by coach over the Trail,
generally pulling up at the sutler's store, whose proprietor was
postmaster, about daylight. While Maxwell and Kit were my guests, I
sauntered down after breakfast one morning to get my mail, and while
waiting for the letters to be distributed, happened to glance at some
papers lying on the counter, among which I saw a new periodical--the
_Day's Doings_, I think it was--that had a full-page illustration of a
scene in a forest. In the foreground stood a gigantic figure dressed in
the traditional buckskin; on one arm rested an immense rifle; his other
arm was around the waist of the conventional female of such sensational
journals, while in front, lying prone upon the ground, were half a
dozen Indians, evidently slain by the singular hero in defending the
impossibly attired female. The legend related how all this had been
effected by the famous Kit Carson. I purchased the paper, returned with
it to my room, and after showing it to several officers who had called
upon Maxwell, I handed it to Kit. He wiped his spectacles, studied the
picture intently for a few seconds, turned round, and said: "Gentlemen,
that thar may be true, but I hain't got no recollection of it."

I passed a delightful two weeks with Maxwell, late in the summer of
1867, at the time that the excitement over the discovery of gold on his
ranch had just commenced, and adventurers were beginning to congregate
in the hills and gulches from everywhere. The discovery of the precious
metal on his estate was the first cause of his financial embarrassment.
It was the ruin also of many other prominent men in New Mexico, who
expended their entire fortune in the construction of an immense ditch,
forty miles in length--from the Little Canadian or Red River--to supply
the placer diggings in the Moreno valley with water, when the melted
snow of Old Baldy range had exhausted itself in the late summer. The
scheme was a stupendous failure; its ruins may be seen to-day in the
deserted valleys, a monument to man's engineering skill, but the wreck
of his hopes.

For some years previous to the discovery of gold in the mountains and
gulches of Maxwell's Ranch, it was known that copper existed in the
region; several shafts had been sunk and tunnels driven in various
places, and gold had been found from time to time, but was kept a secret
for many months. Its presence was at last revealed to Maxwell by a party
of his own miners, who were boring into the