In the same small cemetery are the graves of the outlaw known as "Billy the Kid" and two of the Kid's companions, buried under a common headstone inscribed, "Pals."

   The proximity of Maxwell's grave to the Kid's is not a matter of mere coincidence. "Billy the Kid" was killed nearby in a house which Maxwell owned and which, upon Maxwell's death, passed to his son, Pete Maxwell. When the Kid was killed in 1881, Lucien Maxwell had been dead for six years.

   I stumbled across this bit of Philmont historical trivia during a trip to the southwest in 1990, several years after my last trip to Philmont (1987, 1988). The movie "Young Guns II" had just been released and my son wanted to see the outlaw's grave. So we drove for mile upon mile through a landscape little-changed from the one Maxwell and the Kid knew, and at last found the site.

   Why Fort Sumner? In 1870, Maxwell sold his holdings at Cimarron _ the land that now is Philmont. He then bought and moved into the buildings of the former military post at Fort Sumner, where he eventually slipped into semi-retirement and turned over most of his business affairs to his son.

   Lucien Maxwell died at Fort Sumner at age 56 in 1875. The house he remodeled from the officers quarters at the old fort was the site of the Kid's death. However, the house no longer stands. It was undermined by the Pecos River.

   Again _ why Fort Sumner? I wonder if Maxwell's old friend, Kit Carson, might have had something to do with it. Carson certainly would have been familiar with the region. After all, it was to this very place in the "Bosque Redondo" that Carson marched more than 7,000 Navajo in 1864 on the "Long Walk" from Fort Wingate near Gallup. It proved to be poor agricultural land. The Navajo were released four years later.

The map below shows the approximate locations of Philmont and Fort Sumner.