“Goodness!” said the hard-faced woman, reprovingly. “Any one would think you a boy to hear you cheer like that, Inza. Don’t do it again! It isn’t proper.”
“Oh, what’s the use to be so awfully proper all the time, Aunt Abby!” laughed the girl, with a little pout. “How can a person help being enthusiastic with the prospect of such adventures ahead! You’ll see things you never saw before, aunt.”
“And goodness knows we shall all be scalped! I suppose I’m foolish to accompany you on such a foolish expedition.”
“Oh, Frank says there is not the least danger of anything like scalping, and St. Geronimo Day is the great holiday with the Pueblo Indians. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“I assure you, Miss Gale, there is no danger of being scalped or troubled at all by the Indians,” said Frank, who with his friends were bound for the Pueblo of Taos, where they were going to witness the Indian celebration which takes place there each year on St. Geronimo Day.
Inza had communicated with her maiden aunt, who lived in Sacramento, after arriving in Santa Barbara, and Miss Gale had been so wrought up by the girl’s letter, which told how her father had tried to force her into a marriage with a “horrid English reprobate,” that she had packed a trunk and hastened to Santa Barbara.
She found Inza had already “shaken” the Englishman, but Bernard Burrage was such a physical wreck that the good-hearted spinster determined to accompany Inza on the trip East and look out for her.
Mr. Burrage had stopped at Santa Fe, hoping the climate might agree with him.
Frank had heard much about the affair at the Pueblo of Taos on St. Geronimo Day, and he took a vote of the Yale Combine about attending.
The club was unanimously in favor of it, and thus we find them leaving the train at Embudo, the nearest railway station to the Pueblo.