CARAVANS TO SANTA FE [Illustration: Quivering with rage, Consuelo stood still.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CARAVANS TO SANTA FE By ALIDA SIMS MALKUS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARIE A. LAWSON Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CARAVANS TO SANTA FE COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY HARPER & BROTHERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: a map] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CARAVANS TO SANTA FE CHAPTER I AN OUTPOST OF SPAIN A hundred years ago, in a valley that lies on the slope of flame-shot mountains, a little town of ancient crooked streets slept in the sun, entirely shut away from outside civilization--a bit of old Spain, lying in rare and mellow beauty in the mountains of the Sangre de Cristo. Beyond the Cordilleras lay other ranges of rocky, snow-capped peaks, and beyond these again stretched hundreds of miles of barren desert, succeeded by still other hundreds of miles of rolling plains--a land of red men and bearded bison. Through the streets of the adobe-walled _Villa_, the town of Santa Fe, life flowed with a sluggish content or took siesta. At this moment it was taking siesta. The cook slept with her bare toes spread in the cool mud beneath a dripping _olla_, the wood boy and his _compadre_, the burro slept within a few feet of each other, the burro standing in the sun, the boy lying in the blue shadow of a wall. Doña Gertrudis Chaves y Lopez slept with open mouth, through which issued contented little whistles of escaping steam. Don Anabel Lopez himself slept, but not even sleep could relax the pride of his hawk nose, the defiance of his well-bred snore. But Consuelo Lopez did not sleep; she lay in her bedroom, sulking. She was bored as only sixteen can be bored, and waved a naked foot in the air in rage. “_Bestia!_” she exploded, venting her angry thought. “_Moribundos!_ The dead ones!” Reaching under her pillow, Consuelo drew out a silver case from which she extracted a cigarette. Slipping to a window where one long dazzling shaft of sunshine pierced a crack in the shutter, she held a small burning-glass over a wisp of paper. It flamed in a moment; the cigarette was lit, and she resumed her pose. A step sounded outside the door. Consuelo threw the cigarette disdainfully behind the bed, but the step passed on and she recovered it again before it had time to go out. It was fortunate that Doña Gertrudis was so insistent upon her daughter’s beauty sleep. Consuelo would be permitted to indulge her boredom undisturbed for another hour. A raging boredom she rather enjoyed, but not a languid one.