“I am glad for that.” There was no doubting the sighing voice from the balcony, “but that is not all, Señor Estevan. You are American, and must be very discreet here in Santa Fe. It would be awful to have bloodshed. Although I suppose you are used to that.” “Oh yes, more or less,” replied Steven, modestly. “The mosquitoes on the Trail were frightful. I lost simply quarts to them.” Consuelo looked startled. Felicita was pulling at her skirts from below. “I must go, señor. I may be discovered.” She was peering over the rail at him, and all he could see was her eyes and nose. A wave of genuine gratitude, of pleasure, of moonlight and youth, swept Steven up to the rail. Pulling himself up on a level with it, he implanted a kiss on the small fingers clutching there. But somehow the kiss landed instead on a nose. With a little gasp Consuelo dropped out of sight. Steven slipped to the ground, leaped to the dark side of the street, and, for a novice, lost himself very successfully in the shadows just as the moon escaped fully from the mountains. CHAPTER VII THE PIONEERS Life had altered greatly for Hope Bragdon since that far-away day when her father had decided that they would cross the plains in a Conestoga wagon. That crossing seemed now like a dusty nightmare. Hope did not like to think back to it, but rather to accustom herself to the new life here in the Villa de Santa Fe. Sometimes it seemed that life had just begun for her that night at the dance. No one had ever paid much attention to her back home in Pottsville. She had never seen so much of gayety as during that one crowded hour. Hope would have liked to know the lovely-looking Spanish girl whom she had seen on the night of the dance, but she did not see Consuelo again during the weeks that followed. On the day following the dance Bragdon moved out to a house just outside of town. How different these thick-walled houses, made from the very earth beneath one’s feet, from the cold frame and brick of her New England home. Cool in the heat of the day, warm in the cool of the evening, they were amazingly comfortable. How different, too, the life--easier for the natives, easier even for her, daughter of a Yankee, born to look for work. There was water in the well, there were no forests to be hewn, no fields to clear before they had grain; crops never failed if they were irrigated, it seemed.