The camp was not disturbed that night. The following morning five Indians appeared. Carson called to them, told them he had the night before dispatched a fleet messenger to Rayado, and that if his party was massacred, his friends, the soldiers, would surely inflict swift and terrible vengeance on the Cheyennes. The Indians said they would look for his moccasin tracks and see if the story was true. Carson saw that this was a turning point in his favor. An hour later the whole village of Cheyennes passed in sight, evidently making for safety as fast as possible. They had found the moccasin tracks, and saw the chase had been gone too long to be overtaken. The train proceeded without interruption, until they met a body of troops, who had started at once on the arrival of the Mexican runner. Under this strong escort the remainder of the trip was happily completed.

In 1853, Kit was again appointed and this time confirmed as Indian agent, a position he graced and honored as no other living American would have done. His great knowledge of Indian character was a splendid equipment. Sometimes around their council fires he distributed the bounty of the government, and instructed them in the primary lessons of civilization. Sometimes it was at his own home that he received them as friends, and earnestly advised them to let whisky alone. Again at the head of a column of United States troops he filled the faithless hearts of the Apaches with a fear of justice if not a love of kindness. In one hand he offered the olive branch; in the other, he held his loaded rifle.

Kit at last permanently quieted the Utahs and Apaches. Thenceforward he devoted himself to the works of peace among his Indian protégés. The fierce passion for war was supplanted in their breasts by a love of comfort and domestic life; the tomahawk and the scalping knife grew rusty and forgotten, while the sinewy hand which had wielded them learned to grasp the plow and the sickle. Kit, too, felt that in the remainder of his life war and adventure would have no place. He was mistaken.

The flames of the civil war were already filling the heavens with the red light of doom. Carson was destined to serve his country as a soldier. A lover of the Union, he was made Colonel of the First New Mexico Volunteers. The Indians, always ready to seize a pretext for making war on the government, cast in their lot with the Confederacy. Far away on the plains and in the mountains of New Mexico, where the roar of Gettysburg was silent, and the story of bloody Chickamauga was unknown, there took place terrible struggles between combatants who knew not the ideas for which they fought. The red man fought to be fighting the whites. The brave New Mexican fought the Indian much as he had fought him all his life. The shock of the civil war hurled these ancient foes upon the frontier of civilization against each other. But while the ideas were not present with them as they were among the ranks on many a historic field of conflict, the battle was none the less bloody and the suffering none the less severe.

The campaigns conducted by Carson were splendidly managed. On the sixth day of January, 1864, he started out with a force of four hundred men, only twenty of whom were mounted, upon the famous expedition which forever crushed the power of the Navajoes. By maneuvering with a skill of which Carson alone was capable in an Indian war, he succeeded in entrapping the bulk of the Navajoe Nation in the Cañon de Chelly, one of the largest on the globe. It is forty miles long, with perpendicular walls of rock, fifteen hundred feet high. Carson quickly divided his command, sending one detachment to enter at the east end, while he planted himself at the mouth. Far down in the gloomy depths, the narrow bit of sky looking like a blue ribbon above them, the column cautiously picked its way. Scattering bands of Indians, who saw the doom of their companions, posted themselves along the rocks and crags to annoy the troops, but their efforts were ineffectual. Sometimes a volley was fired from below, at the pigmy warriors on the dizzy height, but generally they reserved themselves for the larger game

which was in the trap. On the second day, Carson attacked the whole force of Indians as they attempted in vain to break out of the deadly chasm. They were terribly punished, and were at last forced to surrender.

By this splendid strategy, between five and ten thousand Indians surrendered to Carson, the largest capture ever made in Indian warfare; and this was achieved by four hundred soldiers, with scarcely the loss of a man. The entire war presents no finer piece of generalship. The majority of the captives were placed on a reservation in Arkansas, but were subsequently permitted to return to their old hunting-grounds, where they are living in happiness and peace.

In the official report to the War Department, is the following: "You have, doubtless, seen the last of the Navajoe war, a war that has continued, with but few intermissions, for the last one hundred and eighty years, and which during that time has been marked by every shade of atrocity, brutality, and ferocity which can be imagined. I beg to congratulate you on the prospect that this formidable band of robbers and murderers has been at last made to succumb. To Colonel Kit Carson, in command of the expedition, whose courage and perseverance excited all to great energy and inspired great resolution, the credit is mainly due."

For his gallant services, "Colonel Kit Carson moted to the rank of brigadier-general.

99

was pro

After the close of the war, Kit, as we will continue to call him, found himself in failing health, the result of an accident in 1860. He was descending a steep mountain, leading his horse, when the animal slipped and fell on him, inflicting internal injury. In spite of sickness, he labored unceasingly to promote the welfare of the Indians. On the 27th of April, 1868, his wife died suddenly, leaving seven children. This threw him into the deepest dejection. In a few days, he found himself too weak to ride horseback, his lifelong pleasure. Then he took short walks around his yard. Then it was noticed that even

Silent

this was too much for him; he no longer left his room. and thoughtful, the hero would sit in his arm-chair all day long. Sometimes, a smile would break over his face; again, the look would be one of intense concentration. Perhaps he was, in fancy, living over his life as a trapper, as hunter to Bent's Fort, or as guide for Fremont and rescuer of Kearney's command.

One morning, Kit Carson was too weak to leave his bed. The next, the 23d of May, 1868, he refused all nourishment. Towards evening, a film coated the kindly eye, and the hand responded more and more feebly to the will. It was evening. The great sun had thrown its latest radiance upon the lowly couch, and was sinking behind the lonely Rockies, over which he had so often wandered. Suddenly he called out in a clear voice, "Doctor, Compadre, adios!" It was the end.

One of Nature's noblemen had passed away.

CHAPTER XVII.

HEROES OF THE LONE STAR STATE.

NELSON LEE, THE TEXAN RANGER.

URING the revolutionary struggles of the Lone Star republic, Texas was a great magnet, toward which were irresistibly attracted, from every portion of the Union, men of physical courage and restless appetite for adventure. This race of men, collected from all parts of the country, had much in common. By a prin ciple of natural selection, they were all kindred spirits. War, adventure, scouting, Indian fighting were their pleasures. What to other men was tragedy, was to them comedy. When taken prisoners by the Mexicans, they drew the black beans, which doomed them to military execution within ten minutes, with the same light, airy demeanor with which they would have thrown dice for drinks or flirted with a Mexican maid. Strange, wild fellows they were, often of gigantic stature, shaggy as lions, and not less brave. Such were the men who, in the wars between Texas and Mexico, and later, between the United States and Mexico, formed those historic bands of scouts known as "Texan Rangers."

Among the restless fellows who were drawn to Texas by the very troubles which drove other people from the State was Nelson Lee, a young man born and raised near Watertown, New York. He had volunteered for the Black Hawk war, but his company was scourged by small-pox while on their