"It was April of 1880 and we were living in Trinidad, Colorado. Father had gone to Silver City, New Mexico near the Mexican border, and it was decided that we should join him."

Thus began the recollections of a boy's experiences in territorial New Mexico, set down in 1950 by an elderly James K. Hastings. They consist of a series of small episodes that collectively impart the flavor of life on the raw Southwestern frontier.

Young James' great adventures started when his family boarded the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and headed over Raton Pass, through the newly built tunnel right on the Colorado-New Mexico line.

Regular passenger service at the moment continued only as far as Bernalillo. From that point south, tracks were just being laid. But the Hastings were able to ride a construction train to Albuquerque, where they transferred to a stagecoach going down the valley.

Passing near Fort Craig, Jim saw a native farmer plowing in the river bottom with a pair of tiny oxen and a forked stick for a plow. He would remember long afterward the sight as symbolic of an old way of life that was vanishing.

The family continued over the Jornada del Muerto desert, where stage stations were located every 20 miles. At Las Cruces, they changed to a westbound coach for Silver City, arriving there May 1, 1880.

The father, James K. Hastings, met his brood and welcomed them to their new home. He was superintendent of a reduction stamp mill that crushed silver ore from local mines. The mill ran 24 hours a day, every day of the week.

Victorio and Geronimo's Apaches were still raiding, at times slipping into Silver City during the night and stealing horses.

"The saddest sight I ever saw," young Jim recalled, "was on a Sunday morning when two soldiers came down the street driving a coached filled with bullet holes and covered with human blood. It had been jumped by Apaches who killed every mortal on board."

When town residents received their mail later in the day, they found it blood-spattered as well. Such incidents were a familiar story in Silver City.

Hastings often pressed his son into service when short-handed at the mill. Jim loved doing grown-up work, especially when he was posted on the mill roof to hose it down and prevent furnace sparks from starting a fire.

As he said, "The men would drench me down first so as not to get the shirt burned off my back."

Once the boy was riding on a loaded ore wagon when it took a jolt rolling over a stone. He was thrown under a rear wheel, but the teamster instantly yelled at the lead mule.

Well-trained, it stopped on a dime and kept the team from moving. The smart long-eared critter had managed to save young Jim's life.

"There was one story of those days that always thrilled me," he recalled. "The Apaches had surprised a Mexican family in their jacal (hut) and killed everyone present."

The only survivor was a 12-year-old girl out herding sheep. The Indians knew of her being in the hills and wanted both her and the animals.

The shepherdess, though small and skinny, was still tough and fleet of foot. She got one good look at the Apaches and sprinted away.

While desert bred and master runners, The Indians proved no match for the spirited girl. With supreme effort, she escaped, giving birth to a heroic legend in that part of the territory.

At his father's mill, where Jim worked much of his youth, the refined silver was cast into monster bricks weighing 300 pounds. Such unwieldy objects were not easily stolen.

When one was ready for shipment, Wells Fargo & Co. would send a heavy Concord coach to collect it. On a certain occasion, the brick in transit broke through the floor of the vehicle and had to be left in the middle of an isolated road.

Although worth $5,000, the abandoned bricks remained safe out in the desert until Wells Fargo could engineer a recovery.

No thief with a pack mule could carry it away and had a gang attempted to load it in a wagon and flee, any posse might swiftly have followed the deeply engraved wheel tracks.

At the end of his life, reflecting back on these and other experiences in Silver City, James Hastings declared: "As a boy I was permitted to see the nation growing. No one dreamed in that faraway time of the stature it would someday attain."

Historian Marc Simmons is author of numerous books on New Mexico and the Southwest. His column appears Saturdays.