"O Uncle! Please, please hurry! If they do come, they may try to scalp everyone; and if they see our heads tied up, they will think we have already been scalped."
"Is that the way you would try to deceive the poor Indians? I am surprised at you! Come here and take a look at them."
Mary timidly peeped out the window; but instead of a band of braves in war paint and feathers, she saw only two men standing on the platform, quietly talking.
"You don't mean to say those are Indians, Uncle! Why, they look just like men."
"And what are Indians, eh? birds?"
"Now, Uncle! But I s'pose those are tame Indians, not wild ones."
"Yes, those men are civilized. We are now in Oklahoma, and by bedtime we shall be in Texas with one more night's ride before us."
The little girl was delighted that the journey was nearing its end. Though the Doctor had taken her out to walk and run about on the station platform whenever the train had stopped for any length of time, she was tired of sitting still so long and would have been quite happy if she could have left the train and enjoyed a good romp over the vast plains which stretched as far as the eye could see.
The next morning, Mary was perfectly sure that she knew just how Rip van Winkle felt when he came down from the mountain after his long sleep. She and her uncle had boarded the train in New York in the midst of a whirling snowstorm; and they stepped off it at San Antonio into the very mildest of spring weather. She looked with delight at the grass and trees and beautiful palms, some of them as high as the second story windows; and if it had not been for Amelia Anabelle's wraps and the new books and games in her trunk, she could not have believed that scarcely two weeks had passed since Christmas.
Instead of staying at a hotel, the Doctor had arranged to board at a big, old-fashioned house, standing far back from the street in the midst of fine old trees. Mary liked this plan very much, and soon became a great favorite with everyone there. She spent most of the time outdoors; and in the fresh air and warm, bright sunshine, she grew stronger day by day. The Doctor, true to the promise he had made when she found she could not go to Rome with her parents, lost no time in getting a pony for her and a horse for himself; and every morning they went for a ride through the parks of the city. The one Mary liked best was Brackenridge Park, where long, gray streamers of Spanish moss hang from the trees, and bright redbirds flit among the branches. She liked the plazas, too,—big open squares in the heart of the city, laid out like little parks with fountains, trees, and beautiful flowers. And she liked the San Antonio River, the "Old Santone," as the natives lovingly call it, with its banks bordered with myrtle and cresses and shaded by old trees. And as they rode through the beautiful city, the Doctor told the little girl of the saintly Franciscan Fathers, who, more than a century before La Salle sailed down the Mississippi, and almost a century before the Mayflower brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth Rock, came to the great, wild, lonely, Texas plains to bring the light of Faith to the savage Indians roaming there. It was the Monks of the same order who founded the city of San Antonio in 1689, and who built the Cathedral of San Fernando and the Mission Chapel of the Alamo; also, the four other Mission Churches which lie from two to eight miles outside the city.