The first letter from Esperanza. The holes are mouse chewings. The letter was found in a small army bag stuffed deep in the back of a floor cabinet in the attic in an old farmhouse in Indiana. A June 1946 letter from Traven was the newest item in the bag. In the bag was all the correspondence he brought back from mexico, 1940-1943, and letters from Esperanza while he was in the army, before he went overseas. It seems the bag had been forgotten. Luckily the mice preferred the newspaper clippings.

Esperanza invites Henry to a club hike at Las Peńas de las Hadas in June 1941. Pictures are Esperanza Lopez Mateos and her walking companion "The Professor", by Henry Schnautz, from the same trip.