«Reno?»

When he looked up, Eve was afraid she had lost the dangerous game she was playing. Reno’s eyes were a pale green, and they burned.

«It’s 1867,» he said, «summer, we’re on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, and I’m trying to decide if I want to hear any more fairy tales about Spanish gold before I take what I won in a card game.»

«It’s not a fairy tale! It’s all in the journal. There was a Captain Leon and someone called Sosa.»

«Sosa?»

«Yes,» Eve said quickly. «Gaspar de Sosa. And a Jesuit Priest. And a handful of soldiers.»

Through a screen of thick brown eyelashes, she watched Reno warily, praying that he believed her.

«I’m listening,» he said. «Not real patiently, mind you, but I’m listening.»

What Reno didn’t say was that he was listening very carefully. He had tried to retrace the trail of the Espejo and Sosa expeditions more than once. Both expeditions had found gold and silver mines that had yielded vast wealth.

And all of their mines had been «lost» before their riches ran out.

«Sosa and Leon were given license to find and develop mines for the king,» Eve said, frowning as she tried to remember all that she had learned from the Lyons and the old journal. «The expedition went north all the way to the land of the Yutahs.»

«Today we call them Utes,» Reno said.

«Sosa followed Espejo, who was the one who gave the land the name of New Mexico,» she said hurriedly. «And he was the one who called the routes leading out of all the mines and back to Mexico the Old Spanish Trail.»

«Nice of them to write in English so you could figure all this out,» Reno said sardonically.

«What do you mean?» Eve asked, giving him a quick glance. «They wrote in Spanish. Funny Spanish. If s the very devil to puzzle out.»