Page:Lost with Lieutenant Pike (1919).djvu/311

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house that this night he was ill. In the morning, which was that of March 3, they all had ridden on southward, led by him and by the pleasant Don Lieutenant Bartholomew. They had passed through several more villages, one resembling another; and in the sunset, after crossing a high mesa or flat tableland covered with cedars, at the edge they had emerged into view of Santa Fe, below.

"Santa Fe! La ciudad muy grande (The great city)! Mira (See)!"

Those were the urgent exclamations from the dragoons and militia.

"'Great city,' they say?" Hugh uttered, to Stub. "Huh! Faith, it looks like a fleet o' flatboats, left dry an' waitin' for a spring rise!"

It was larger than the other villages or towns, and lay along both flanks of a creek. There were two churches, one with two round-topped steeples; but all the other buildings were low and flat-roofed and ugly, ranged upon three or four narrow crooked streets. At this side of the town there appeared to be the usual square, surrounded by the mud buildings. Yes, the two-steepled church fronted upon it.

As they rode down from the mesa, by the road that they had been following, the town seemed to wake up. They could hear shouting, and might see