Caravans to Santa Fe

Doña Gertrudis sat before a great log fire, drawing the threads in a new altar cloth. The work was to be like lace and gossamer and would be weighted with silver thread. Tilted back against the wall in his chair, Manuel strummed a guitarro, lightly, oh, very lightly, and essayed his new copleta—two such pretty stanzas. Was Consuelo going to object to this?

He darted an eye in her direction, but she sat quietly on her bench, slowly sipping her chocolate; in fact, she was even tapping slightly with her toe in time to the tinka-tink, atink-atink. Relieved, Manuel threw back his head, closed his eyes, and abandoned himself to the soul of music that burned within him. Ah, it was delightful to sing of love. Especially now that Consuelo did not interrupt him all the time. Really, he was becoming quite fond of his cousin, and coming to enjoy being with her. Whereas before, when he loved her, Dios, what torment; and no musical expression at all.

As for Consuelo, she was glad to be allowed to concentrate upon her own thoughts. In reality life was not at all the simple and boring thing she had once thought it. Safe and sheltered this valley had always been in their lifetime. Tales of Indian massacre beyond the mountains, or over the deserts lying between them and far Chihuahua—they had never touched her. Like wars far away. She had thrilled with horror to hear of them, but they did not touch her life. Yet tragedies were going on all around them all the time.

What was Ess-tevan suffering now? Lightly she had sent would-be suitors off on the long march to Chihuahua through which a lover proved his mettle, and although Steven had not been lightly sent, she had not realized to the full what such a journey might mean. Now she could picture all the hardships and tortures of which she had heard. Perhaps he would never come back and they would never again have word of him or know what had been his end. This thought was too much for her and she wept into her chocolate, so that the spoonful which she took to cover her emotion was very salty. This made her smile. Even upon the verge of one’s seventeenth birthday one cannot be forever repenting, forever gloomy. There are moments in between remorse and an aching heart when coral earrings, a new shawl, the gossip of one’s girl friends, no longer torture, but give relief.

So, although her cheeks were flushed and her eyes unusually bright, both were dry when Consuelo jumped up to welcome Anita de Guevara. She greeted her warmly with a kiss on either cheek. Had Consuelo heard, Anita began at once, of the magnificent new establishment that Don Tiburcio had built on the Rio Grande for the Americana he had married? No? They said it was to be furnished with naught but carved woods from Spain, and every bit of the table silver was to be made in Salamanca and imported!

“Oof! I do not believe that!” protested Doña Gertrudis.

Anita leaned closer to Consuelo. “Is it true what they are telling of Luis?” she whispered.

“What are they telling?” demanded Consuelo, hotly, a trifle faintly.

“That he has turned Penitente. That he no longer games or diverts himself.”

Consuelo was saved from making any reply to this question by the entrance at that moment of Don Anabel, who came in, as always, with a manner of distinction and ceremony, bowing carefully to each of the ladies, maintaining the traditions of that chivalry of the land of Cervantes brought to New Spain by his forefathers.

“What have you learned of the painting?” asked Anita of Don Anabel, the business of saluting all the company in the room being concluded. Anita always asked the most unfortunate questions. Don Anabel became obsessed whenever the painting was mentioned. “Nothing that can give me hope for its recovery,” he replied. “Rather to the contrary. You may remember,” he turned to Doña Gertrudis, “that of the suspects among those who had left Santa Fe during the week when Murillo disappeared (he always referred to the picture as the Murillo), suspicion pointed to the Americano who accompanied the last caravan and who remained here after it returned (as though everyone present did not know Steven perfectly without such careful identification).

“Today I learned that this young man departed the Villa at night. And furthermore that he was seen to vault the wall of our lower garden earlier on that same night, to remain inside the space of twenty minutes or so.” A clatter of amazement and discussion pro and con broke forth. Presently Consuelo made herself heard, almost timidly. (“What a change has come over la gattita,” thought Anita, “the little cat who was always throwing out sparks.”)

“But papa, the Americano was seen by Don Tiburcio way south en route to Chihuahua. It was he who saved Doren, the Yanqui’s boy. He would not be likely to be guilty of stealing then, would he?” Consuelo looked about the room for confirmation.

“That is another matter,” Don Anabel decided. “Of course he would succor his countryman. But to take a valuable painting is another thing. Yes, I think he might well do both.” As Don Anabel finished speaking, old Angel appeared in the door with a letter for el padron. He brought it to Don Anabel and there was a moment’s silence while it was read. Don Anabel rose to his feet, his lean brown cheeks alternately flushing and paling, and informed the startled company, “Quite apropos of our conversation comes this letter, from the gentleman himself—Señor Ess-tevan Mercer.” (Don Anabel almost hissed the name.) “He has at this moment returned to Santa Fe, brought by his conscience or his need, who can say, and he brings me back my canvas.”

“Tst, tst, tst! figure-se; imagine,” clucked Doña Gertrudis. “What does he say, then?”

“This.” Don Anabel opened the sheet which he still held in his hand and read aloud: “My Very Dear Sir: I have but just returned to Santa Fe, and bear with me your lost painting. At least, if I mistake not, it belongs to you,” (“The impudence of the rascal! Belongs to me indeed!”) “I am changing my clothes and refreshing myself somewhat from the fatigue and dust of the journey, but immediately thereafter I shall personally restore the picture to your house, if that is your wish.”

“Por los santos!” Don Anabel exclaimed, “but this fellow has assurance. I’ll go fetch it myself, if this is not but a ruse. He is at Doña Katarina’s house.” Don Anabel threw on his black cloak, and stopping for a moment in his office, went forth from the front door.

Consuelo was trembling; her hands and feet were like ice, her face flaming. She could scarcely maintain her composure. In the general chatter and excitement which followed Don Anabel’s astounding message she slipped unnoticed to her room, where Felicita was building up her mistress’s fire.

“Felicita, he has returned! Ess-tevan. And he brings my father’s picture. How he found it I do not know. But here he is, and my father is again accusing him of the theft of it. He has gone off in haste to get his painting, his treasure. I should have told him at once, but I could not there before them all. That would have been worse for my father than never to have regained the picture. I must go tell him now. Quick; come with me. Perhaps we can overtake him.” She threw a black reboso over her head, and with Felicita close upon her heels fled through the garden and out the side gate.

But it was already too late. By the time she reached Doña Katarina’s house, on foot, she saw her father emerging from the door. Felicita pulled her back. Instinctively they drew out of sight. She would have to tell Don Anabel when he returned home. Alas, poor Steven! what had her father said? Then a new thought struck her with cold terror. “Alas! pobre de mi, what will Ess-tevan think of me that I did not at least defend him? Does he know?” They crept back through the little lanes.

Steven had just stepped from the vast copper kettle which the good Doña Katarina supplied him for the bath and was joyously rubbing himself dry after his first hot scrub in a month, when there came a knock upon his door. The criada, a slovenly girl, called through the door that it was Don Anabel and his attendant without. If they would please sit down, Steven called back. With glad anticipation he hurried into his clothes. The painting was then as valuable as he had thought it might be, and here was Don Anabel himself come to thank him! Good.

Shortly the door of Steven’s chamber opened and Don Anabel was confronted with a stalwart young man, ruddy with health, his skin golden with the varnish of sun and desert, his hair still damp and wavy. He was smiling with assurance, the unconscionable rogue, apologizing for his lack of jacket or coat, and bowing as though in anticipation of warm greetings. Don Anabel arose and stood stiffly erect, his hand on his hip.

“Do I understand you rightly that you have with you my Murillo, my sacred painting?” His nostrils dilated with nervous tension as he hung on Steven’s affirmation.

“Yes, señor, I have it.”

Don Anabel glared coldly at the baffled young man. “What, may I ask, is your price for the safe restoral of the painting?”

“What do you mean? I do not understand you,” Steven stammered.

“Your price?” the Don repeated. “Whatever it is I shall deliver it in consideration of the safe restoral.” The young man made no answer and Don Anabel continued, coldly and deliberately, “If the canvas is returned unharmed you will be permitted to leave Santa Fe without question or arrest. On the condition that you never attempt to return here,” quoth Don Anabel.

With a lofty disregard that matched the New Mexican’s own, Steven ignored the imputation carried by the words—though indeed he had been actually arrested before on suspicion of espionage—and faced the wily older man with wits sharpened by his struggle with the desert these last months.

“Señor”—he looked squarely at Don Anabel—“I expect to be returning to Santa Fe every year, perhaps twice a year, with a caravan of goods. I do not intend to be bullied out of a business field that is extended to others. Is it possible that you are afraid of the advent of Americans?

“In my country gentlemen do not ask requital for the return of property. But as that seems to be the custom here I shall make my demands, too. I must exact the right of unmolested commerce here or I shall not answer for the safe delivery of the painting.” Steven’s voice trembled with anger. Only rage at the treatment he had received from the autocrat before him, overlord of lands that were equal to a kingdom, spurred him to use the painting as a club over Don Anabel’s head. The threat was effective.

Don Anabel would take no chances with the loss or mutilation of his treasure. He credited Steven with a faculty for plotting that he did not possess. If it were himself, he would have arranged that the painting be out of reach of its owner; he could not have believed that it lay on a chest in the adjoining room. He inclined his head in consent.

“Muy bien, since you put it that way. I myself will not oppose your trade here further, and I fancy the jefe politico will not of his own accord. The painting?”

Steven called the criada, who brought in from his bedchamber a roll of deerskin. Don Anabel seized it, unfastened the wrappings with trembling fingers, and unrolled the canvas, stretching it out before the candles that burned on the mantle.

“The Murillo. Unharmed. Gracias a Dios!” Without another word Don Anabel, gesturing to his servant, rolled up the picture again, thrust it beneath his arm, and pulling his cloak tight about him, turned his back upon Steven and strode toward the door. The moso threw upon the floor at Steven’s feet a sack that struck the boards with the unmistakable clink of moneda, Spanish duros, sesterces, and reales.

Then Steven’s gorge rose and he shouted, “Stop!” with such suddenness and passion that Don Anabel paused in his tracks. Steven kicked the sack with a rage that shot it straight after the servant and hit him amidships in the rear with such violence that he staggered and plunged forward against the wall.

“Hold!” yelled Steven. “Take your filthy silver out of here, Señor Don Anabel Lopez! I turned back on my way to Chihuahua, retracing my steps over mountain passes and through deserts, to return to you this painting, which I recognized as having seen in your house. I found the canvas on the dead body of a prelate, late of Albuquerque, where, señor, he told me, a night or so before his demise, he had acquired the canvas.

“Believe this tale or not, as you like, but, by the saints, you shall make apology for the accusation of theft. Look nearer home for your crime. If you do not take back your words, I shall spread a tale in Santa Fe that will somewhat tarnish the luster of your honored name.”

Steven stopped abruptly. He had not intended to say that. He had no proof that Luis was responsible for Bragdon’s death, though it was tacitly understood between Juan and himself that it was he who had dispatched the murderers on the Yankee’s trail. He had no proof that it was Luis who had stolen his father’s painting and gambled it away. A terrible silence had fallen upon the room. Don Anabel’s face grew old and drawn. He looked gaunt and thin and sick, as he stood there in his dark cloak, the candlelight throwing a heroic black silhouette against the whitewashed wall. Terrible suspicions had entered his mind. To what did the American refer? He was not sure.

Then the face of the boy before him broke into a disarming smile. “Señor, I am sorry. I did not mean that. Here, shall we not both retract what we have said? Surely you owe me something for having restored your treasure to you? And, after all, why should I have come back if theft were my purpose?”

But Don Anabel was already convinced—forced, in spite of himself, to recognize the caballero in another. A younger man of a hated race, he could not let the youth outdo him in courtesy. He capitulated with the grace of which he was master. “Señor Mercer,” he replied with an inclination of his head, “it is as you say. I have the honor, señor, to request that you will give us the pleasure of dining with us tomorrow night? It is too late for our kitchen this evening, I fear.”

That would be a great pleasure, Steven replied with an imperturbability that belied the excitement he felt. He accepted the long-coveted invitation not with the unalloyed pleasure which he had thought would be his, but with a burning desire to see Consuelo and to find out for himself whether she, too, had suspected him—whether she had had faith in him. Don Anabel took his departure and Steven sat down to his supper and to thoughts of Consuelo. When he saw her again it would be with a knowledge that he had not had before, if what Hope had told him was still true. He burned to make sure that Consuelo had trusted him, for, after all, he told himself, she knew very little of him.

Doña Katarina knocked and entered, bearing a fowl still sizzling from the spit. Steven had been much pleased to find his good landlady returned from Taos, and they chatted now of all that happened during Steven’s absence. Steven told Doña Katarina what had passed between himself and Don Anabel, inquiring if there had been talk in Santa Fe of the loss of the painting. “But yes”—she spread her hands—“of course. What would you? Don Anabel has been near frantic, and all Santa Fe has been busy with the mystery of the theft of the holy painting. Some think that it served the don right for not having presented the painting to the Church long since.

“After you left—the latest massacre would have been as nothing. They talked of nothing but the Madonna and the news that the Yankees had packed their wagon wheels with the silver they gained in trading in Santa Fe. Think of that, to escape the impuestas, the duties!” Doña Katarina threw back her head and laughed the rich husky laugh of the full-throated Mexican matron.

Steven grinned unabashedly with her. “But how was it found out? I am curious to know. It was well done. I know, for I helped them do it!”

“Hu!” Doña Katarina laughed till she must hold her sides, and the tears streamed down her cheeks. “Hu-hu! They were held up by Santa Feans, just beyond Raton Pass.” Between her gusts of mirth he learned that as the wagons went bounding over the ruts the axle of one of them broke, and the rim of a wheel came off, disclosing cavities within rim and hub that were filled with silver. No! the Santa Feans did not get it. The Yankees got away, after all.

Steve heaved a sigh of satisfaction and returned to his own matters. “But about the painting? And my departure? Did they, did anyone——?”

“But yes, I tell you.” Doña Katarina nodded vigorously. “It was the talk of the town. Of course I knew, and Consuelo without a doubt knew, that you had nothing to do with its disappearance.”

Steven sat thoughtfully before the fire that night, too tired to go out in search of company, and gave himself over to thought. It was more than a year since the tall, hatchet-faced refugee from Mexico’s perilous presidential chair had walked into his father’s office and commissioned him with an errand which had started him on a twelvemonth of perilous adventuring. What was it, he mused, that should make him stray from the great business in New Orleans that was his by inheritance, to set his heart upon a pioneer undertaking so far from his people? What held Pierre Lafitte and brought him back to his trapping after a lifetime, almost, of solitude, and labor for which he was illy repaid? All the pioneers who dared the desert, the enmity of the Indians, the freezing passage of the Rockies in winter, were not landless and penniless when they started forth.

“One might as well ask the buffalo why they migrate, or the birds of passage,” St. Vrain had said. “It’s instinct. Mankind has it almost as strong as the four-footed or the birds. They want land, room to breathe. It’s only the daring and the brave who blaze trails, who strike out for new business where there’s room and they won’t be crowded out. Only the red-blooded can survive against the odds on the frontier.”

These words came back to Steven with force as he thought about the agreement he had made with Don Tiburcio de Garcia. Well, he felt fit to tackle the Trail and survive, and he would not be forced from the territory as long as others could hold their own in this New World, held by a handful of haughty Spanish and a horde of red men.

No, he would stay, and—and marry, and bring up a family in this land. Mexico? What line across the mountain said that here the English-speaking should stop and forever keep to the other side? The land should belong to those who would build it. And so Steven fell asleep, dreaming of empire and of a piquante face peering over a tipsy balcony in the moonlight.

At that precise moment Consuelo was facing her father in his study. Don Anabel’s voice was shaken. “You mean, Consuelo, that you actually saw Luis hand a long object like this”—he held up the rolled canvas which he had not yet had time to restore to its frame—“out the window to some other waiting there?”

“Precisely, papa. I would swear it was that. I have told you exactly. In justice to Señor Estevan. I think Luis has been protected long enough.”

“It is as I feared,” Don Anabel muttered. “But I did not think, I really did not think, that Luis would have stooped to such an act; that he could be led to this. Ingrato! It is fortunate indeed that no word of this has gotten through Santa Fe.” He felt peculiarly humbled, and at the mercy of this young American who might so easily put his son to public shame. Don Anabel lashed himself into a proud fury. Consuelo drew herself up on tiptoe with her hands on his shoulders and kissed him tenderly. “See, papa, you have the Murillo back again now. And it is Ess-tevan who has thus served you, even after he had been thrown in the carcel and attacked. It is done and over. Let us forget. Luis will have learned his lesson.”

“I could never forget.” Don Anabel shook his head angrily. “My son!”

Supper had been brilliant. Lupe had done herself proud with the dishes. Everyone was in sparkling humor. Don Anabel because the Murillo once more glowed richly from its frame against the whitewashed wall, Doña Gertrudis because Don Anabel was pleased. It was Sunday, a feast day, and the Lenten fast was therefore broken for the week with several kinds of meat and game, with sweets, fresh water cress, and coffee that caused Doña Gertrudis to sigh in ecstasy.

Consuelo was echando rayos, (throwing out sparks), as the saying went. Steven was likewise in glowing humor. He was the lion of the occasion. He had been pressed until he had told and retold the adventures of his trip south and what befell him on the road back. But of the fraile and his story of the painting not a word was said; Don Anabel had heard all that the evening before, and had told his family, presumably, for the subject was tacitly and widely avoided by all. Luis alone was not one with the merry company about the table. He was quite different from his old, teasing, swaggering self. Preoccupied, self-centered still, he nevertheless hung nervously upon his father’s words. He gave a grave attention to Steven’s talk, was courteously, cooly attentive. He ate little, and drank not at all. Consuelo herself wondered what had come over Luis.

Could it be true what Anita de Guevara had whispered to her yesterday afternoon? Had Luis reformed and turned Penitente? She shuddered at the thought of that stern brotherhood, unrecognized child of the Church, whose members inflicted torturous penance upon themselves in imitation of the sufferings of Christ and the martyrs. She searched Luis’s face earnestly; but behind his unlined youthful features she could read nothing. He had been away a great deal of late, but he would tell her nothing. She had yearned over Luis, prayed for his salvation, worried over his comings and goings.

But tonight Ess-tevan commanded her full attention. Here he was seated at her father’s table, a thing she had thought would never come to pass. She would tell him afterwards how she repented her proud and hasty words that night in the garden. How wicked she had been to have kept silence about the painting all the time he was away. Surely Ess-tevan would understand how terrible it would have been to have had her father know all the time that it was Luis who had stolen his picture. Especially while it was still missing. What he would have done with Luis she did not know. And had she not given her solemn word to Luis not to betray him? At the time it had seemed the only thing to do.

Whenever Steven could do so without anyone else observing, his eyes questioned Consuelo. She became nervous. Thereafter the meal passed as in a haze. She could scarcely wait until it was over and she might have the opportunity to talk with Señor Ess-tevan. At length Don Anabel arose. He passed around the table to assist his wife, a deference he always practiced when company of any distinction was present. As he waited behind her chair he rested his hand upon his son’s shoulder, as though in a return to his old affection. Luis winced involuntarily, but so slight was the movement that none but an expectant eye would have noted it. As Don Anabel’s hand was withdrawn from his son’s shoulder a crimson stain showed faintly where it had rested. The stain spread ever so slightly on his cloth bolero and a tiny vivid streak appeared on the white linen shirt showing beneath.

Consuelo, sitting opposite Luis and next to Steven, watched the spot, fascinated, unconscious horror in her face. She recovered as Don Anabel drew out his wife’s chair and followed her from the room. Had he noticed Luis’s shirt? Had anyone else noticed? Luis rose and, throwing his poncho over his shoulder, followed the guest of the evening out of the dining room. He did not join the family in the sala, excusing himself at the doorway. After taking coffee with the others before the fire, Don Anabel had retired to his despacho, where the business of the haciendas was attended to, and still sipping another cup of the coffee, Doña Gertrudis, who had long since passed the point of stimulation with the cup, dozed off into a comfortably drugged state.

Consuelo sat opposite Steven, alone; chaperoned, but not too well. She looked timidly at the big fellow standing astride the buffalo rug before the fire. He had grown taller since she last saw him and had filled out with muscle. Consuelo felt no longer that sense of power which always had made her mistress of a situation. She was trembling.

Steven came over to her bench and stood beside it, looking down upon her. “May I sit beside you, señorita?”

She made room for him and they looked into the fire for a space.

“I have come, as you know, from Don Tiburcio and the Señora Garcia,” he began at length, awkwardly. “My countrywoman told me how kind you were to her while she was ill.”

“We did very little,” Consuelo murmured. “We owed her a great deal more.”

Neither of them spoke, embarrassment tying their tongues, then Consuelo echoed softly, “And we owe you still more.”

They both looked up to where above the mantel Don Anabel’s prized painting hung. The old master stood forth with great beauty against the austere whiteness of the wall. This brought Steven to the point.

“Señorita”—he looked directly at her—“you did not think, after I left, that I had anything to do with the disappearance of your father’s painting?”

“No, no, Señor, Ess-tevan. How could I? Had I not known you in the least I could not have thought such a thing, when you were going off so magnificently to save the Americans.”

“Nor when I came back with the painting and your father thought I had surely got possession of it somehow and taken it away?” He leaned toward her, his eyes eager, his whole attitude one of waiting to hear her defense of him. He laid a hand over hers. Happiness swam before him. Dared he take her in his arms, here?

“No, no, if you had not taken it you had not. Because you brought it back proved nothing but your generous service. I would never have believed such a thing. Besides, I knew, Ess-tevan, that you could not have taken it, for I saw another do that, though at the time I did not know what was being taken.”

“You saw—another?” Steven faltered, in surprise. “But you did not tell your father, when there was all this talk, after I left, that I was the thief?”

The words fell in complete silence. Consuelo looked away, her face burning. No words came to her, now that the fearful moment had come. This was not going as she had dreamed, this meeting. For months she had prayed just to have the chance to ask forgiveness of Steven for her proud manner on the night that she had sent Steven off on his journey. And not a word of his love had he mentioned. Did he not care any more whether or no she loved him? He was looking at her now with hurt surprise.

“You saw some one else take the picture,” he was repeating, incredulously; a dull red mantled his forehead, his boyish face was stubborn and hurt. “You knew who did it, and yet you let your father and all this town, where I expected to build up a business in trade, you let them believe that I was a common thief?”

Consuelo looked wildly at him. Tears started in her eyes, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth as he stammered mercilessly on: “And I can say nothing. I can imagine who took your painting. The fraile told me how he got it. And you, señorita, on the very night that you sent me to risk my life in the desert, not because of the poor little lad or a hated Yank, nor for the sake of the girl, but to save your brother’s soul—after that you kept silence about why I entered your garden. You did not tell who took the painting?”

All the pent up thoughts of his months alone on horse, riding with only thoughts for company, came out in the deluge of unaccustomed speech.

“Oh, Ess-tevan, I could not tell,” Consuelo implored, forcing her words as he stopped talking. “It would have broken my father’s heart. I—I had promised not to tell. I—I did not know you would come back this way, even. I prayed, I thought, something would happen meanwhile.”

“It has,” Steven answered, coldly, bowing and reaching for his hat. “Señorita, I have the honor to bid you good night. Will you extend my thanks and farewell to your so generous parents?” He found himself walking out through the door into the chill of the night air. His emotions were at a white heat of rage, or was it that he was stone cold?

He did not seem to know exactly what he was doing. Only he felt an alien chill against all that had drawn him back to the Villa. He strode down the dark narrow street, feeling his way by familiar walls and posts, till he came to Doña Katarina’s house.

“Juan,” he called, for the man had returned to him the night before, “get the horses and the mules, ready to leave for Taos the first thing in the morning.” He went into his room and proceeded to pack everything he owned. When all was strapped and ready he laid out his buckskin clothes and went to bed. Strangely he slept. His body and his emotions were tired, and he was young. But he had shut his mind in a coldly determined way.

Consuelo did not sleep till toward dawn. When Steven had seized his hat and stalked out of the room she could scarcely credit it. She stood before the fireplace, clenching and unclenching her hands, raging after her old fashion. Gradually she quieted and utter misery engulfed her. Doña Gertrudis awakened. With forced calm Consuelo delivered Steven’s message and then bade her mother good night.

When she reached her room a storm of tears broke and she wept for hours. Felicita stayed with her, and at length, when she had spent her strength, she sent the tired woman to bed, but Felicita lay down upon the floor at her side and would not leave her. Reason began to function in the early hours of the morning and Consuelo realized that the Americano, too, had his pride.

“Because he was always so amiable I did not realize how it would hurt and anger him to be suspected and to know that I could have stopped it,” she told herself, finding her only consolation in justifying him. “I will go to him myself in the morning,” she decided at last, as light was beginning to break in the east, and fell asleep.

The sun was already well up when Consuelo awoke. She dressed hurriedly and, leaving her chocolate untasted, hastened out through garden and toward the cathedral, which she would pass on her way to Doña Katarina’s house. She entered the church for a moment’s prayer, and as her black reboso disappeared within the door a horseman stopped outside the cathedral, hesitated for a moment at the foot of the steps. Then, with a quick gesture of determination he slapped his mare’s flank and rode on through the town, followed by his Indian attendant.

When Consuelo came out a few minutes later there was no one to be seen on the street, and when she arrived at Doña Katarina’s she learned that it was too late.

Juan and Steven stood upon a desolate hillside, and from behind the stunted cedar and pines looked down upon a strange scene. Juan had ridden somewhat out of the way on the trail to Taos, and had led Señor Estevan up to this mount from which he could see in a small valley below them a group of people clustering about a small adobe building.

“Look!” pointed Juan. “Listen! It is the pito (the flute).”

On the cold clear air a thin, sweet, flute-like piping arose to them. A little man down in the valley emerged from the house, carrying a book, which he held open before him, and from which he read aloud as he walked along. He was followed by one who played the flute, and behind him came a small procession, not more than five or six men, who wore masks, but who were bare to the waist, wearing nothing but white trunks. The men were striking themselves rhythmically across their backs with great whips, which were wetted from time to time in a bucket of brine carried alongside by another man. In a moment blood began to flow down their backs and the cotton trunks turned red. Steven looked away, shuddering, but in a low voice Juan once more called his attention to the religious ceremony below them.

“Señor, but look, Señor!”

Steven again looked down. The procession was winding along a rocky thorn-strewn trail beneath them, quite near, and following those that smote themselves with the thorny whips came another, bearing upon his back a heavy wooden cross. He lifted his face, and Steven recognized Luis Lopez. Juan pulled Steven back out of sight. They retraced their path and came out upon a main road where they had left their pack mules hobbled. Juan pulled and rode beside Steven.

“It is the Penitentes, señor, Los Hermanos De Luz, the Brothers of Light. I wanted you to see with your own eyes. Don Luis is of them; he has turned Penitente. This is the Holy Week, you know.”

“It was very old, this custom,” Juan continued. It had come with the first Spaniards; sometimes an Indian had been Penitente, but rarely. Long ago the Pecos Indians, of the ruined pueblo one passed on the Trail to Santa Fe,—did he remember?—had made sacrifices, it was said. But they were Aztecan; they worshiped differently. Still the Pecos tribes kept a sacred fire burning in the mountains, while the other Pueblos did not. Juan said no more and they rode on in silence.

A queer land, thought Steven. Luis could kill a man, steal, murder, and then atone by repenting in secret, whipping himself hideously. Oh, well, what did it matter now to him whether Luis repented or not? Steven could not understand this land. It was old, mysterious, and unfriendly. Yet in spite of his depression his whole nature responded to the mountains. They had lingered for four days among the hills, hunting. Spring was faintly burgeoning. The trees were ready to burst into bud, the air that blew down from the snow-capped peaks to the north carried that rare headiness that comes from beyond the timber line.

They shot a huge lobo (wolf) on the way and Steve turned it over to Juan for a robe. At the end of the fifth day they rode up through the deep arroyo that lies in the plain this side of Taos Valley, and trotted along through fertile farms into the tiny town. They made straight to the house where Colonel Ceran St. Vrain and Charles Bent lived, and there found young John Smith, Kit Carson, and a dozen long-haired trappers, guides, and hunters, among them his old friend Pierre Lafitte, who welcomed Steven right joyously. They sat up half the night, smoking, talking of the winter’s kill, and what promise the spring held.

“What have you been doing all these winter months, since last I saw you?” asked Ceran St. Vrain.

Steven told him of the trip south and its object. Ceran nodded.

“You could have done nothing else—nothing better, for that matter.”

“What was that southern country like and how did the streams run?” asked Kit. He had been down there once, in the Black Mountains, and he drew a map in the dust with his finger nail. Now what he wanted to know was, did this here river dreen down into this here valley, and from where did that thar small stream take its course?

Steven blushed. He had not located himself very well as he went. He was afraid he had not fixed the lay of the land in his mind, except for the valley of the Rio Grande.

“Pshaw!” said Kit. “You will never make a good scout if you don’t learn the mountains and the valleys, and the waterways especial. You’ve got to fix them all in your mind’s eye; then you never get lost. How did you ever get out of them White Sands you tell about, I wonder.”

“I didn’t,” Steve admitted, shamefacedly. “I went round and round after I reached right to the edge, so they told me, till finally de Garcia saw me and came up after us. I thought all the time that this white desert kept right on going, as I remember.”

The trappers nodded sympathetically. “That’s the desert for you. Mirage. In the mountains, now, you know where you’re at. Somethin’ to go by.” There was talk of traps and furs and how the Hudson Bay Company had lost out since the Rocky Mountain Fur Company had taken hold, and there was wonder what that country was like, way to the northwest, that the folks who had taken the Oregon Trail had struck out for.

John Smith said he met a French hunter in the mountains by the Red River, who said that there was an inland sea up north that was as briny as the Atlantic. “Well, you’d have to swallow that with a little salt,” spoke up Steven. There was a hearty guffaw, and St. Vrain silenced them with the withering retort that he not only believed it, but that he knew a man who had come across the hull of a Dutch ship, big as Columbus had used, stranded right in the midst of the desert, a hundred miles above the Gulf. Now what did they make of that?

“Nuthin’,” meditated John Smith. “No more’n a stranger could make of the millions of tons of buffalo bones what you see bleachin’ on the prairies.”

Someone burned a hole with a hot coal, with which he was lighting a pipe, and St. Vrain turned to Steven. “That reminds me, lad, when you return with your first caravan, bring a lot of those amusing little fire sticks, like the Yankees had. Matches. Some of them were no good at all, but the first lot set fire at the first scratch, and burned finely. They’re a great thing, I think, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some day no one would be without ’em.”

“I’ll send you back some,” Steven replied. “I’ll ship them from New York if New Orleans hasn’t got any yet. But I’ve decided not to come back myself.”

“What?” said St. Vrain, in astonishment, “Why, I thought it was all settled. Surely you don’t mean it, lad. I shall be very sorry.”

“But I do,” said Steven. “I have not seen my father and mother for a year, nor heard from them. After all, my father has built up a business, which he wishes his son to carry on. My place is there, where a great house known by the name I bear is already established.”

“That’s just it,” said St. Vrain, sagely. “It’s all ready made. You had no hand in it. Here is something you can do yourself. Your father has a partner, hasn’t he? And you can see him from time to time? Many have made their pile in the fur business and then retired. But they’ve helped to build up the country and the trade meanwhile. Trade, my lad, is the life of any country. Why hasn’t this land of New Spain grown any more in the three hundred odd years since the Spanish Conquistadores found it and settled it? No trade with outside countries. That’s why. That’s what builds any country up. Trade brings in new life.”

But Steven was determined. He would have to go north the day after the next, then, St. Vrain told him. He could go with Kit there, and join the party setting out from Bent’s Fort next month. They were going out to Leavenworth and another return caravan would follow back on the Trail in June. Steven said he would be ready to go with Kit.

Twenty-four hours later he was still of the same mind. And yet there was a strange ache in his breast. He sat with St. Vrain before the big fireplace. Tall Indians from the near-by pueblo which he had passed on his first trip to Taos in the fall stood around the wall, stately men, wearing their white deerskin robes, almost as an Arab wears his burnoose. One of them came over to Steven and showed him a tiny wagon which he had wrought out of silver—a little covered wagon. Steven gave the Taos artificer twice its weight in silver for the piece; the Indian was delighted.

“A silver wagon,” said St. Vrain. “That’s just a sample, silver caravans, one after another, that’s what that represents. Not only the hub and the linings of the wheels silver, but the goods inside.” He nudged Steven in an aside, for there was in the room a mixed company of Taos Indians, Mexicans from San Fernando de Taos, French trappers in the employ of the Bents, all eating, drinking, smoking.

“Had you heard about the hold-up of the Yankee caravan?”

Steven told him he had through Doña Katarina, upon her return from seeing her husband off on his spring round of the traps.

“That’s going to make it harder for the traders this next year. We need a friend in Santa Fe, Steven, my friend.”

“There’s Don Tiburcio just below,” Steven reminded him. “He wants to establish himself at Albuquerque. He has gold to invest. I have two sacks of his money for the trade.... Ah, here’s Kit.”

Young Carson had come in with a swarthy Frenchman, a lean, flashing hunter who might have been one of the Indians themselves except for his gayety and his mustachios. He laughed and sang as he flung down his pack and soon was tearing at his meat with gleaming teeth, half starved from the long trail just covered.

“Thou, Etienne,” said St. Vrain in French, “when will you have tired of living the life of the engagé, hunting, trapping? For three winters now, is it not?”

Etienne smiled back in perfect good nature, “Never, I think, my friend, though some day duty may recall me. I think your mountains have got hold of me. Their clutch is stronger than that of the vigilants of the French Republic.”

Steven looked sharply at him. The man had indeed the look of the French noble house of Napoleonic sympathies.

“Etienne was a French colonel of the Guards,” explained St. Vrain. “Something happened in his life. He came to this country, as you see, down the Mississippi, over the plains, and he cannot break himself away.”

A great weight was on Steven’s chest. He thought perhaps he was going to be ill. Never did he remember having had such a feeling of depression. This was the last night he should spend with this company. These daring, free, wild, fearless men, rich and uncouth, sharing a common love for the grandeur of the mountains, speaking the same tongue, understanding the silence of the timber-line heights—was he never to mingle with them again? Had he lived and dared throughout the past twelvemonth just to go away, now that he had become one with the life? St. Vrain broke in on his thoughts.

“This Steven has grown two inches this year, I swear,” said he, “and see how thick through the chest the man is.” He no longer called him lad, thought Steven, “This life has made a man of him. Here’s where he belongs.”

Unable to bear his heavy chest in company any more, Steven got up and went out. He paced up and down in the moonlight, and his thoughts were of the girl he had left standing before her hearth but a few nights before. Why had she ever warned him, in the first place? Why had she come to let him out the carcel? That debt angered him. And why had she sent him away on an errand of life and death only to treat him like a felon while he was gone? The more he thought of it the heavier became his chest and the tightness about his heart caused an acute pain. The chill indifference that had brought him north had melted away. But this hurt that followed his indifference was worse than anything else could have been.

He strode back and forth in the road in an unconscious effort to work off the pain that had accumulated and become dammed up during the past few days, the burning sense of injustice. No, he could not stay in this country, much as he loved it. The very name of Santa Fe would always be connected with Consuelo. Her lovely face was the first he had seen as he entered the Villa, and the last. If he did not put her sharply out of his mind now it would be the last that he carried out of the West.

She had played fast and loose with so fine a gentleman as Tiburcio de Garcia, he told himself, not asking why. Her family meant more to her than anything else could—her family pride. Who were these dons of New Mexico, anyway, that did not look down on trade as did the old French aristocrats of New Orleans? They had no scruples about trade. But he, Steven Mercer, came from a line of traders who had scoured the Seven Seas; from Caracas to Cuba, from China to Bombay, from Leavenworth to New Mexico.

In a rage he strode down the street and turned in at a brightly lighted little place whence came the sounds of music and dancing. Doña Magdalena de Archibec knew how to entertain. Always there was music in her place, a bright-eyed muchacha or two to dance or to be merry with, tables for cards and lotto. The place was merry tonight indeed. There were more than the usual number of trappers and pleasure-loving youths, who frolicked on the eve of Easter, now that Good Friday had passed. A solitary fiddler with but one leg, who sat with his chair tilted back against the wall, threw back his head, closed his eyes, and played all that he saw in his soul. A girl called Rosita slipped smilingly into a chair beside Steven, where he sat at the end of the room. She smiled close into his face and laid a very soft hand over his, humming gay little airs that followed the fiddle like a happy soul singing with a sad one.

“You are too sad, señor,” Rosita laughed in a sweet, hoarse voice.

She soothed him, reminded him vaguely of some one else. Other men came up to dance with her, but she waved them away. “No, no; he is sad. I must to cheer him.... Why are you sad?” she begged. “Girl, no?”

Steven made as if to rise from the table, but her expression showed that she was hurt, that her face was that of a tender child. He sat down again.

“What would you do,” he asked, “if you had done everything that some one asked of you, and then after you had risked life and all, asking nothing, found that she had let you be blamed for something you did not do, something—well, a thief, a low common thief? It was a lie, even though a silent lie.”

“Perhaps there was a reason,” offered Rosita, sympathetically. “I do not always tell the truth. My papa he does not know that I dance here. He would be most unhappy that I dance to make money, and sing for strange men. Yet it is very nice. I make silver money. I take it to my mamma, my papa—he is crippled, can never walk—and to the eight niños. I tell the lie to my parents. Why make them sad? Alas! they must think the streets of Taos are paved with gold or silver that I can find so much money sweeping and washing the dishes for the padrona!” She smiled a trifle sadly, and then both of them laughed. A fat, pock-marked Mexican boy came for her and she rose to whirl in solemn circles with him.

A hand touched Steven upon the shoulder. It was Pierre. “Some one asks for you outside,” he said, “a lady. She waits before the house of Ceran St. Vrain, seated upon a white horse.”

Steven stared at him almost uncomprehendingly; but he rose to his feet and followed Pierre out into the moonlight. Consuelo sat atop her white horse, saddled bravely with the chair saddle of red Spanish leather. She gazed down at him anxiously. Her face looked very small and white beneath her dark reboso. As Steven advanced and stood at her stirrup, an Indian guide who had been waiting beside her touched heels to his horse and rode on up the road.

“Ess-tevan,” she whispered, “I have come after you—to tell you—what in Santa Fe you would not hear. I am so, so sorry for all. It was wrong of me, I see, to be thinking of Luis, but I did not think of him only. I thought—that you loved the Americana, ’Ope Bragdon, and that you would for her sake be glad to go into the desert, as well as for the child. And about the—the picture. I could not tell my father.” Her voice broke, stopped. There was no word from Steven. She found a sobbing breath and hurried on. “You do not know how he would take such things. He is too proud. I could only wait and pray. Father Filemon Hubert said that it was right, that all would come right. How I have wept.

“Even now, that the painting is back again, my father has had a stroke. He could not bear it, to know about Luis. And Luis—he has gone away from home. We have not seen him since the night you were with us.” It was too much. She had said bravely all that there was to say, with no help from Steven. He was standing with bowed head at her side.

Then he lifted his face and spoke, wonderingly and ashamed: “And you came all this way across the mountains just to tell me, worthless and hasty as I have been, about it all, when I would not even stay to listen.” He raised his arms, lifted her down from the saddle, and carried her like a child into St. Vrain’s house, and did not stop till he had set her down before the fire in the brightly lighted room. He asked for a room and food for the lady, and while people flew in all directions to bring hot coffee and broth, Steven with eyes for nothing else leaned above her and whispered, “Consuelo, Consuelo.”

All the trappers and rough hunters in their shaggy sheepskins, their coon caps, their fringed and soiled buckskins, arose and filed quietly out and down the street to Magdalena de Archibec’s.

Steven knew now that the thing he most wanted was to stay in the mountains, to trade with New Mexico and to mingle in the company of Indians and fighters, of traders and exploring trappers. Not to Chihuahua would his pilgrimage be, to buy brocades and bracelets of garnets for his sweetheart, as the young swains of New Spain were wont, to show their valor, braving Indians and deserts—but to New Orleans, where one day he would take his bride to the home of his parents. He hung about her neck a riband from which dangled the tiny silver wagon of the caravans.

“Next year we shall travel with them, verdad?”

While they waited for the fraile to come over from his house, whither Ceran St. Vrain had sent to fetch him, Consuelo lifted a radiant face, dewy with tears. “And our house shall be furnished not from Chihuahua, not from Spain, but from America, and the bodegas of Mercer & Son.”