ong for the Indians, who came dashing up,
lashing their ponies, which were panting and blowing. We let two of them
pass by, but we opened a lively fire on the next three or four, killing
two of them at the first crack. The others following discovered that
they had run into an ambush, and whirling off into the brush, they
turned and ran back in the direction whence they had come. The two who
had passed by heard the firing and made their escape. We scalped the two
that we had killed, and appropriated their arms and equipments; then,
catching their ponies, we made our way into the Post."

CHAPTER XVIII. MAXWELL'S RANCH.

One of the most interesting and picturesque regions of all New Mexico is
the immense tract of nearly two million acres known as Maxwell's Ranch,
through which the Old Trail ran, and the title to which was some years
since determined by the Supreme Court of the United States in favour of
an alien company.[59] Dead long ago, Maxwell belonged to a generation
and a class almost completely extinct, and the like of which will, in
all probability, never be seen again; for there is no more frontier to
develop them.

Several years prior to the acquisition of the territory by the United
States, the immense tract comprised in the geographical limits of
the ranch was granted to Carlos Beaubien and Guadalupe Miranda, both
citizens of the province of New Mexico, and agents of the American Fur
Company. Attached to the company as an employer, a trapper, and hunter,
was Lucien B. Maxwell, an Illinoisan by birth, who married a daughter
of Beaubien. After the death of the latter Maxwell purchased all the
interest of the joint proprietor, Miranda, and that of the heirs of
Beaubien, thus at once becoming the largest landowner in the United
States.

At the zenith of his influence and wealth, during the War of the
Rebellion, when New Mexico was isolated and almost independent of
care or thought by the government at Washington, he lived in a sort of
barbaric splendour, akin to that of the nobles of England at the time of
the Norman conquest.

The thousands of arable acres comprised in the many fertile valleys of
his immense estate were farmed in a primitive, feudal sort of way, by
native Mexicans principally, under the system of peonage then existing
in the Territory. He employed about five hundred men, and they were as
much his thralls as were Gurth and Wamba of Cedric of Rotherwood, only
they wore no engraved co