d the jury-box, and American soldiery guarded the
halls. It was a strange mixture of violence and justice--a middle ground
between the martial and common law.

After an absence of a few minutes, the jury returned with a verdict of
"guilty in the first degree"--five for murder, one for treason. Treason,
indeed! What did the poor devil know about his new allegiance? But so it
was; and as the jail was overstocked with others awaiting trial, it
was deemed expedient to hasten the execution, and the culprits were
sentenced to be hung on the following Friday--hangman's day.

Court was daily in session; five more Indians and four Mexicans were
sentenced to be hung on the 30th of April. In the court room, on the
occasion of the trial of these nine prisoners, were Senora Bent the late
governor's wife, and Senora Boggs, giving their evidence in regard to
the massacre, of which they were eye-witnesses. Mrs. Bent was quite
handsome; a few years previously she must have been a beautiful woman.
The wife of the renowned Kit Carson also was in attendance. Her style
of beauty was of the haughty, heart-breaking kind--such as would lead a
man, with a glance of the eye, to risk his life for one smile.

The court room was a small, oblong apartment, dimly lighted by two
narrow windows; a thin railing keeping the bystanders from contact
with the functionaries. The prisoners faced the judges, and the three
witnesses--Senoras Bent, Boggs, and Carson--were close to them on a
bench by the wall. When Mrs. Bent gave her testimony, the eyes of the
culprits were fixed sternly upon her; when she pointed out the Indian
who had killed the governor, not a muscle of the chief's face twitched
or betrayed agitation, though he was aware her evidence settled his
death warrant; he sat with lips gently closed, eyes earnestly fixed
on her, without a show of malice or hatred--a spectacle of Indian
fortitude, and of the severe mastery to which the emotions can be
subjected.

Among the jurors was a trapper named Baptiste Brown, a Frenchman, as
were the majority of the trappers in the early days of the border.
He was an exceptionally kind-hearted man when he first came to the
mountains, and seriously inclined to regard the Indians with that
mistaken sentimentality characterizing the average New England
philanthropist, who has never seen the untutored savage on his native
heath. His ideas, however, underwent a marked change as the years rolled
on and he became mor