ches, Comanches, Navajos, beset the way. She rode at night and
slept by day. The trail was a desert waste of waterless, bare, rocky
hills and quicksand rivers and blistering heat. God, or the Virgin to
whom she constantly prayed, or her own dauntless spirit, must have
piloted the way; for she reached the old city of Mexico, laid her case
before the King's representatives, and won the day. Her sister's death
was avenged. The husband was tried and executed: and the Viceroy was
deposed. Most of us know of almost similar cases. I think of a man who
has repeatedly tried for a federal judgeship in New Mexico, who has
literally been guilty of every crime on the human calendar. Yet we don't
at risk of life push these cases to retribution. Is that one of the
lessons the past has for us? Spanish power fell in New Mexico because
there came a time when there was neither justice nor retribution in any
of the courts.

Other panoramas there were beneath the age-mellowed beams of the Palace
ceiling, panoramas of Comanche and Navajo and Ute and Apache stalking in
war feathers before a Spanish governor clad in velvets and laces.
Tradition has it that a Ute was once struck dead in the Governor's
presence. Certainly, all four tribes wrought havoc and raid to the very
doors of the Palace. Within only the last century, a Comanche chief and
his warriors came to Santa Fe demanding the daughter of a leading
trader in marriage for the chief's son. The garrison was weak, in spite
of fustian and rusty helmets and battered breastplates and velvet
doublets and boots half way to the waist--there were seldom more than
200 soldiers, and the pusillanimous Governor counseled deception. He
told the Comanche that the trader's daughter had died, and ordered the
girl to hide. The only peace that an Indian respects--or any other man,
for that matter--is the peace that is a victory. The Indian suspected
that the answer was the answer of the coward, a lie, and came back with
his Comanche warriors. While the soldiers huddled inside the Palace
walls, the town was raided. The trader was murdered and the daughter
carried off to the Comanches, where she died of abuse. When these
tragedies fell on daughters of the Pilgrims in New England, the Saxon
strain of the warrior women in their blood rose to meet the challenge of
fate; and they brained their captors with an ax; but no such warrior
strain was in the blood of the daughters of Spain. By religion, by
nationality,