GOLD MINES OF THE PECOS AND THE GILA.
How we envied the careless buoyancy of the released stage, passenger, happy in the prospect of refreshment and rest, and caught at any snatches of intelligence of the outer world his gay loquacity might let fall! But above all, if he came from . some distant country like Texas and Mexico—which were then the enchanted lands of our dreams—we watched him with awe and wonder, hung upon his words with a feverish and devouring credulity, treasuring everything as " food for parlance " with our secret thoughts.
It was thus there came back suddenly into our midst a young man whom I remembered well from my earliest childhood; but whom, since his unaccountable departure years before, we had almost learned to consider as among the dead " who make no sign." He was not a person to be thought of for his own sake, for he was a harsh, ignoble, gawky brute, with desperately freckled face, hirsute hands, and huge, matted masses of fiery red hair. As a "big boy," alias a grown-up young man, he had been the dreaded tyrant of the village school; for, as he seemed incapable of acquiring even the rudiments of learning, he took a sort of stolid and malignant pleasure in torturing those whose perceptions were quicker than his own. Many a savage blow and ruffianly insult did we have to endure from him uncomplainingly; for, when brought to account, the wretch, with an abject cunning, would unblushingly lie himself free. It caused a general feeling of relief to us all, when the young man's father, wearied with his hopeless stupidity, at last took him from school and placed him with a merchant, to learn, if possible, how to retail " dry goods." But even this experiment upon his availability proved a failure.
The fellow was in heart, soul, and body, a ruffian : though the story went, that even he, uncouth as he was, had succumbed to the tender passion. The sentimental spinsters of the village declared, with a sigh, that it was for unrequited love of one of their venerable order, who was only twenty years older than himself, that the inconsolable swain had mysteriously made away with himself; while others, who looked at facts through an atmosphere something less rosy-tinted, hinted rather at a bereaved cash drawer with which he had been too familiar.   At
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