t, so he reluctantly decided that amputation was necessary.
After an operation was determined upon, I prevailed upon Maxwell to come
to the fort and remain with me, inviting Kit Carson at the same time,
that he might assist in catering to the amusement of my suffering guest.
Maxwell and Carson arrived at my quarters late in the day, after a
tedious ride in the big coach, and the surgeon, in order to allow a
prolonged rest on account of Maxwell's feverish condition, postponed the
operation until the following evening.

The next night, as soon as it grew dark--we waited for coolness, as the
days were excessively hot--the necessary preliminaries were arranged,
and when everything was ready the surgeon commenced. Maxwell declined
the anaesthetic prepared for him, and sitting in a common office chair
put out his hand, while Carson and myself stood on opposite sides, each
holding an ordinary kerosene lamp. In a few seconds the operation was
concluded, and after the silver-wire ligatures were twisted in their
places, I offered Maxwell, who had not as yet permitted a single sigh to
escape his lips, half a tumblerful of whiskey; but before I had fairly
put it to his mouth, he fell over, having fainted dead away, while great
beads of perspiration stood on his forehead, indicative of the pain he
had suffered, as the amputation of the thumb, the surgeon told us then,
was as bad as that of a leg.

He returned to his ranch as soon as the surgeon pronounced him well, and
Carson to his home in Taos. I saw the latter but once more at Maxwell's;
but he was en route to visit me at Fort Harker, in Kansas, when he was
taken ill at Fort Lyon, where he died.

A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

How true it now seems to me, as the recollections of my boyish days,
when I read of the exploits of Kit Carson, crowd upon my memory! I
firmly believed him to be at least ten feet tall, carrying a rifle
so heavy that, like Bruce's sword, it required two men to lift it. I
imagined he drank out of nothing smaller than a river, and picked the
carcass of a whole buffalo as easily as a lady does the wing of a quail.
Ten years later I made the acquaintance of the foremost frontiersman,
and found him a delicate, reticent, under-sized, wiry man, as perfectly
the opposite of the type my childish brain had created as it is possible
to conceive.

At Fort Union our mail arrived every morning