DON MIGUEL  ZARATE.                             10
opportunity to ally themselves with their desert con-geners; and in the incursions of the Apaches and Comanches it is rare for the faithful Indians not to serve them as scouts, guides, and spies.
The family of Don Miguel Zarate had retired to New Mexico, which country it did not leave again a few years   after thj   conquests of the adventurer Cortez. Don Miguel  had  closely followed the  policy  of his family by maintaining the bonds of friendship and good neighbourhood which, from time immemorial, attached it to the Indians, believers or not.    This policy had borne its  fruit.    Annually, in  September, when the terrible red warriors, preceded by murder and arson, rushed  like  a torrent  on  the wretched  inhabitants, whom they massacred in  the  farms they plundered, without pity for age or sex, only Don Miguel Zarate's estates were respected; and not merely was no damage inflicted on them, but even if at times a field were unwittingly trampled by the horses'  hoofs, or a few trees destroyed by plunderers, the evil was immediately repaired ere the owner had opportunity for complaint.
This conduct of the Indians had not failed to arouso against Don Miguel extreme jealousy on the part of the inhabitants, who saw themselves periodically ruined by the Indios Bravos. Earnest complaints had been laid against him before the Mexican Government; but whatever might be the power of his enemies, and the means they employed to ruin him, the rich baciendero had never been seriously disturbed: in the first place, because New Mexico is too remote from the capital for the inhabitants to have anything to fear from the governing classes; and secondly, Don Miguel was too