He reaches Washington safe and sound, of course; starts back for New Mexico; and arrives there in October, 1848. Figure yourself, if you like, as chief actor in a quarter of a century of such traveling as was done by Kit Carson. His travels are given thus in detail that we may have just estimate of the man of those days, of the tremendous demands upon his courage and endurance. Only the West could produce such a man. Now we may picture Kit Carson in the fourth stage of his career, as settler and rancher. He was at home now, but he knew no rest. He fought the Apaches, and guided Colonel Beall against that tribe and the Comanches, in an endeavor to round up all the Mexican prisoners in the hands of the Indians, who were to be returned to their own firesides. After this little expedition Carson was once more a man without an occupation. There was a lull in fighting and scouting. Having no profession except that of trapper and of guide, he cast about him and once more determined to be a ranchman. He and his friend Maxwell established a ranch fifty miles west of Taos, at what is known as Rayado or Rezado. Again he joined an expedition against the Apaches, a day and a half to the southeast, a disastrous expedition, in which he was not leader, but might better have been. At another time he helped chase some Apache thieves, and assisted in the killing of five of them, being always desired in these errands of swift punishment. Our army could never catch the Apaches, the Nez Percés, the Comanches, the Crows, the Blackfeet. Kit Carson always could and did. This Indian fighting, however, did not bring money to his coffers; therefore in 1850 we find him and a partner taking a band of horses from New Mexico up to Fort Laramie, a journey of five hundred miles.[32] After this followed some more horse stealing on the part of the Indians, yet more punitive expeditions, and considerable amateur sheriffing, for which service Carson had become a necessity in the district. He was not afraid. He could read the signs of the trails. He could ride. In 1851 Carson and Maxwell tried their hands at a bit of the Santa Fé trade themselves, although this was long after the glory of the old-time wagon trade had departed. They got a train load of goods at St. Louis, and started westward up the Arkansas, after the old-fashioned way. They met the Cheyennes, always ambitious to acquire tax title of the plains to such valuable property as this. Carson knew that the protestations of these Cheyennes were not to be believed, and told the Indians that they could neither deceive him nor frighten him; yet with diplomacy equal to his courage, he edged on and on for three doubtful days, farther and farther to the westward, and so at last came safe. Kit Carson was no blusterer and no swashbuckler, but was first and last of all a good business man. He knew that it was good judgment to keep out of a fight whenever possible, which he did.