, he
nevertheless was always as quick to take up arms and undergo any hazard
and hardship in pursuit of murderous rustlers as he was in 1861 to join
the California Column (First California Volunteers) on its march across
the burning deserts of Arizona to meet and defeat Sibley at Val Verde.
A face fuller of the humanities and charities of life than his would be
hard to find; but, roused, the laughing eyes shone cold as a wintry
sky. He despised wrong, and hated the criminal, and spent his whole
life trying to right the one and suppress or exterminate the other. In
this work, and of it, ultimately, he lost his life.

In the early eighties, while the New Mexican courts were well-nigh
idle, crime was rampant, especially in Lincoln, Dona Ana, and Grant
Counties. To the east of the Rio Grande the Lincoln County War was at
its height, while to the west the Jack Kinney gang took whatever they
wanted at the muzzle of their guns; and they wanted about everything in
sight. County peace officers were powerless.

At this stage Fountain was appointed by the Governor "Colonel of State
Militia," and given a free hand to pacify the country. As an organized
military body, the militia existed only in name. And so Fountain left
it. Serious and effective as was his work, no man loved a grand-stand
play more than he. He liked to go it alone, to be the only thing in
the spot light. Thus most of his work as a desperado-hunter was done
single-handed.

On only one occasion that I can recall did he ever have with him on his
raids more than one or two men, always Mexicans, temporarily deputized.
That was when he met and cleaned out the Kinney gang over on the
Miembres, and did it with half the number of the men he was after.
Among those who escaped was Kinney's lieutenant. A few weeks later
Colonel Fountain learned that this man was in hiding at Concordia, a
_placita_ two miles below El Paso. He was one of the most desperate
Mexican outlaws the border has ever known, a man who had boasted he
would never be taken alive, and that he would kill Fountain before he
was himself taken dead, a human tiger, whom the bravest peace officer
might be pardoned for wanting a great deal of help to take. Yet
Fountain merely took his armory's best and undertook it alone: and by
mid-afternoon of the very next day after the information reached him he
had his man safely manacled at the El Paso depot of the Santa Fe
Railway.

While waiting for the tra