Recounting my experience to Mr L---- and the lawyers, after a long confab they decided that I should go down again and _take_ possession.

They refused me the services of a sheriff or a deputy to serve the papers and represent the law.

No, I was to take possession in any way my wits might suggest; they merely proposing that everything I did I should put on paper and make affidavit to and send up to them.

By this time I had learned that M---- was very much stirred up about it, was quite determined to give nothing up, and that really he was a dangerous man who, if pushed to extremities, might do something desperate.

The lawyers told me there was another, a right, usual and legal way of taking possession, but for private reasons they did not wish to proceed in that way; and so I finally agreed to go down again and do what I could.
Buying some horses and hiring a Mexican vaquero to show me the country, and especially to be a witness to whatever took place, we pulled out for Fort Sumner.