XX
STUB REACHES END O' TRAIL
"Santa Fe! The city of Santa Fe! Behold!"
Those were the cries adown the delighted column. Here they were, at last; but this was the evening of the fifth day since leaving the camp, and the distance was more than one hundred and sixty miles. The two spies, who had said that Santa Fe was only two days' journey from the stockade, had lied.
The first stage of the trip had been very cold, in deep snow. Then, on the third day, or March 1, they had emerged into a country of warmth and grass and buds, at the first of the Mexican settlements—a little town named Aqua Caliente or Warm Springs. Hooray!
They all, the Americans, viewed it curiously. The houses were low and one-story, of yellowish mud, with flat roofs; grouped close together so that they made an open square in the middle of the town and their rears formed a bare wall on the four sides.
"'Tis like a big brick-kiln, by jinks," remarked Freegift. "Now I wonder do they build this way for fear o' the Injuns?"
