Colonel's wife can do what she pleases now!"

For in the days of which this chronicle tells, Santa Fé was still a
military post, and the wife of the commanding officer had been all winter
a thorn in the flesh of Mrs. Coolidge. The Colonel had been recently
transferred from an Eastern post; and his wife, who had never been West
before, had supposed that of course she would at once become the social
leader of Santa Fe. Her disappointment was bitter when she found that
place already firmly held and learned that she, the wife of a colonel in
the army, and just from the East, would have to yield first place to the
wife of a mere civilian who had lived in the West for a dozen years. She
rebelled and tried to start a clique of her own, and all winter she had
made trouble among the Select by getting up affairs which clashed with
Colonel Kate's plans, and by introducing innovations of which Colonel
Kate did not approve. Mrs. Coolidge had no fears for her social
supremacy,--she had reigned too long for the thought of downfall to be
possible,--but she was tired of being crossed and annoyed, and she
purposed with one audacious blow to humble the Colonel's wife and put an
end to her pretensions.

The plan came to her suddenly while she talked with old Ambrosio's
daughter in the street at Acoma. She saw that Barbara was discontented
and unhappy, and that she longed to return to even so much of the life of
the whites as she had found in the Indian schools. Colonel Kate pitied
her and determined to help her. She was saying to herself that the girl
was certainly intelligent and attractive, when she suddenly realized that
this Indian maid was gifted with that indefinable but most potent of
feminine attractions--personal charm. And then, like an inspiration, the
idea took possession of her mind. She turned impulsively to Barbara: