Caravans to Santa Fe

Steven and Juan were lost in the world of vast sand dunes; yellow dunes that rose like titanic anthills, while they were the ants, to labor up one side and down the other. In order to make speed and if possible to overtake Bragdon, they had descended the Rio Grande from a point just below Albuquerque in a bull boat, a canoe made of scraped buffalo hide drawn taut over willow boughs. On the wide muddy stream, burdened with tons of the erosive soil through which it flowed, they wound southward at the rate of thirty, sometimes forty, miles a day, swirling between low wooded banks beyond which blue mountains lay always in sight.

They were forced to portage around one beaver dam after another. Every moment afloat demanded the watchful care of both Steven and Juan. Countless branches imbedded in the viscous, sandy bottoms, reached out to pierce their hide-covered boat. Eddies and whirlpools caught at them at unexpected turns in the current, which swung its channel erratically from left to right of the river’s course. Sometimes they were stranded on sand bars, for the shallows could not be seen through the muddy water. Steven had twice sunk into quicksands when he got out to lighten the boat and push off from a bar. Only through Juan’s skill and prompt action could he have gotten free.

In between these delays they flew south with the stream. The river was almost never used by the Pueblos, Juan said. Only an occasional trapper who was used to shooting rapids and handling a canoe dared launch his bull boat on the treacherous Rio Grande. On the second night it rained heavily all night and they slept beneath their boat, which made a very good tent. Steven had never thought of his illness since the night he had left Santa Fe. The open air had apparently aided nature in restoring him completely. After the rain the river was so swollen with the deluge that had cascaded down the hillsides that the water rolled in great combers. It meant that they could go very fast, yet they were in constant danger of capsizing. They strapped their guns tightly across their backs and fastened their ammunition belts securely so that these should not be lost. Steven carried also a money belt filled with silver delivered him by Juan from Consuelo in case they should overtake the paid murderers.

Toward dusk they were looking for a good landing spot where they could go ashore and make a fire on some wooded bank, when a greater danger than the river threatened. Rounding a sharp curve in the stream they saw a great dark form breasting the combers ahead. As they were swept nearer they saw the massive head and shoulders of a great grizzly rising high from the river. His coat was heavy with the muddy water, yet he split the waves as though their current were nothing. They were nearly abreast of the beast when he struck shallows and rose in his height beside them for a moment; then began to sink.

“Quicksand!” shouted Steven, and the Indian paddled violently across current and away from the grizzly. The bear with a mighty effort lunged free from the sand, but there was not enough depth for him to swim in, and he made straight for the canoe, floundering, but gaining ground. His paws reached the stern of the bull boat. Juan beat at them in the gathering darkness. The canoe tipped and the prow rose under the pressure of the great bear of the Rockies. Steven seized a small hatchet and, leaning back as far as he dared, he chopped at the paws which were inundating them. There was a roar of rage and pain, and the bear dropped back, sinking below the surface for a moment. Gracias a Dios they had struck the main channel again! The current bore them on to the far side of the river and in the darkness they left the bear behind.

But dangerous as it was to be swept along by night on that black and swollen stream, Juan would not attempt a landing for another half hour. When they had drawn their canoe up on a small strip of sandy beach and lit a fire, they saw the giant claws of the grizzly imbedded in the blood-stained thwart of the boat. Steven wondered if they would ever survive to find Doren and his father. To Juan their progress was not unusual or eventful; he pointed out how much better time they were making, with no Indians to attack them on the way, than the Yankee possibly could, traveling overland with mules.

It seemed as though every four-footed creature of the Rocky Mountain country came to the banks of the river, and wild fowl of all kinds were there for the shooting—duck, geese, swan, bittern, crane, heron. On the third day Juan pointed to a certain peak rising from a low-lying range east of the river. That was where they were bound. The river had now become unnavigable, for the deep channels disappeared at times and they were forced to make portages in midstream, so to speak. Great dun-colored hills, bare and without a sign of vegetation, closed them in.

“It is there, to the Mescalero, where the Apaches are,” said Juan, “that we must go. By this time the Señor Yankee may have reached that country, and as he sought gold and silver, it is in the mountains that we will find him, not in the river valley. His pursuers cannot have overtaken him yet, unless he stopped by the way, in which case we would have been too late, anyway. As it is, we are ahead of them at least.”

To Steven this appeared like a monstrous valley of death. Not a living thing was to be seen, except the leering faces of carp poking their evil heads, with whiskers like tentacles, from the muddy waters. On the land where they abandoned the bull boat a few small lizards scurried away. High in a turquoise vaulted heaven soared those scavengers of death, the buzzards. Underfoot stirred one living thing that rattled as Steven passed. It too spelled death.

And then they entered those baffling dunes, carrying enough game and water to last for that day and the next, and Steven became one with the desert in another of its forms. Again and again Juan would climb to the summit of the highest foothill to locate some blue peak, and would descend to thread those deceptive winding ways at their feet. Miraculously, it seemed to Steven, they emerged from the dunes at the end of the second day just as Juan had said they would, and thereafter they bore eastward, directing their footsteps toward a pass in the nearer range, which, because of the height of the dunes, could not be seen at all before.

Here they came upon a tiny village of Pueblo Indians, nestling beside a clear stream upon the sloping side of the mountain. Juan found that he could speak their tongue; they were of Queres stock, as was his pueblo. They made inquiries for Bragdon and Doren, but the Indians said that the two had not passed that way. The Pueblos were a friendly, farming people and there was no reason to doubt that they were speaking the truth.

For a small bar of pure silver Steven and Juan took their fill of the best of corn cakes, of savory kid stew cooked with little wild onions and green beans of native raising, and rode away upon two frisky mares, saddled and bridled with rope and blanket only, it is true, but worth ten bars of silver to Steven’s blistered feet. Over the mountain passes they rode, through a pretty winding canyon filled with flowers and small pine, and came out upon a wide flat plain, across which they cantered as upon a level table. Gleaming sand and hard yellow clay gave back like castanets the sound of their mares’ unshod hooves. And as they trotted ahead the mountains rose before them, up and up from the mesa till they towered even above the foothills that came rippling graciously down to the plain. They slept on the desert and went on at dawn.

The tents of the Apaches clustered thick upon the grassy slopes of the mountain-side. The chiefs of the Apaches welcomed them with tobacco and with the white meat of fish that a short time before had been leaping in the sunlight from the crystal-clear streams of Mescalero. With signs, and with his few words of Apache, Juan of Santo Domingo made clear the purpose for which they had come. To find a white man and child. An Apache chieftain who came forward to listen nodded and, speaking and gesticulating rapidly, gave Juan to understand that a white man and a boy child had passed that way, had lingered along their streams, shaking the basin which yields gold and silver, and had departed but yesterday.

Where had he gone, and why? The chieftain said they had forced the man to give them half the dust which he had found with his placer mining, and that, not being content with this arrangement, he had gone off to a place where he thought he would find more silver and have to part with none of it. This seemed to provoke much amusement among the staid Apaches; the younger braves rocked with merriment. Taking Steven and Juan to a high point of rock upon the mountain-side, the interpreter pointed their gaze across the plain south and westward, where a shining space was seen upon the desert. He spoke rapidly.

Juan turned to Steven. “He says that below lie the White Sands. They are a place of death. Naught grows there, naught dwells there, but the spirits of the departed and of the desert. There is a legend that the shining sands are half silver; that if sifted they would yield pure silver dust. See how they shine from here, he says, and on windy days the white grains have been borne clear across the desert and up into the mountains, where they have lain thick on the tepees of the Apache. It is the spirits of the desert seeking to return home to the mountains, many say.”

That was where James Bragdon, the Yankee, had gone with his little boy. Why bother to kill the white man? The desert would attend to him; and if he escaped its embracing sands—two of the half-bloods from the northern town Indians, they who had mingled with the Spanish, would find him. These two had come but a few hours after the white man left and had followed on his trail. Footsore and angry, for they had thought to overtake him within a day or two days of their starting, and they had been after him now for nearly a moon.

Blood silver they sought to gain, but they could not lay it across their itching palms until they had the white man’s scalp to show in proof of his death. Yes, the half-breed Mexicans had told the Apache chieftain all about it, offering turquoise and wampum for this same information of the white man’s course.

As Steven stood upon the mountain-side, looking out over that vast plain, seventy-five leagues from one mountain range to another, his imagination pictured the face of the boy Doren rising in the shimmering heat waves. He gave the Apache the silver beads which he wore beneath his deerskin shirt, and he and Juan turned back down the mountain trail. They could not hope to reach that far place of gleaming death until another day had dawned, nevertheless they kept their horses moving steadily until dark fell. They ate, and rode again, until the bright moon sank behind the mountains and the mesa was plunged into darkness.

The sun had been up for several hours and the desert was already a little heady in its palpitating warmth when Steven and Juan stood beside the bank of gleaming gypsum that rose sheer fifty feet from the plain—a desert within a desert. A light breeze blew off a thin mist-like spray from the wind-carved edges of the sands, so that their mystery was veiled, dazzling. Before them the tracks of feet, human feet both big and little, showed in the trail of burros’ hooves, went on to the edge of a gradual slope ascending the sands, and were lost, while the tracks of the burros turned about and went away back over the desert.

Juan stooped, and with his eyes close to the ground examined the tracks intently. When he rose he spread his hands in an eloquent gesture, then folded his blanket tightly about him and stood with uncovered head.

“Juan,” Steven demanded, “what do you find? Do you think——?”

Juan drew his blanket over his head and spoke solemnly: “The breeds have taken the mules and returned whence they came. That means—no hope. The man? Gone. The child? Quien sabe!”

Steven threw down his mare’s bridle and, taking the gourd of water from the Indian, he threw it over his own shoulder. “Come.” He strode toward the raised desert before them. “We must find out.”

Juan shook his head and sat down with an air of finality. He would not venture upon that cursed place; the evil spirits of the desert inhabited it. It was abhorred by man and beast. If the white man would enter, it must be alone. Perhaps the spirits of the sands would not speak to him with the words that led to madness. Juan would wait on the desert’s brink until Estevan came out. He would need some one then to take his hand and lead him on.

Steven saw that to remonstrate was futile. He plunged ahead up the incline and entered the white deadliness alone. He found himself upon a plain that shone like snow and that seemed by the strange magic of mirage to stretch away to the very horizon, to lift to meet the turquoise sky and the azure mountains, so that Juan and the horses and the desert below passed out of the picture; might not have existed. All the world was white and blue enamel, and the air swimming sunlight. Steven tucked under his wide-brimmed hat a dark bit of cambric torn from his sash to shield his eyes from the glare. His gaze swept the expanse before him. Not a footstep marred the snowy whiteness. He looked back suddenly for his own tracks. There were none. He stood alone in his own footsteps and not a sign remained of the way he had come. This filled him with horror. He planted his feet deeply and walked on the sheltered side of ridges that he might leave some trace of his own progress.

Hours passed and it seemed that he must have gone further than a man with a boy could have walked in a day. The sun was high overhead. It must be well past midday. He was standing on a little dune when he caught a glimpse of a dark object some distance away. By planting his feet one straight before the other he was able to make directly toward what he had seen. It took a long time. Then he was upon it—a man, Bragdon, lying face down, and beside him a smaller shape. Steven turned Bragdon over; he was dead. Whether he had been killed by violence or not Steven did not stop to see, nor note whether he had been scalped before or after death. He tore at the red-and-black serape which covered the smaller shape, uncovering Doren, who lay limp and pale.

But the boy was sleeping. He slept, and the traces of tears coursed grimily down the thin childish cheeks. Steven was dizzy. The whole gruesome world seemed unreal. He raised a tiny tepee over the sleeping boy, with the blanket and a stick he had carried with him into the desert. Then with his hands he scooped a shallow grave for Bragdon and buried him where he lay. He lifted Doren in his arms, but remembered to give the child a drink lest he should perish of thirst. He opened his gourd, took a drink of the tepid water himself, and slowly poured a generous amount down Doren’s throat. The boy gulped and swallowed automatically without opening his eyes.

Steven made, by instinct, toward the spot where he had ascended the sands; that would be the nearest point at which to leave them, surely. He found a few footsteps here and there, but they brought him no nearer the edge of the white desert. Everywhere it seemed to turn up its rim toward the sky and he would turn back baffled and try a bit further along. Some instinct within told him that just beyond were water, shade, rest, where he could lay the burden to which he clung. The gourd slipped unnoticed from his back as he plodded on. Long after all conscious reason had left him, instinct persisted through the delirium of heat and thirst, and he kept on and on, trying to reach the crest beyond which lay a lower, more friendly desert.

He fell often to his knees, rested a moment, rose, tumbled again, and so often as he fell staggered up once more. Again and again he turned back from the very edge of the drift, blinded, and then retraced his steps. But everywhere he turned a white curtain seemed to hang before him, and in its misty film he saw Consuelo’s face as she had looked up at him that night, so whitely in the moonlight of her garden.

A small cavalcade came with leisurely paced gait through the desert, making toward a cool spring which welled in the shade of mesquite shrubbery at the foot of the great table of White Sand. There were perhaps a dozen men and twice as many mules and burros. Don Tiburcio himself rode at the head. His eyes searched the surrounding country, picking out in the mountains beyond certain peaks beneath which lay silver, or so he had been told on his trip north. He wanted to see again, too, the phenomenon of this high white desert, where his men had found water and shade after noon under the low desert palms.

For a long time as his cavalcade approached the sands Don Tiburcio was troubled by a dark object which seemed to move about the gypsum desert’s edge, back and forth. He remembered the strange effect of mirage which had so impressed him before and dismissed the apparition as a trick of sun spots, directing his gaze instead eastward. When he looked again with rested eyes the black moving spot was gone and he made a mental note never again to believe one’s eyes on the desert.

The sun was sinking lower, yet the heat of the day was little abated. Soon a swift darkness would fall over mountain and plain. Then nothing could be seen. The moon would rise early, however, and they would be on their way to yon mountains in the cool of the night. The white desert before him glowed rose in the dying sun. It seemed stained in blood. The sun lingered a moment over the peaks that bound the plain to the west and then sank below the jagged monoliths with great speed. Yet the moment before it sank there appeared on the rim of the desert above a figure so clear that before it too sank out of sight Don Tiburcio had halloo’d to his men and was halfway up the slope.

“Estevan, amigo; Estevan!” It seemed to Steven Mercer that he had heard a familiar voice commanding him sharply for a long time to wake up, to rouse himself. His eyeballs burned like fire in their sockets. His mouth hurt inside. His skin felt as though every drop of moisture or oil had been burned out of it. Intermittently he felt thus, for cooling streams of water played over his brow. Was that, too, part of the mirage? he wished it might continue. At length he found strength to pull himself together; with an effort he sat up and by the light of a tula fire he recognized Don Tiburcio. This dazed him and for a moment he grappled with memory, then asked rather, wildly, “Where is the boy?”

“There.” Don Tiburcio pointed. Doren lay not far from the fire, which showed him dozing, fresh and placid. Juan sat beside him. “He woke,” said Don Tiburcio, “after we had laved him and poured water down him. We have given him burro’s milk, wafers. He fell asleep again immediately. And you, amigo, how goes it? The glare of that desert has ever driven men mad.” Don Tiburcio smiled.

They made Steven sleep again for a few hours. It was decided to cross the mesa that night and to start from the western mountains in the morning, crossing another mesa to the river valley that lay beyond. Twenty-four hours later brought them to a fertile valley, where, it was decided, they would part. Don Tiburcio had decided to return to Santa Fe, after all, and Steven therefore determined to confide Doren to his care. Steven knew that it would please the Mexican greatly to be able to return the boy to his sister. He himself would continue on down to Mexico, where he would join the movement of Pedraza’s sympathizers about which Don Tiburcio had confided to him the details as they rode along together. Perhaps he would make toward the coast, and would fight, a soldier of fortune, with Santa Anna near the coast. From there he could return, across the Gulf to his home, should he survive.

Don Tiburcio tried to discourage this determination. “Do you realize that only in companies do travelers find any safety on this trail? It is a three to four months’ journey to Chihuahua and you would travel alone.”

“The trappers hunt alone for months at a time and survive for years.” Steven shrugged.

“But not down through Chihuahua,” Don Anabel insisted. “If you must do it, however, cling close to the Cordilleras, for in the mountains there is always refuge.”

Steven was now so removed by time and distance from all hope of the love of Consuelo that to plunge into wars that did not concern him seemed a fine thing. It never occurred to Steven that Consuelo had not meant exactly what she said. He pondered Don Tiburcio’s remark, that women did not always mean the firmest thing they said. He wondered if Don Tiburcio were returning with Doren because he wanted to see Hope Bragdon again, because he still had hopes of her, or to find out if the caravan had come with arms and ammunition. He proposed a rendezvous with Don Tiburcio in Vera Cruz six months from that date, but Don Tiburcio replied that he had an idea their meeting would be much sooner than that and not so far away.

They parted, nevertheless, to go in opposite directions. Doren kissed Steven and clung to him, brushing away his tears. Doren had never spoken of his father but once, and when they had told him why Bragdon was not with them he had turned silently away, his lip quivering. That was all. He could remember nothing that had happened after they had gone up on the White Sands, and did not care to talk about the rest of the trip. He did say once to Steven, “My father thought that if a young boy was with a man Indians would not kill him. They would want to take the boy for an Indian brave when he grew up and they would let the father come along. Don Tiburcio told me so long ago when we were in Santa Fe, and that is why my father would not let me leave him.”

And so they parted, waving Steven good-by to the south and hastening their own journey back to Santa Fe.

Some three weeks later the little cavalcade came clattering down the red trail into Santa Fe, and with little acclaim made haste to the plaza. Halting before the church, Don Tiburcio uncovered his head, as did his men, and it was thus that Father Filemon saw them. Hope Bragdon was not at the ranchito, he told Don Tiburcio, but here in town, staying with the wife of Don Anabel Lopez and the Señorita Consuelo. She had been very ill; was but just able to sit up now after two months in bed.

They took Doren in to see her, Consuelo herself having broken the news gently. Don Tiburcio begged the privilege of taking the boy in, and led Doren up to the bed, brown and rosy as he had never been. Hope opened her arms with a cry and Consuelo ran out, leaving the three together. She almost tumbled over Luis at the door, and pushed him back. “You shan’t see her. You shan’t see her now.”

Luis made no protest. He slunk back unhappily. He had seen that the returning party brought Doren, and Doren only. Luis was different. Since Hope’s illness in his father’s house he had grown nervous, furtive. There was a time when they thought that Hope would not get well at all. She might die at any moment; the doctor bled her once and seriously considered doing it again if she did not revive, but Felicita, protesting violently, rushed out and brought an old Indian woman who gave the girl a brew which brought her out of her swoon, and thereafter fed her on broths made of the liver of young veal.

Whether it was genuine love and distress that he felt as Hope lay dying, or merely frustration, the situation was a potent worker of change in Luis. Even Don Anabel could not fail to note the difference in his son. He meditated bitterly upon the irony of both his children being infatuated with these blond foreigners. It had been an act of charity to take the girl from the ranch house. Consuelo had ridden out one day to see the Yankee girl and had found her tossing on the bed with fever, thin to the point of emaciation. Doña Katarina had tried earlier to induce Hope to come in to town and stay with her, but she would not leave the place. She had an idea that Doren might return, might get away somehow and find his way back, and would not know where to look for her. If he came he would be tired out; perhaps ready to die of exhaustion. Doña Katarina had gone with Consuelo, and together they secured an ox cart and with Doña Gertrudis’s permission had installed the unconscious girl in Consuelo’s own room.

Hope had passed the crisis of her fever, but had been slow and reluctant to convalesce. She did not care whether she lived or died. At times she seemed touchingly grateful for the care and attention given her, and at other times she accepted it indifferently. Luis came in once to bring her yellow roses. She turned her mournful eyes, made huge with illness and the dark smudges beneath, hopefully toward him. She seemed to remember the evening they had spent together as one of the few bright spots of her new life, and asked him if he would not find her little brother for her. Doña Gertrudis did not realize what a tender heart her son had; with a sob of agony he ran out of the house and disappeared for hours. Hope would never get well; she was grieving her heart out.

Yet in a week after Doren’s return the alchemy of happiness had not only raised her from her bed, but had filled out her cheeks, brought a little color to the sweetly curved but prim lips. Then she seemed more alive than she had ever been. It was as though it had taken this terrible anxiety, and the consequent overwhelming happiness of Doren’s restoral to her, to break down the cold barriers in her nature. In her gratitude she turned to Don Tiburcio, and scarcely two weeks after Doren’s return Hope went with the courtly don to the cathedral, where they were married by Father Filemon Hubert. The padre then gave them as splendid a dinner as his kitchen could encompass, and when they had paid their respects to Don Anabel and Doña Gertrudis they took Doren and departed southward to select a site for a new hacienda on lands belonging to Don Tiburcio’s father within the state of New Mexico.

In parting with Don Anabel, Don Tiburcio informed him that as an evidence of his gratitude to them for their kindness to Hope, he wished to present Don Anabel with a picture which, while it would not take the place of the old master stolen from him, would still be some consolation. It was a Goya, he said, that master of modern Spanish art who had died in Spain only the year before, but whose work was prized highly. Don Tiburcio’s father possessed two examples, one of which should be sent to Don Tiburcio on next year’s caravan.

Consuelo looked after them, departing so happily, with the feeling that if her happiness had been given for theirs, it had been done by the hand of God through her. And although the man Bragdon had died, Hope and the boy were in reality far better off now. Don Tiburcio was radiantly happy, and the sister and brother were content in the possession of each other.

Though each day Consuelo awoke with a feeling of great loss, she tried not to weep at the thought of Steven, traveling over the ugly parched plains to Chihuahua, perhaps to death. Perhaps the Indians had already taken him. Against this her heart cried out in disbelief, for youth believes mainly what it wishes most to believe. With her tears prayers were said each day for Steven’s safety, and for his return. She knelt longer and more often before the crucifix and little altar in her room than ever before.

Had all her life not been so arrogant, so assured of worship that she could brook no rivalry, no crossing of her will, Consuelo told herself, Estevan should not have departed with no word of appreciation, no sign of love from herself, for this tremendous deed which she had asked of him and upon which he had embarked so unhesitatingly. How could he have done otherwise than he had on the night of their appointed meeting? He could not abandon his countrymen.—Father Filemon prayed with Consuelo that the life of the Americano would be spared and that he might return to Santa Fe.

Steven found himself, after parting with Don Tiburcio, in a level valley fertile as an Oriental garden. Fifteen miles of sandy desert lay between the river and the sheer spur of Rockies which they had crossed. This was a desert land, fruitful only where the river flowed, barren save where water touched; but in that rich strip of earth along the river banks were groves of ancient cottonwood. The pink tamarack waved its plumes against the blue sky, and among them nestled many comfortable little ranchos, all Mexican, for the land of the Pueblo Indians had been left far behind along the upper valley of the Rio Grande.

There were other Indians westward, an old Mexican told him. All beyond was the land of the Navajo, a country of a great desert and a vast rift in the earth, greater than any canyon man had ever seen. This painted canyon was near the Mission of San Xavier del Bac, near the homes of the Moquis, too. A country for one to adventure in.

But Steven’s feet were drawn where his heart lay, and, failing that, homeward. Youth and pride and the hopelessness of first love would not let him turn back to Santa Fe, so down to Vera Cruz, whence one could take ship for New Orleans, and so home, he must go. Of the two hundred silver dollars which had remained to him when he set out across the prairies from Independence there still remained one hundred and fifty. For if life were cheap in this land where mankind was so scattered, living cost nothing at all, hospitality was to be had for the asking.

One evening at sunset at a place where the ditch banks burgeoned with flowering locust and the bird-of-paradise tree, Steven came to a low rambling ranch house whose stoutly pillared portal was framed in sweet clematis. The place was like an oasis. He had trotted his weary little mare over many a dusty mile across a sandy arid mesa. It was with relief that he dismounted and took water from a gourd offered by a young girl whose dark beauty was like a madonna’s. There was no wife in the house, but the father, a grave, silent man, appeared in the door and offered his house to the strange blond traveler, questioning neither his name nor his race, his destination nor his business. An older brother to the girl came up to take Steven’s horse. He was dark and silent, too, like the father, with a sharp, suspicious gleam in his eye. As they talked, a fraile, or friar, in the habit of a Franciscan, emerged from a wing of the house and joined them with an easy, merry flow of talk.

The fraile was fat and, though well robed, was illy groomed, unshaven, and therefore unpleasant to Steven. Yet in spite of a certain grossness the prelate had charm, wit that was most welcome. When Steven had been shown to a room and had washed away the dust of travel he went outside again and sat with the men beneath the paradise trees, where the fraile talked of many things and held his listeners’ attention undiverted. Fray Bartolomeo had been for a number of years in Albuquerque, but he had been recalled, gracias a Dios, and was going back to his beloved Mexico.

Fray Bartolomeo rubbed his hands with unaffected gusto when the mosa came calling them to dinner. This was but a farmer’s house, not that of a poor peon by any means, but a prosperous ranchero, who was called “Don” by his neighbors and servants, but who was not of the Spanish hidalgos, nor made pretense of being. There was plenty of the foods to which Steven had already become accustomed in New Mexico, but of which he had not eaten in a week, for the poor and the shiftless had little but beans and chili, and night had brought him only to such places heretofore. Here was melon such as he had never known surpassed, soup of strange herbs and greens, filled with balls of finely ground meat rich with chili and mutton fat. There were squashes baked in the outdoor estufas, rich and mealy, and little cakes made of corn flour and covered with white honey and chopped piñon nuts.

Fray Bartolomeo ate with a smacking of lips; he leaned over his deep plate and scooped the food untidily into his mouth with wisps of tortilla, although Don José, his host, had two silver spoons set at the plate of each guest. Don José owned a silver bowl and pitcher, and for the rest the reddish earthenware of Mexico. The Madonna-faced girl who ate silently with them rose during the meal and brought in a bowl of luscious grapes, both small and large. Fray Bartolomeo spat the skins on the bare earthen floor, which, though uncarpeted, was scrupulously swept and clean, as was indeed the entire room, with its whitewashed walls and sturdy hand-built furniture.

Don José sent for wine, and poured from the bulging kidskin that was brought in a silver pitcher full. They quaffed it from gourd cups. The fraile grew red with content and, draining his copa at a gulp, passed it back for more. The pitcher was filled again and again, and while the fraile consumed an incredible quantity of wine and the girl carried away the remains of the supper, Don José, his son, and Steven listened to talk of gaming birds, of the virtues of good cooking, and the skill of the Indians at gaming and as silversmiths.

Strange talk from a fraile for pious ears. The lean features of Don José contracted with disapproval, and after the candles had been lit he arose and withdrew. The son remained, held by a gloomy fascination with the conversation, and as the evening wore on Steven himself listened with delight and amazement. Low, unclean, cunning as the fraile showed himself to be, growing less and less careful as he bibbed at the wine, nevertheless he was a man whose knowledge was wide, whose tastes were cosmopolitan.

He was a Cachupin, a Spanish-born resident of old Mexico, and for that reason was being recalled along with the other Spanish born who were to be expelled from the land. He did not make mention of the fact that there were certain charges which he would be compelled to face before his superiors of the Church.

“Yet what difference does it make,” he shrugged, “whether I am in Spain or here? One would scarcely know the difference. The same mountains, the same faces, same types. I think the wine of Spain is better, yet the grapes are not so good, so rich.” He sighed. “Spain has little gold or silver. No jewels, much as she craves them. Her rubies come from the Orient, her sapphires from France. Mexico has gold and silver, opals and aquamarines, and for precious gems pearls from the Gulf on the western coast.

“But Spain, ah Spain,” the fraile sighed with genuine rapture. “There is a finished life. What paintings! Did you know that last year the great Goya died? Never has there been a greater depicter of Spain. For one of his canvases I would give——” His voice died away. But he had been lucky, the fraile said, always lucky. Lucky at cards, lucky in love. To the horrified ears of the two youths he roared of his conquests and spoke of matters beyond their comprehension. And now his luck still held, the babbling tongue went on, for had he not won at cards, from a youth of the Villa, a thousand times the amount of the boy’s losses, payment, by an old painting, a priceless canvas which should have gone to the Church, anyway, but which he would sell when he got to Mexico City, or to Spain. The proceeds would make him rich beyond avarice.

The impious bragging of the prelate, imposing thus on the respect and hospitality due his garb from faithful Catholics, had broken the spell of his speech, and without ceremony the two youths left him, bowed soddenly over the table. Yet the next morning Fray Bartolomeo was brisk and fresh and ready to start forth upon his way. Steven declined his invitation to be a partner on the road as far as El Paso del Norte, where the Cachupin was to join a caravan for safety down the Cordilleras. Steven preferred traveling alone, and made excuse that he was saddle-sore and would remain for a matter of weeks right here.

So the friar rode off and Steven spent a quiet day, resting, getting his linen washed, chatting with the pretty child, winning the sober friendliness of the youth. Don José was gone all day and did not appear until sundown. He had been away looking after his sheep, he said, and brought back a lamb for stewing. With dawn the next morning Steven was on his way. He rode along briskly and uneventfully, mile after mile, passing the laborious oxen and their clumsy carts, and tiny burros laden with vast burdens like moving haystacks. He had received a map from Don Tiburcio and was making toward the pass of the north, where he would leave the Rio Grande behind and follow the mountains down to Chihuahua.

A well-traveled road lay before him, stretching smooth and hard between rolling dunes where stunted palms and Spanish dagger pricked the desert. Suddenly between the ruts he came upon a body prone, lying with arms outflung beneath its black cassock—the fraile, dead, his glazed eyes staring into the sun. One tale too many the night before. Here was unexpected reprisal far from the scene of some forgotten injury.

Shrinking from the unwelcome office of giving the fraile decent burial, Steven nevertheless pulled at the heavy body that lay as it fell with a knife in the heart. He dragged it to the side of the road, intending to cover it with stones in a sandy grave so that neither coyotes nor wolves could scratch it forth. He owed the fraile that much for what entertainment and information he had yielded him two nights before.

The movement disclosed a long, rolled-up piece of canvas protruding from beneath the cassock of the dead fraile. Steven drew it forth and, loosing the deerskin thongs with which it was bound, unrolled a painting, cracked, old, yet to his eyes undoubtedly beautiful and perhaps of value. Then in a flash he recognized the painting of the “Madonna and Child” which he had seen upon the wall of the sala in Don Anabel Lopez’s house upon his first night in Santa Fe. The talk of the fraile came rushing back to him and he recalled it with new significance. Why had it not occurred to him at the time that this coveted treasure had been dishonestly secured from Santa Fe?

Steven stood in the road for some time, gazing at the painting, putting the story together. Then he rolled the canvas up again, replacing the thong that had bound it. The fraile’s care that so valuable a thing should not leave his person had saved the painting, for his mules had either been driven off or had run away by themselves, all his possessions upon them, while this most priceless article had remained concealed beneath his long robes. Whoever had made an end of Fray Bartolomeo had not stopped to touch him or to look for gold or silver upon his person.

Steven tied the roll upon the side of his mare, fastening it to the wrought-leather saddle securely. Then he turned to the fraile. An hour later a fresh heap of stones marked a spot by the roadside and two buzzards appeared high in the sky. Steven straightened up, heaved a thoughtful sigh, and brushed the sweat from his temples. Mounting his mare, he turned her head about and, pressing his spurs upon her flanks, set off at a canter toward Santa Fe.

It was the only thing to do. He was secretly relieved to have the matter of decision taken out of his hands. There was obviously no one to whom he could safely intrust the return of the canvas. He must take it himself, just as Don Tiburcio de Garcia had taken Doren back to his sister.

Steven returned that night to the house which he had left in the early morning. His reception was gentle and cordial. He told Don José that he had changed his mind and why he was returning to Santa Fe. Don José exchanged a swift look with his son, and nodded to his guest in acknowledgment without changing expression. Steven brought in the roll of canvas, opened and spread it before their gaze. They knelt before its beauty, crossing themselves.

“I am taking it back where it came from,” Steven said, simply. Don José gazed at him with a deep, searching look, and the two clasped hands after the manner of the country, left hands upon the other’s arm.

Steven thought, “Perhaps they think it was I who stabbed the fraile.” But neither would have told whatever he thought or whoever had done the deed.

Steven came after many weeks to the ford above Albuquerque. “I will not cross here,” he thought, “but above, nearest the Sandia Mountains.” To the north he could faintly see the tips of the snow-capped peaks that towered above Santa Fe. It was late winter and the giant cottonwoods were turned to copper and polished brass. The nights were cold. Steven was weary of travel alone; he longed once more to be with friends. Adventuring was hard business and he was glad that he was not a trapper, yet the wilderness had forged a claim that he could never forget, upon him, too, a claim that he could never shake off.

He rode along the river bank, thinking of these things, and before he realized it came upon a large hacienda before which lay a garden of at least two varas, surrounded by a stout wall, well fortified, and with many outbuildings behind. He was surprised to see so expansive a dwelling here, for there were fewer ricos near the town named after the famous Spanish duke than there were at Santa Fe. By rising in his stirrups he could peer over the wall, and in the garden he saw a boy playing, shooting at a target with bow and arrows. It was Doren Bragdon! Steven hallooed, and in a few moments the heavy gate was opened and he rode through to alight before Don Tiburcio and the Señora Garcia.

This was an occasion of great rejoicing. The hacienda was set aflutter with preparations of an honored guest. Don Tiburcio apologized for the meanness of his furnishings; he had been able to procure little there in the territory fit to set up an establishment with. They had built on to an already old and seasoned house, and were still building; Don Tiburcio had already sent a messenger to Mexico for silver and robes and furniture and brocade and the finest tapestries to be procured in the capital. As soon as he and Hope had been married they had come down here. They wished to stay in New Mexico so that Hope would be near to some Americanos.

Hope smiled shyly at Steven. She wore a sapphire that would ransom a General of Mexico; her gown was ridiculously rich to be trailing about in the dust. “But Don Tiburcio will not let me wear gingham,” she protested, not pridefully, but in real distress. “Even when I am working I must be dressed in fine clothes.”

Don Tiburcio took Steven to a workroom where he had a cabinet-maker carving furniture, and he had engaged an Indian silversmith who was melting up silver to make plates and forks and spoons and other service worthy of his wife’s table.

“Come,” said Hope, drawing Steven to one side, “sit here in the garden with me, for I want to tell you something.” She was silent for a moment and her eyes were moist. “I owe you everything—all this happiness—Doren, my husband, everything. They have told me, Don Tiburcio, and Doren, too, how you went after my father and how you found them at last. But it is not of that I want to speak, for I can never thank you. I want to talk to you about Consuelo. I know that she sent you to save Doren. She told me when I was ill and so worried. She wanted to give me courage. And it did. To know you had gone after him, it kept me alive. And I cannot forget Consuelo. She loved you, Steven Mercer, when she sent you away; but she thought you didn’t care about her.

“Steven, why didn’t you go back to her? Why don’t you go now, right away? She has been waiting there, eating her heart out, worrying about you, and she feels so badly, Steven, that she sent you away and didn’t say she loved you. For she does love you, Steven. She told me so.” It embarrassed Hope to speak about love, but she did it with painful honesty.

“I’m going back as fast as I can travel,” Steven assured her smilingly.

“Come,” said Don Tiburcio, “I see you two Americanos have much to talk about, but I want to show Señor Estevan my store, my warehouse. Did I not tell you,” he asked with evident pleasure, as he led the way to the bodegas, “that it would be less than six months and not so far away as Mexico that we should meet? I felt that this would somehow come about.”

He showed Steven the grains and wheats, the pelts and hides, with which the bodega was stored. “What do you say, amigo, to going into partnership with me here? I will handle whatever goods you wish to import from New Orleans and to pass on to me here, and I will supply you with as much Spanish merchandise from Mexico, with silver ore and gold bullion, as you need to carry on your end of the trade in Santa Fe. There is a great future. Don Anabel Chavez is our greatest competitor; but when he is gone there will be little opposition from Luis, for he is both lazy and incompetent. You can buy as you see fit from incoming traders. You can collect furs. The fur business has definitely been transferred from the Northeast to the Southwest and for a number of years the Rocky Mountain Company will be the richest field for hunter and trapper. There is room for many here. Let us, too, build up a business in this country. What do you say, my friend?”

Steven was radiantly pleased. Here was the opportunity to trade in a big way. He could show his father that capital was available without asking a dollar from Mercer & Co. He could trade, buying his own cargo and paying for it. He could build up a great business. His dreams soared, all before he had answered Don Tiburcio de Garcia.

“That I’ll do, señor,” he responded.

“Let us strike hands on the bargain, then,” the Mexican proposed. “You are going on to Santa Fe? Good. I shall follow you there within a week or so and we will complete the details. I shall finance the caravan loads that come from St. Louis each year.”

Steven slept in a wide fresh room, with linen sheets upon a hair mattress, such luxury as he had not known in months. He left shortly after his breakfast and departed right merrily, while Doren and Hope would not say good-by, but hasta la vista (till we meet again).