St. Vrain, on the other hand, had been forced that morning to pay thirty dollars apiece for the ten mules which he was taking back to Taos with him, where he and Charles Bent would need them in conducting their branch of the trade that had grown up about Bent’s Fort. Salt at five dollars a load was not difficult to dispose of, although any New Mexican could haul it himself from various places for even less than that amount. St. Vrain showed Steven a pretty little mare which he bought at once for eleven dollars and of which he at once became very fond. By noon everyone was ready to stop. A good deal remained to be disposed of, and yet an extremely good business had been done. “I do not mind paying thirty dollars for the mules,” St. Vrain confided to Steven, as he locked his warehouse door behind him, “as long as I am not forced to buy back my own mules as those poor chaps did last year. Not four days from La Villa their mules were all stampeded off, nearly three hundred of them, and, having been forced to return to Santa Fe on foot to purchase more, they were offered their own animals and had to buy them back. And they are not nearly so good, either, these mules of New Mexico, as your large Louisiana jackass. Did you notice that Bragdon had six of his mules die in harness just as they reached the end of the Trail?” “No wonder, with the load he carried and the way he pushed them.” “Trade is not nearly so good this year as it was last,” St. Vrain considered. “It’s due to such treatment here in Santa Fe and to the terrible ferocity of the Indians. Why, last year there were a hundred wagons to the thirty of this summer. The amount of merchandise brought in and the business done was more than three times as much as for this summer.” They were walking up the narrow street and Steven now was getting his first real glimpse of Santa Fe. There were no sidewalks and the walls of the houses rose straight from the road. There were occasional glimpses into green patios, and fragrant sprays of deep pink tamarack drooped occasionally over the walls, waving their plumes against a very blue sky. When it wished, the reserve of Old Spain was well housed behind those shuttered windows and crooked little doors. Yet when so disposed it could overflow merrily into the street, or peer intimately from windows through which a hand could thrust to pluck at one’s cloak as he passed, to pick one’s pocket, or to drop a note within the hand. One may imagine Steven’s surprise to feel a crumpled piece of paper come into contact with his palm. He closed his finger upon the fragment and looked swiftly down. But only the barred shutters of a little blue window were there, and he walked on with scarcely a halt in his stride.