he aggregate of his vast herds.
He had a thousand horses, ten thousand cattle, and forty thousand sheep
at the time I knew him well, according to the best estimates of his
Mexican relatives.

He also possessed a large and perfectly appointed gristmill, which was
a great source of revenue, for wheat was one of the staple crops of his
many farms.

Maxwell was fond of travelling all over the Territory, his equipages
comprising everything in the shape of a vehicle, through all their
varieties, from the most plainly constructed buckboard to the lumbering,
but comfortable and expensive, Concord coach, mounted on thorough braces
instead of springs, and drawn by four or six horses. He was perfectly
reckless in his driving, dashing through streams, over irrigating
ditches, stones, and stumps like a veritable Jehu, regardless of
consequences, but, as is usually the fortune of such precipitate
horsemen, rarely coming to grief.

The headquarters of the Ute agency were established at Maxwell's Ranch
in early days, and the government detailed a company of cavalry to camp
there, more, however, to impress the plains tribes who roamed along the
Old Trail east of the Raton Range, than for any effect on the Utes, whom
Maxwell could always control, and who regarded him as a father.

On the 4th of July, 1867, Maxwell, who owned an antiquated and rusty
six-pound field howitzer, suggested to the captain of the troop
stationed there the propriety of celebrating the day. So the old piece
was dragged from its place under a clump of elms, where it had been
hidden in the grass and weeds ever since the Mexican War probably,
and brought near the house. The captain and Maxwell acted the role
of gunners, the former at the muzzle, the latter at the breech; the
discharge was premature, blowing out the captain's eye and taking off
his arm, while Maxwell escaped with a shattered thumb. As soon as the
accident occurred, a sergeant was despatched to Fort Union on one of the
fastest horses on the ranch, the faithful animal falling dead the moment
he stopped in front of the surgeon's quarters, having made the journey
of fifty-five miles in little more than four hours.

The surgeon left the post immediately, arriving at Maxwell's late that
night, but in time to save the officer's life, after which he dressed
Maxwell's apparently inconsiderable wound. In a few days, however, the
thumb grew angry-looking; it would not yield to the doctor's careful
treatmen