and, when the wind was right, the shriek of the locomotive whistle could
be heard at Dry Creek; and in this interval between dawn and daylight
Jethro Simsby sold his quarter-section for the nominal sum of two thousand
dollars, spot cash, to two men who buck-boarded in ahead of the
track-layers.

This purchase of the "J-lazy-S" ranch by Hawk and Guilford marked the
modest beginning of Gaston the marvelous. By the time the temporary
sidings were down and the tank well was dug in the damp sands, it was
heralded far and wide that the Western Pacific would make the city on the
banks of Dry Creek--a city consisting as yet only of the Simsby ranch
shacks--its western terminus. Thereupon followed one of the senseless
rushes that populate the waste places of the earth and give the
professional city-builder his reason for being. In a fortnight after the
driving of the silver spike the dusty plain was dotted with the
black-roofed shelters of the Argonauts; and by the following spring the
plow was furrowing the cattle ranges in ever-widening circles, and Gaston
had voted a bond loan of three hundred thousand dollars to pave its
streets.

Then under the forced draft of skilful exploitation, three years of high
pressure passed quickly; years named by the promoters the period of
development. In the Year One the very heavens smiled and the rainfall
broke the record of the oldest inhabitant. Thus the region round about
lost the word "arid" as a qualifying adjective, and the picturesque
fictions of the prospectus makers were miraculously justified. In Year Two
there was less rain, but still an abundant crop; and Jethro Simsby,
drifting in from some unnamed frontier of a newer cow-country, saw what he
had missed, took to drink, and shot himself in the lobby of the
Mid-Continent Hotel, an ornate, five-storied, brick-and-terra-cotta