Treasure of the Sangre de Cristos

Book excerpt: This collection of tales and traditions from the Southwest includes stories of lost mines stacked with bars of gold, mule loads of silver cached away in outlaw hoards, and fabulous Jesuit treasures buried when that order was expelled from New Spain. Some treasure locations would be rediscovered by chance or by an old map-and somehow always lost again. But not all these folk teasures are of material wealth. There is the story of a nun who loved a soldier and repented, and whose kneeling figure may still be seen as a mountain rock formation. There is the Hermit of Las Vegas, an actual person who, after traveling between Argentina and Quebec, settled in New Mexico, where he became the subject of affectionate legends.