I fell asleep it was to dream of
a princess and Jondo by a strange name, but the same Jondo.

The air of New Mexico puts iron into the blood. The trail life had
hardened us all, but the finishing touch for Rex Krane came in the
invigorating breath of that mountain-cooled, sun-cleansed atmosphere of
Santa Fé. Shrewd, philosophic, brave-hearted like his historic ancestry,