The San Francisco call., 1898-07-03

day he met the wife of a Mexican rail- road laborer and together they started on broncos across the country for Colo rado. The husband, Felipe Aguilar, came home the next day and started post haste after the elOpers. What took place was never fully known, but Silva and his new wife reached Las Vegas, worn out and ragged, after weeks of horseback travel, and a month later the news followed after them that an American farmer in Southern Wyoming, near Cheyenne, had found the deComposed remains of a man. who resembled Felipe Aguilar beneath a strawstack The head was nearly cut off, and there were mortal cuts through the chest No one ever doubted that Felipe had come upon Silva and the eloping wife, and that the husband had been stabbed to death and his body concealed in the strawstack. But those were rude days.
 By a lucky find of a small silver mine in Southern Colorado Silva had some capital. He opened a saloon on the old plaza in Las Vegas, and did a good business from the first day. His win ming ways, his big mahogany bar and his gorgeous gambling rooms upstairs made this place a center of attraction. The cattle and sheep herderS and silver miners made money fast in those days, dIlu HIS pIdCe became Ine most re quented in San Miguel County. There was always a crowd of cowboys, sheep herders and wool and cattle buyers at Silva's, and the old timers say that some of the most exciting moments they have ever known in the Territo- ries were those in Vicente Silvas sa- loon of an evening, when the Mexicans from the ranges had become drunk and ugly. The cattle and wool business rapidly declined in 1887 and 1888, and custom at Sllva's bar fell away fast
 Hard times and an eXtravagant taste quickly bred In Silva the old-time taste for outlaWry as an easy means of live lihood, and, while he laughed and joked with patrons at his bar, and gave os- tentatiously and generously to charity, he was secretly and at night organizing the most thorough band of marauders yet known in that region. He had been in Colorado and he saw how cattle and horses might be driven there through the unfrequented passes in the Rockies, and how they might be sold in small punches for large prices per head at the numerous mining camps in Colorado without exciting comment and investi- gation. Then, too, his long association with the Mexican vaqueros in Northern New MeXico-eSpecially in San Miguel, Santa Fe and San Barnalillo counties made him familiar with the men most suitable for an organization for rob- bery and plunder, and he made few er- TOTS in his choice of followers.
 The meeting place of the new band was the Silva saloon, at night, after the lights had been put out and the business closed. No band of Molly Ma guires were ever bound by such secrecy and oaths as were the men who joined the Silva gang. Robbery of cattle, horses and sheep from the numerous lonely ranches in Northern New Mex leo. with occasional burglary, and a murder if it became necessary in the course of operations, was the purpose of the band. Silva bought for a mere song ranch thirty-two miles from Las Vegas (near San Pedro), among the Raton Mountains. as the base of operations for his secret band of rob-
 bers. A more isolated and uninviting spot could hardly have been found in all that region. Scarcely dozen peo- pie went that way in the course of a year The route there twisted among towering cliffs and pinnacles of gran ite. Patricio Macs and Manuel Ma lonado were appointed to look .after the ranch, and to tell possible inquirers