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feasting his eyes on the solemn pomp of religious fiestas and processions, and thrilling to the prairie-schooner caravans that drove in every summer over the Santa Fé trail to fill the ancient plaza with the stir and excitement of strange romance.

The Antrims moved in 1868 to Silver City in southwestern New Mexico, a silver camp in its raw boom days. Here Antrim worked in the mines; his wife opened another boarding house. Billy, who was eight years old upon their arrival, went to school. Ash Upson, one of Mrs. Antrim's boarders, has left his testimony that Billy was bright at his lessons and stood well in his classes. "He had as a little boy," says Upson, "a happy, sunny disposition but also a fiery temper, and when he was in one of his rages nobody could do anything with him."

For four years Billy lived here in Silver City, growing into precocious youth. The town was uncouth and lawless, filled with saloons and gambling houses, bad Mexicans, and worse white men. It was the devil's own school for any boy, and Billy learned its lessons well. He associated on familiar terms with the wild spirits of the place, hung about saloons, watching the gamblers at their games, and soon displayed a natural and uncanny facility at cards. To a boy of such talent, gamblers good-naturedly condescended to teach their tricks. Under their expert coaching, Billy became an adept at dealing stud poker and monte, learned to stack a deck, deal from the bottom, palm a card, and cheat a fellow gamester's eyes out without detection. In a little while he was master of all the dextrous stratagems of the crooked short-card gambler. This at an age when boys in less strenuous communities are still at tops and marbles.

It was at Silver City, when twelve years old, that Billy