Mesa Trail ch.12
Draft 3

"I now felt for the first time the joy of exploration. The isle was uninhabited; my shipmates I had left behind, and nothing lived in front of me but dumb brutes and fowls. I turned hither and thither among the trees. Here and there flowering plants, unknown to me; here there I saw snakes, and one raised his head from a ledge of rock and hissed at me with a noise not unlike the spinning of a top. Little did I suppose that he was a deadly enemy and that the noise was the famous rattle." – Treasure Island


The story that Kitie, Hannah and Josh had remembered from their childhood, handed down to them, like a strange but wonderful gift of a dream, started by what must have been nothing more than myth but, as time moved on and the players in the dream came to reach closer and closer to their very own great grandfather, became so real they felt like they could touch it, and did! Hannah was not the only one who carried a golden trinket from their past; Kitie had her very own coin which held the original Spanish lettering that had been translated to Santa Fe De Nuevo Mexico.  It had been told to her from her father that he had been told there were many more where this one came from and was one of the very original coins that sent, so many years later, great grandfather from his home in New England to the claim that had been settled by his father years before during the Great Pikes Peak Gold Rush.  The Spanish were the first known European Settlers and had briefly explored into the Front Range area as early as the 17th century and found many native groups who had lived in among the great mountains and learned to trade Spanish good for buffalo robes, which came in handy for a winter climate the Spanish were not used to in Mexican territory.  The Spanish conquistadors, always with one eye out for expanding their colonial territory and one eye out for expanding their possessions of gold, had learned that many natives easily collected gold from rushing creeks spinning down from the steep mountainsides.  Even though long and difficult winters and mostly small treasures persuaded the Spanish from fully settling their new claimed territory of Colorado, they had paid close attention to the ancient story of the great golden cave, a true mother lode as it would be termed in later years, but that also held great spiritual significance for the tribes who called the Flatirons home.  This story had made its way from the Mexican territory by Spanish ship, the Hispaniola, back along the coast of South America and up through trade routes and to Boston where they had found native tribes to trade with as well.  The Hispaniola never left the Boston Harbor again; the Spanish had disappeared, but the ship remained for hundreds of years as a relic and object of plunder by both natives and colonists.  The Hispaniola carried a full load, as it was on its way back to Spain for offering spoils to the king.  A mix of treasures from both Americas had been found; buffalo robes, foreign tools, even scalps, and several maps.  Some of the coins and maps referred to Santa Fe De Nuevo, Colorado, the Spanish claim west in the interior.  It was one such coin, and two such maps that eventually found their way into the Three Cranes Tavern in the center of a thriving downtown Boston at the turn of the 20th century in the hands of Kitie's great grandfather.