CHAPTER XXXI. SANTA FE
I made haste to present Captain Summerhayes with the shoulder-straps of his new rank, when he joined me in New York.
The orders for Santa Fe reached us in mid-summer at Nantucket. I knew about as much of Santa Fe as the average American knows, and that was nothing; but I did know that the Staff appointment solved the problem of education for us (for Staff officers are usually stationed in cities), and I knew that our frontier life was over. I welcomed the change, for our children were getting older, and we were ourselves approaching the age when comfort means more to one than it heretofore has.
Jack obeyed his sudden orders, and I followed him as soon as possible.
Arriving at Santa Fe in the mellow sunlight of an October day, we were met by my husband and an officer of the Tenth Infantry, and as we drove into the town, its appearance of placid content, its ancient buildings, its great trees, its clear air, its friendly, indolent-looking inhabitants, gave me a delightful feeling of home. A mysterious charm seemed to possess me. It was the spell which that old town loves to throw over the strangers who venture off the beaten track to come within her walls.
Lying only eighteen miles away, over a small branch road from Llamy (a station on the Atchison and Topeka Railroad), few people take the trouble to stop over to visit it. "Dead old town," says the commercial traveller, "nothing doing there."
And it is true.
But no spot that I have visited in this country has thrown around me the spell of enchantment which held me fast in that sleepy and historic town.
The Governor's Palace, the old plaza, the ancient churches, the antiquated customs, the Sisters' Hospital, the old Convent of Our Lady of Loretto, the soft music of the Spanish tongue, I loved them all.