"Come here, children. Yonder is the end of the trail."

We gathered eagerly about him, a picture in ourselves, maybe, in an age
of picturesque things; four men, bronzed and bearded; two sturdy boys;
Mat Nivers, no longer a little girl, it seemed now, with the bloom of
health on her tanned cheeks, and the smile of good nature in wide gray
eyes; beside her, the Indian maiden, Little Blue Flower, slim, brown,
lithe of motion, brief of speech; and towering back of all, the
glistening black face of the big, silent African woman.

So we stood looking out toward that northwest plain where the trail lost
itself among the low adobe huts huddled together beside the glistening
waters of the Santa Fé River.

Rex Krane was the first to speak.

"So that's what we've come out for to see, is it?" he mused, aloud.
"That's the precious old town that we've dodged Indians, and shot
rattlesnakes, and sunburnt our noses, and rain-soaked our dress suits
for! That's why we've pillowed our heads on the cushiony cactus and
tramped through purling sands, and blistered our hands pullin' at
eider-down ropes, and strained our leg-muscles goin' down, and busted
our lungs comin' up, and clawed along the top edge of the world with
nothin' but healthy climate between us and the bottom of the bottomless
pit. Humph! That's what you call Santa Fé! 'The city of the Holy Faith!'
Well, I need a darned lot of 'holy faith' to make me see any city there.
It's just a bunch of old yellow brick-kilns to me, and I 'most wish now
I'd stayed back at Independence and hunted dog-tooth violets along the
Big Blue."