y one had been so busy since rising that the professor's discovery
was not mentioned. In fact, the big brothers and their mother had
forgotten it; the little girl thought of it many times, however, and
hoped each moment that she could speak privately to the professor. And
he, as he took his seat in the buckboard, remembered it and smiled
contentedly, never suspecting that the youngest brother, riding beside
him, had secretly planned to file at once a claim on the quarter-section
that included the little canyon so that the red-gray rock should be
lawfully his.

Arrived at the station, all became occupied with the celebration. While
the big brothers took care of the horses, their mother and the little
girl changed their dresses at the hotel. The professor hunted up the
grand marshal, held a whispered conversation with him, and was assigned
a place in the procession. For the scientist purposed that the day
should be more than one of national commemoration to the townspeople: it
should be one of local rejoicing.

This was the first public holiday ever observed at the station, for it
was still very young. Two years before, when the railroad crept up to it
and passed it, it consisted of a lonely box-car standing in the center
of a broad, level tract flecked with anemones. The next week, thanks to
a sudden boom, the box-car gave place to a board depot, with other pine
structures springing up all about, and to long lines of white stakes
that marked the avenues, streets, and alleys of a future city. Now it
consisted of half a hundred houses and stores surrounded by as many
shanties and dugouts.

The streets were gay with color. Everywhere festoons of red, white, and
blue swung in the morning breeze, and flags flapped from improvised
poles. Horses with ribbons braided into their manes and tails dashed
about, carrying riders who were importantly arranging for the
procession, and who wore broad sashes of tricolored bunting.

The crowds added further to the brightness of the scene. Soldiers in
uniform, frontiersmen in red shirts and leather breeches, farmers and
men of the town, dressed in their best, and Indians in every imaginable
style of raiment, filled the saloons and shooting galleries, where they
kept the glasses clinking and the bells a-jangle. Women and children, in
light dresses and flower-trimmed hats, lined the scanty sidewalks and
the store porches, with a fringe of squaws and Indian babies seated in
the weeds besid