of Taos, were collected in front of his dwelling
striving to gain admittance. While they were effecting an entrance,
he, with an axe, cut through an adobe wall into another house; and
the Mexican wife of the occupant, a clever though shiftless Canadian,
hearing him, with all her strength rendered him assistance. He
retreated to a room, but, seeing no way of escaping from the infuriated
assailants, who fired upon him from a window, he spoke to his weeping
wife and trembling children, and, taking paper from his pocket,
endeavoured to write; but fast losing strength, he commended them to God
and his brothers and fell, pierced by a ball from a Pueblo. Then rushing
in and tearing off his gray-haired scalp, the Indians bore it away in
triumph.

The circuit attorney, T. W. Leal, was scalped alive and dragged through
the streets, his relentless persecutors pricking him with lances. After
hours of suffering, they threw him aside in the inclement weather, he
imploring them earnestly to kill him to end his misery. A compassionate
Mexican at last closed the tragic scene by shooting him. Stephen
Lee, brother to the general, was killed on his own housetop. Narcisse
Beaubien, son of the presiding judge of the district, hid in an outhouse
with his Indian slave, at the commencement of the massacre, under a
straw-covered trough. The insurgents on the search, thinking that they
had escaped, were leaving, but a woman servant of the family, going to
the housetop, called to them, "Kill the young ones, and they will never
be men to trouble us." They swarmed back and, by cruelly putting to
death and scalping him and his slave, added two more to the list of
unfortunate victims.

The Pueblos and Mexicans, after their cruelties at Fernandez de Taos,
attacked and destroyed Turley's Ranch on the Arroyo Hondo[27] twelve
miles from Fernandez, or Taos. Arroyo Hondo runs along the base of a
ridge of a mountain of moderate elevation, which divides the valley of
Taos from that of the Rio Colorado, or Red River, both flowing into
the Del Norte. The trail from one place to the other passes over the
mountain, which is covered with pine, cedar, and a species of dwarf oak;
and numerous little streams run through the many canyons.

On the bank of one of the creeks was a mill and distillery belonging
to an American named Turley, who did a thriving business. He possessed
herds of goats, and hogs innumerable; his barns were filled with grain,
his mill with flo