As the streams laugh down from the mountains, ranches grow more and more frequent. It is characteristic of the West that you don't cross the _acequias_ on bridges. You cross them on two planks, with risk to your car if the driver swerve at the steering wheel. All the houses are red earth adobe, thick of wall to shut out both heat and cold, with a smell of juniper wood in the fireplaces of each room. Much of this land--nearly all of it, in fact--is owned by the Taos Indians and held in common for pasturage and cultivation. Title was given by Spain four centuries ago, and the same title holds to-day in spite of white squatters' attempt to break down the law by cutting the wire of the pasture fences and taking the case to the courts. It was in this way that squatters broke down the title of old Spanish families to thousands and hundreds of thousands of acres granted before American occupation. To be sure, an American land commission took evidence on these titles, in the quarrel between Yankee squatter and Spanish don; but the squatter had "friends in court." The old Spanish don hadn't. He saw titles that had held good from 1540 slipping from his neighbor's hands; and he either contested the case to lose out before he had begun, or sold and sold at a song to save the wreckage of his fortunes. Of all the Spanish land grants originally partitioning off what is now New Mexico, I know of only one held by the family of the original grantee; and it is now in process of partition. It is an untold page of Southwestern history, this "stampeding" of Spanish titles. Some day, when we are a little farther away from it, the story will be told. It will not make pleasant reading, nor afford a bill of health to some family fortunes of the Southwest. Perjuries, assassinations, purchase in open markets of judges drawing such small pittances that they were in the auction mart for highest bid, forged documents, incendiary fires to destroy true titles--these were the least and most decent of the crimes of this era. "Ramona" tells what happened to Indian titles in California. Paint Helen Hunt Jackson's colors red instead of gray; multiply the crimes by ten instead of two; and you have a faint picture of the land-jockey period of New Mexican history. Something of this sort is going on at Taos to-day among the pueblos for their land, and down at Sacaton among the Pimas for water. Treaty guaranteed the Indian his rights, but at Taos the squatter cut the pueblo fences and carried the case to court. At Sacaton, the big squatter, the irrigation company, took the Pimas' water; so that the Indian can no longer raise crops. If you want to know what the courts do in these cases, ask the pueblo governor at Taos; or the Pima chief at Sacaton. * * * * *