On his march he gathered in every American trader and trapper he found and some of these he sent to Nachitoches, a Spanish post in Texas, where Pike afterwards found them existing in abject poverty. The army was made up of one hundred dragoons from the province of Biscay, who had fitted out on reaching Santa Fé, and were there joined by five hundred mounted militia, equipped for six months. Each man led two horses and a mule, making in all over two thousand head of stock. Down Red River they had gone some 233 miles, before turning to the north-east to reach the Arkansas, where Malgares left 240 of his men with the worn-out stock, while with the rest he kept on to the village of the Pawnee Republic, on the Republican fork of the Kansas River, where he held councils with various tribes of Pawnees. It was about here that the unfortunate Villazur party met its sad fate in 1720, and the recollection of that affair now produced in the Spanish soldiers a desire rather to revenge the treachery against Villazur by destroying the Pawnees, than to promote the repairing of the slender links of the ancient amity chain. In addition to this they seem to have grown discontented. These considerations and the lame condition of the stock prevented Malgares from advancing farther or from waiting to intercept Pike, and he was obliged to take the back track; a lucky thing for the small American party. By October he was in Santa Fé, where his militia disbanded, but he remained there with the regular troops. He was well out of Pike's way, as it was the end of September before the American party came upon the trail of the Spaniards on the Republican fork. [Illustration: A Glade for the Weary. Altitude 8000 Feet. Photograph by F. S. Dellenbaugh.] This was probably the region that Coronado reached in his eastward march two and a half centuries earlier—and it was little different from what it was at that time.