or brutality and selfishness by slaying them at night or from an ambush?
Were they killed by banditti? Did they sink in the quicksands that led
the river into subterranean canals? None will ever know, perhaps; but
many years afterward a savage told a priest in Santa Fe that the regiment
had been surrounded by Indians, as Custer's command was in Montana, and
slain, to a man. Seeing that escape was hopeless, the colonel--so said
the narrator--had buried the gold that he was transporting. Thousands of
doubloons are believed to be hidden in the canon, and thousands of
dollars have been spent in searching for them.

After weeks had lapsed into months and months into years, and no word
came of the missing regiment, the priests named the river El Rio de las
Animas Perdidas--the River of Lost Souls. The echoing of the flood as it
tumbled through the canon was said to be the lamentation of the troopers.
French trappers softened the suggestion of the Spanish title when they
renamed it Purgatoire, and--"bullwhackers" teaming across the plains
twisted the French title into the unmeaning "Picketwire." But
Americo-Spaniards keep alive the tradition, and the prayers of many have
ascended and do ascend for the succor of those who vanished so strangely
in the valley of Las Animas.

RIDERS OF THE DESERT

Among the sandstone columns of the Colorado foot-hills stood the lodge of
Ta-in-ga-ro (First Falling Thunder). Though swift in the chase and brave
in battle, he seldom went abroad with neighboring tribes, for he was
happy in the society of his wife, Zecana (The Bird). To sell beaver and
wild sheep-skins he often went with her to a post on the New Mexico
frontier, and it was while at this fort that a Spanish trader saw the
pretty Zecana, and, determining to win her, sent the Indian on a mission
into the heart of the mountains, with a promise that she should rest
securely at the settlement until his return.

On his way Ta-in-ga-ro stopped at the spring in Manitou, and after
drinking he cast beads and wampum into the well in oblation to its deity.
The offering was flung out by the bubbling water, and as he stared,
distressed at this unwelcome omen, a picture formed on the surface--the
anguished features of Zecana. He ran to his horse, galloped away, and
paused neither for rest nor food till he had reached the post. The
Spaniard was gone. Turning, then, to the foot-hills, he urged his jaded
horse toward his cabin, and arrived, one b