Two years after the death of Grim, Carson and a negro were hunting in the Grand River country and were encamped one night in the hills. While seated beside their campfire, they heard a cry of distress. Upon going to the spot, they found a lone Indian woman pinioned beneath her pony, which had stepped into a wolf hole and broke its leg. The woman was badly injured and they carried her to their campfire and made her comfortable. The next day they constructed a rude litter and carried her twenty miles to a place where she could receive medical attention. The woman was Mary Greenwater, and this was, perhaps, the first act of kindness she had ever received. A certain escapade at the close of Carson's college days had caused him to migrate to the West, where, like many others, he became a soldier of fortune, drifting whither the strongest tide wind blew. When Mary Greenwater recovered she sought him, and in her gratitude made him the overseer of her ranch at a princely salary. In course of time they were married by the ancient Indian ceremony of the Fastest Horse. When the days of feasting were over, and Mary Greenwater's relatives had returned to their cabins richer by a number of ponies, Mary told Carson a wondrous story of how, many summers ago, when her grandfather was a boy, a Spanish caravan came from Santa Fe and was besieged in the Grand river hills for many days, and of how, finding that they would eventually be starved to death if they remained, the travelers had hidden their possessions among the lime rocks and undertaken to cut their way through the Indian hordes to a place of safety. Her grandfather had found the hiding place of the treasure and had kept it a profound secret from all except herself, to whom he told it only when he began to sing his death song. Mary Greenwater swore to Carson that the hiding place of the Spanish treasure would never be known except to one other member of her tribe, and then not until after her death. She told him there were valuable papers which she knew none of her people could ever use, and which she later gave to Carson.