“I doubt if ever,” St. Vrain shook his head skeptically. “They could _never_ lay the track, and could make but little better time. We’ve come fast. We’ll be nooning at One-hundred-and-ten-mile creek. Day before yesterday I showed you where the Oregon Trail branched off; now the way lies straight ahead till we strike the Arkansas at the Bend. Your Senator Benton, and President Monroe, too, have been good friends to the traders, getting the old Trail surveyed. This is the way lad, that the first fellows who found that country yonder traveled. They followed the sunset, the Spaniards, till they struck a river flowing from the west, the Arkansas. And that’s the way the first traders, La Lande and Pursley, came twenty-five years ago; they’re still living in Santa Fe, doing business. And Captain Pike, exploring for the United States--I’ll show you a great peak named after him when we reach the mountains. But poor Pike got onto Mexican territory and built him a winter fort, thinking it was the United States, and they threw him into prison in Santa Fe as a spy. Lots of those who came after him met the same fate; and since they blazed the way many traders have come. “I’ve heard it said out yonder”--the colonel nodded towards the sunset--“that those early Spaniards thought they were going to find cities with streets paved with gold! Seven of them!” The fat Frenchman threw back his head and laughed appreciatively. “But the gold is in the pocket, not in the street; and it’s _silver_, bar and bullion and minted coin.” He slapped his thigh, roaring heartily. “That is what the trader finds in honest trade where the Spaniard failed with all his bloodshed. Yet do you know, they hate us like pizen! Many a man who found his way across this trackless plain and through the mountain passes wasn’t able to find his way back. Rotted in Mexican jails like McKnight and his party back in 1812, that lay for ten years in Chihuahua carcels, their goods confiscate; _mais oui!_” “How did this Pursley happen to be allowed to live in Santa Fe unmolested?” asked Steven, curiously, a trifle uneasy at such a record. “They wouldn’t let him leave. He knows where free gold lies thick in those mountains,” the colonel replied. “He won’t tell where and they wouldn’t let him get away. They always hope to find out where. Some day he may tell and there’ll be a trail broader than this worn to the diggings, mark me.”