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?