“Diaz!” she cried. “He is here; but he is almost mad! Never have I seen him so wrought up, and I have been married to him for forty years. But,” with the facility of much practice, “what will you have? I can buy, sell and trade as well as Diaz. What will you have?” “We want to see your husband,” said Kit. “See him!” Again the old woman flourished her hands. “Impossible, señor! He will see no one. He has met with a misfortune!” From the back of the storehouse they now heard a wailing voice lifted to a pitch of great distress. “Oh, a blight is on me,” it droned. “A darkness is shut down upon me. Never again will such a chance be mine. To think of it! A river running with gold--clear, yellow, beautiful gold!” At this the three Americans looked at each other with quickened interest; the old woman wrung her fat hands and took up the wail. “Running with gold, señors--a large river whom no one but the Indians have any knowledge of. And now the paper is gone. We shall never see it again.” Kit Carson leaned his rifle against a heap of wolf skins; to the woman he said: “We must see your husband, señora; the matter is of great importance.” Then, as she shook her head stubbornly, he added: “It is about this paper; tell him that.” The woman gave him a greedy look; then as fast as her unwieldy body would permit, she scuttled to the rear of the storehouse and through a curtained doorway. Beyond this there came a babble of excited voices; then the woman reappeared followed by an old man with bent shoulders and a long, chin beard. “Señors,” squeaked this latter, in a thin, trembling voice, “I welcome you. You have come to bring joy to my old heart, have you not? You have come with an offer from the señor of the moccasins?” eagerly, as his ratty old eyes ran from one to the other. “Sit down. Be comfortable. Let us approach this business quietly and with freedom.” The trapper folded his arms across his chest and leaned his shoulders against the bare clay wall. “We were told by Manuel Lopez to seek you out when we arrived in Santa Fé,” said he. “It is on a business about a paper which he has--a paper which he took from the schooner ‘Gadfly’ at Los Angeles.” The quaking hands of Goat Beard began to gesture; his halting old tongue was striving to form a reply, when the curtains at the rear doorway were once more pushed aside--and Lopez himself stood before them! The half-breed’s eyes were bloodshot and feverish; his brown hands trembled as badly as those of the old man. “So you are here, are you?” said he, after he had stood staring at them for a moment from the doorway. “You are here, and looking for the map.” He threw up his hands, pressing them tightly to his forehead; then he began to laugh in a way that made the flesh of the two lads creep. “He’s like a madman,” whispered Dave to his cousin. [Illustration: “SO YOU ARE HERE?”] “Something has happened,” replied Joe, in the same low tone. “And something that means ill luck for us, I’m afraid.”