s astonished and delighted to think I would let him ride Brigham,
the most famous buffalo horse in the West. When we drew near the herd I
pointed out a fine four-year-old bull with a splendid head. I galloped
alongside. Brigham spotted the buffalo I wanted, and after my
companion's third shot the brute fell. My pupil was overjoyed with his
success, and appeared to be so grateful to me that I felt sure I should
be able to sell him three or four blocks of Rome real estate at least.
I invited him to take dinner, and served as part of the repast the meat
of the buffalo he had shot. The next morning he looked me up and told
me he wanted to make a proposition to me.

"What is it?" I asked. I had thought I was the one who was going to
make a proposition.

"I will give you one-eighth of this town site," he said.

The nerve of this proposal took me off my feet. Here was a total
stranger offering me one-eighth of my own town site as a reward for
what I had done for him.

I told him that if he killed another buffalo I would have to hog-hobble
him and send him out of town; then rode off and left him.

This magnanimous offer occurred right in front of my own house. My wife
overheard it, and also my reply.

As I rode away, he called out that he wanted to explain, but I was
thoroughly disgusted.

"I have no time to listen to you," I shouted over my shoulder.

I was bound out on a buffalo hunt to get meat for the graders twenty
miles away on the railroad, and I kept right on going. Three days
afterward I rode back over the ridge above the town of Rome and looked
down on it.

I took several more looks. The town was being torn down and carted
away. The balloon-frame buildings were coming apart section by section.
I could see at least a hundred teams and wagons carting lumber,
furniture, and everything that made up the town over the prairies to
the eastward.

My pupil at buffalo hunting was Dr. Webb, president of the town-site
company of the Kansas Pacific. After I had ridden away without
listening to his explanations he had invited the citizens of Rome to
come over and see where the new railroad division town of Hays City was
to be built. He supplied them with wagons for the journey from a number
of rock wagons that had been lent him by the Government to assist him
in the location of a new town. The distance was only a mile, and he got
a crowd. At the town site of Hays City he made a speech, telling the
people who he was and