Adelia Beauchamp has been reading to anyone who wants to listen on Tuesday and Thursday evenings in the school house. Most of the local populace is, at best, only partially literate and these readings have made Adelia very popular. Thursdays have been reserved for the classics such as Homer, Dickens, and Shakespeare. Tuesdays have featured the very popular dime novels particularly those of Peyton Grey including Diamond's Acres ( The fictional Diamond Ranch of Oklahoma Territory.� Rustlers, indians and family troubles) {p 1870}, Ace of Diamonds (The adventures of Nick Diamond of the Diamond Ranch� as a gambler on Mississippi riverboats.) {p 1870}, The Golden Gulch (The story of three prospectors.� One gets rich, one finds love and the last finds success, but longs to return to the home he was so anxious to leave.) {p 1871}, The Easterners (Adventures of a family from Boston moves west settling in Denver, Colorado) {p 1873}, and Six guns and a dozen roses (Story of redemption and romance between the sheriff of the town of Amarillo and the local madam.) {p 1874}.
There have been recent reports from the Colorado and Wyoming territories of unrest in the Sioux nations. This has caused a lot of worry in the New Mexico that this unrest could spread to the local Apache reservations. There have been letters in the local newspapers calling for more Army troops to be deployed to Fort Stanton.
Elizabeth Cameron's father, "Old Man" Cameron, was killed on February 20 in a stampede. His body was severely trampled. For a while she was insisting it was foul play. In one heated conversation with Sheriff Mills, he suggested she was only a woman and didn't know what she was talking about. Many of the townsfolk were amazed and/or shocked to learn the extent of her vocabulary.
Someone has been trying to intimidate the populace in and around the local Mission at San Patricio. There have been several attacks; a couple of buildings have been burned and several livestock killed. No one has been hurt although a couple of the younger orphans where taken and found the next day tied to a tree a mile or so away. The local Mexicans have attributed this to a folk legend called "El Lobo". El Lobo has been described as everything from a ghost to a 10 ft. tall demon, cloaked in fire, and trailed by a pack of gargantuan ghost-wolves who eat the bodies of El Lobo's victims. The less superstitious speculate it's the work of Indians or Banditos or outlaws or just some local hooligans getting their jollies in a particularly nasty way.
In October of 1874, Prospector Jimmy Riley disappeared in the Capitan Mountains. It's eventually decided that he just wandered off into the mountains and died in some secluded spot. The local Mexicans are convinced that El Lobo got him.
There was an influenza epidemic in Lincoln County during February 1874. It claimed many lives including Silas Ragsdale Sr. and Joeseph Hunt, Annie Hunt's husband. Many of the townsfolk were particularly impressed by the efforts of Madame Celeste and her ladies who assisted Dr. Jackson in nursing for the sick.
A little over a month ago a group of Mexican Banditos raided the Holly farm in Southern Lincoln County. As a result they were unable to make their payments to L.G. Murphy & Co. and the store foreclosed on their land. Local newspapers have been calling for patrols of the Mexican border by Army troops to prevent this sort of thing.
In the past year or two there have been several large silver strikes in Utah and Colorado. Due to the large amounts of California gold and the relative scarcity of silver, the value of silver is nearly that of gold. All of the Western states and territories have seen an influx of prospectors looking for silver veins. Lincoln County has been no exception.
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