GILA BENT HAS SUFFEREDLIKE JOB BUT WITH MORE COMPLAINING

One day after he closed the museum for the day at 4 p.m., Laird got his dog and went up to the site of the old stage stop, three miles north on the banks of the Gila River. He had his metal detector with him, and found an 1863 dime.

He talks about what it was like, the slanting rays of the sun going down, the quiet, the water, the mountains in the distance. "I've never seen the Gila River look so beautiful as it did yesterday," he says of a spot he's spent years visiting, and that he will never tire of.