Five years after the Great Rebellion had ended, Benjamin still drifted. There was nothing behind him in Georgia and nothing further west than San Francisco. Not that he wanted to go there. The California gold fields were played out.
But he needed to get out of Denver. A man could stand town life only so long, and he’d been here three months. The Colorado gold fields had collapsed, anyway. Played out before he even got here.
“I’ve been too late since the day I was born,” he muttered as he put his whisky glass on the long wooden bar.
“I hear tell there’s gold in Elizabethtown,” the bartender said. He reached for Benjamin’s glass and began wiping it out. He knew Benjamin’s pockets were empty.
“Where’s Elizabethtown?”
“New Mexico Territory. East of Taos somewheres.” Benjamin nodded and pushed himself away from the bar. “Elizabethtown,” he repeated as he hitched up his trousers. “Now there’s an idea.”
from Valley of the Eagles
Fiction and Fact From Old New Mexico 