good beaver."

The sun set in a gold and crimson glory, working its magic metamorphosis on river, banks, and bottoms, painting the colored cliffs and setting afire the crystals in which their clay was rich. Though usually the scenery along this river at this time of the year was nothing to boast of, there were certain conditions under which it resembled a fairyland. The rolling wavelets bore their changing colors across the glowing water and set dancing myriad flashes of sunlight; streaks of sunlight reached in under the trees along the bank and made fairy paths[Pg 82] among the trunks, while the imbedded crystals in the clay bluffs glittered in thousands of pin-points of iridescent flame.

[Pg 82]

When supper time came around Tom still felt a little reluctant to meet Patience, worried by how she might greet him, although her actions preceding the fight should have told him that his fears were groundless. To his great relief she met him as graciously as she had before, and as a matter of fact he thought he detected a little more warmth and interest, but discounted this because he feared that his judgment might be biased in his favor by his hopes.

Uncle Joe apparently had forgotten all about the affair and did not refer to it in any way, confining himself to subjects connected with the great southwest highway, its trade, outfitting, the organization of the caravans, the merchandising at Santa Fe and bits of historical and personal incidents, not forgetting to comment on the personality of Armijo and his arbitrary impost of five hundred dollars on each wagon to cross the boundary, regardless of what its contents might be. He chuckled over the impost, for the goods which he had sent up to Independence by an earlier boat had been selected with that tax in mind. He had his own ideas about the payment of the impost, and although he could not entirely avoid it, he intended to take a great deal of the sting out of it.

He contended that the beating of unlawful duties was not cheating, since it was purely a game of one individual outwitting another, one being an arbitrary tyrant who was strongly suspected of pocketing the wagon tax for his own uses. The only trouble with his philosophy was[Pg 83] what it set going, for having proved one evasion of tax to be honest it tended to go farther and justify other evasions which fairly crossed the ethical boundaries. One of these was the rumored prohibition of Mackinaw blankets and the export tax on specie. This last would be something of a hardship, for coin was the best and most 

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