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Vanguards of the Plains by Margaret Hill McCarter
page 98 of 367 (26%)
walls defy the wearing years. Compared to the kingly palaces of my
imagination, this royal dwelling seemed a very commonplace thing, and
the wide portal, or veranda, that ran along its front looked like one of
the sheds about the barracks at the fort rather than an entranceway for
rulers. Yet this was the house of a ruler hostile to that flag to which
I had thrown a good-by kiss, up at Fort Leavenworth.

On the other three sides of the Plaza were other low adobe buildings,
for the business of the city faced this central square.

A crowd was gathered there when we reached it. Somebody standing before
the Palace of the Governors was haranguing in fiery Spanish, if gesture
and oral vehemence are true tokens.

As our wagons rumbled up to the corner of the square the crowd broke up
with a shout.

"Los Americanos! Los Carros!"

The cry went up everywhere as the rabble left the speaker to flock about
us--men, women, children, Mexican, Spanish, Indian, with now and then a
Saxon face among them. Our outfit was as well appointed as such a
journey's end permitted. We were in our best clothes--clean-shaven
gentlemen, well-dressed boys, and one girl, neat and comely in a
dark-blue gown of thin stuff with white lace at throat and wrist; and
last, and biggest of all, Aunty Boone, in a bright-green lawn with
little white dots all over it.

As I sat on my pony beside my uncle's wagon, I caught sight of the slim
figure of Little Blue Flower, well back in the shade of the Plaza. She
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