Carson was to guide St. Vrain’s party over the Raton Pass and down to Santa Fe, a ten-day trip, ordinarily. Three mornings later they were off, ascending into a rarer air and a rocky grandeur that filled the boy from New Orleans with a headiness like wine. Carson dropped alongside Steven often and rode beside him, pointing out spots of interest. “Beyond that far peak yonder”--he nodded northwest--“you see that blue shadow? That’s Pike’s Peak. They get you, you know, the mountains,” he added, reflectively, “You can’t never leave ’em, once you’ve known ’em.” “Kit’s a great lad,” said St. Vrain. “Already he knows every inch o’ the land for a hundred miles; the sources o’ streams, which way they flow; every peak and pass. He’s a fearful fighter, too, lookin’ sweet as a woman, yet he can get along with Indians, even at his age, better than anyone else except William Bent.” On the third or fourth day they struck Raton Pass, and at that altitude Steve felt a ringing in his ears and an exultation forever to be associated with the grandeur of the country that lay before them as they emerged, and thereafter as they wended their way over hemlock-darkened slopes and saw beyond the bare reaches above timber line the distant jagged structure of snowy peaks. Santa Fe lay below, they told him. The caravan threaded narrow canyons and ascended to high trails from which they could look down into vast valleys in the bottom of which molten quicksilver flowed in narrow ribbons. Across the empty spaces the blue light of the heavens hung motionless, amethystine in the shadow of titanic hills or the eclipse of a far cloud. Down mountain roads strewn thick with stone and perilous to the feet of oxen the heavy wagons rocked and slid, with locked wheels, through fertile level valleys, and one bright morning they awoke in a land that shone red as an inferno, where earth and rock alike were red, the color of the red man’s skin. The stunted cedar, the cloudless turquoise sky, alone remained familiar to make the stranger know he was still upon this earth. “Why is it so red?” Steven marveled. “It’s the blood that’s been shed here,” replied St. Vrain, solemnly, “and the red Indians that’ve lived and died and been buried in this land.” “Glorieta!” yelled the mule-drivers. “Glorieta!” answered the echoes. “Santa Fe tonight,” shouted Kit Carson. “Santa Fe! Santa Fe!” The echoes must have carried almost across the hills. CHAPTER V THE COMING OF THE CARAVAN It had been a long while for Consuelo Lopez to await the coming of the caravan from the East. She was not conscious, perhaps, that she was waiting, nevertheless the summer days had passed in an expectancy that held off Don Tiburcio’s wooing. It was an effective barrier. He himself felt that Consuelo was waiting for something. He hoped that it would prove to have been for him.