Only a gripping necessity could have led a man like Esmond Clarenden to
take the trail alone in the certain perils of the plains during the
middle '40's. I did not know until long afterward how brave was the
loving heart that beat in that little merchant's bosom. A devotee of
ease and refinement, he walked the prairie trails unafraid, and made the
desert serve his will.

The dusk of evening had fallen long before we pitched camp that night
under the big oak-trees in the Neosho River valley outside of the little
trading-post. Up in the village a light or two gleamed faintly. From
somewhere in the darkness came the sound of a violin, mingling with loud
talking and boisterous laughter in a distant drinking-den. It would be
some time until moon-rise, and the shadowy places thickened to
blackness.

In fair weather all of us except Mat Nivers slept in the open. On stormy
nights the younger men occupied one of the wagons, Jondo and Beverly
another, and my uncle and myself the third. Mat had the "baby-cab" as
Beverly called it, with Aunty Boone underneath it. The ground was Aunty
Boone's kingdom. She sat upon it, ate from it, slept on it, and seemed
no more soiled than a snake would be by the contact with it.

"Some day I goes plop under it, and be ground myself," she used to say.
"Good black soil I make, too," she always added, with her low chuckle.

To-night we were all in the wagons, for the spring rains had made the
Neosho valley damp and muddy. I was just on the edge of dreamless
slumber when a low voice that seemed to cut the darkness caught my ear.

"Cla'nden! Cla'nden!" it hissed, softly.