The colonel flecked the backs of his oxen to speed their measured pacing. “My countree she give up an empire here,” he said at length in English. “Two hundred year she been here, up and down the Mississip. England push down from the Great Lakes, from the Hudson Bay, but she can’t push the _voyageur_ off the rivers and _lacs_. Those Spanish they lie safe behind those mountains, like the dog in the mange; cannot hold this land and don’t want anyone else to. The Mexican, and now the Texan South, they get as bad as the Indian every year now. Don’t want traders to pass through Texas. “But two hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of goods have been carried over this trail this year, my lad.” The colonel nodded impressively. “I talk with all the traders who buy for forts and with fur-traders as well. And that is not all. Colonel Bent tells me that seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars’ worth of trade has been taken in to Santa Fe from Mexico this year from everywhere. For this reason I myself and Charles Bent have made our move to Taos this year. Colonel Bent stays on the Arkansas. Too bad there is no river to Santa Fe. See how many trading stations and forts already on the Oklahoma. “But come, I see you are more interested in stories of adventure. Is it not so? You shall have enough of it before you have finished.” Steven’s eyes lit with delight. “Last year a company of young men from Franklin, Missouri,” the colonel continued, “reached Santa Fe, sold their goods, and months later came staggering back to Independence on foot, almost dead. They’d been attacked almost from the moment they left Santa Fe, their mules stampeded off. They had finally to hide nearly all the money they’d made, ten thousand dollars silver--cached it on Chouteau’s island on the border. “Will they go back for the money? I bet you _que oui_! Some of them are with that caravan ahead with Bent. Major Riley will guard them to the cache. Oh, you’ll have adventure aplenty my lad.” “Tonight I stand guard for the first time”--Steven was hugely pleased--“but everything has been very quiet so far, Colonel.” “Let us hope it will continue to be so,” replied St. Vrain, fervently, “as we have no military escort. We’re but four days out and there is a six weeks’ journey at least before us. Do you see that dark streak yonder on the horizon? That’s buffalo, a hundred herds, likely.” To Steven the endless, treeless prairie stretching away before them held all the lure of the sea for the sailor. His eager eyes looked over its waves, anticipating what lay beyond. A natural road, surveyed five years before as far as the Mexican border. But through the mountains beyond, where there were no roads--that was where the survey was needed; where many a good man was killed from ambush in some narrow canyon.