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.”