charge into the streets of a town, shoot down or spear the
citizens, plunder the shops, and seize upon such women as they wanted,
carrying these captives to their far-off fastnesses in the land of
Navajoa.

In the _canon_ de Chelley these savages had their headquarters, with the
temple and _estufa_, where the sacred fire of _Moctezuma_ was never
permitted to go out; and there, in times past, when Mexico was misruled
by the tyrant Santa Anna, might have been seen scores of white women,
captives to the Navajo nation, women well born and tenderly brought up,
torn from their homes on the Rio del Norte, and forced to become the
wives of their red-skinned captors--oftener their concubines and slaves.
White children, too, in like manner, growing up among the children of
their despoilers; on reaching manhood to forget all the ties of kindred,
with the _liens_ of civilised life--in short, to be as much savages as
those who had adopted them.

At no period was this despoliation more rife than in the time of which
we write. It had reached its climax of horrors, day after day
recurring, when Colonel Miranda became military commandant of the
district of Albuquerque; until not only this town, but Santa Fe, the
capital of the province itself, was menaced with destruction by the red
marauders. Not alone the Navajoes on the west, but the Apaches on the
south, and the Comanches who peopled the plains to the east, made
intermittent and frequent forays upon the towns and villages lying along
the renowned Rio del Norte. There were no longer any outlying
settlements or isolated plantations. The grand _haciendas_, as the
humble _ranchos_, were alike lain in ruins. In the walled town alone
was there safety for the white inhabitants of Nuevo Mexico, or for those
Indians, termed _mansos_, converted to Christianity, and leagued with
them in the pursuits of civilisation. And, indeed, not much safety
either within towns--even in Albuquerque itself.

Imbued with a spirit of patriotism, Colonel Miranda, in taking charge of
the district--his native place, as already known--determined on doing
his best to protect it from further spoliation; and for this purpose had
appealed to the central government to give him an increase to the forces
under his command.

It came in the shape of a squadron of lancers from Chihuahua, whose
garrison only spared them on their being replaced by a troop of like
strength, sent on from the capital of the country.