About twenty-five miles east of Taos, near the summit of the continental divide, is a lonely hut and when I went to Taos, I paused there for refreshments, and also because Senor Sol Luna had given me a token of introduction to Miguel Dacombo; and here it was that he, knowing of my desire, sat squat upon the ground, and with a stick sketched crudely in the sand, after the manner of story tellers and tradition men of the southwest. And this is the story imperfectly told in broken English, as it had come to him through fourteen generations of ancestry:

"I, Miguel Dacombo (the camper), being of the ancient family, will tell you now the story of 'The Nine Years.' Fra Juan de Padilla, and Fra Juan de La Cruz, and Dacombo, the soldier with two boys, Lucas and Sabastian, went into the far land of Quivera, to teach the desert men, the Christ. They crossed leagues of waste, perhaps three hundred and perhaps rive hundred. They forded rivers, and after a time, Padre Padilla said, 'We have reached the land.' It was late in the summer, and they had come upon a bluff overlooking a wide glade. A river there was in the glade, which they afterwards found to be very shallow and full of dangerous quick-sands. Many islands there wrere, and trees and grass. Here were the people they had come to teach.

"The desert men came running, whereupon Padre Padillo told all to hide and he would meet them alone. He knelt down to pray, and the desert men fell upon and killed him, while kneeling. Fra de La Cruz, some days later, saw a small band, and being in sore need of food, he tried to reconcile them, but they also killed him. Then it was that the Soldier spoke : 'They are God-less, -- they are devils, -- let us go away.'