what he proposed to do. He said the railroad
would build its repair-shops at the new town, and there would be
employment for many men, and that Hays City was destined soon to be the
most important place on the Plains. He had already put surveyors to
work on the site. Lots, he said, were then on the market, and could be
had far more reasonably than the lots in Rome.

My fellow-citizens straightway began to pick out their lots in the new
town. Webb loaned them the six-mule Government wagons to bring over
their goods and chattels, together with the timbers of their houses.
When I galloped into Rome that day there was hardly a house left
standing save my little home, our general store, and a few sod-houses
and dugouts.

Mrs. Cody and the baby were sitting on a drygoods box when I rode up to
the store. My partner, Rose, stood near by, whistling and whittling.

"My word, Rose! What has become of our town!" I cried. Rose could make
no answer. Mrs. Cody said:

"You wrote me you were worth $250,000."

"We've got no time to talk about that now," I said. "What made this
town move away?"

"You ought to have taken Mr. Webb's offer," was her answer.

"Who the dickens is Webb?" I stormed. Rose looked up from his
whittling. "Bill," he said, "that little flapper-jack was the president
of the town-site company for the K.P. Railroad, and he's run such a
bluff on our citizens about a new town site that is going to be a
division-point that they've all moved over there."

"Yes," commented Mrs. Cody, "and where is your $250,000?"

"Well, I've got to make it yet," I said, and then to Rose: "How did the
fall hit you?"

"What fall?"

"From millionaire to pauper."

"It hasn't got through hitting me yet," he said solemnly.

Rose went back to his grading contract, and I resumed my work as a
buffalo hunter. When the Perry House, the Rome hotel, was moved to Hays
City and rebuilt there, I took my wife and daughter and installed them
there.

It was hard to descend from the rank of millionaires to that of graders
and buffalo hunters, but we had to do it. The rise and fall of modern
Rome had made us, and it broke us!

CHAPTER IV

I soon became better acquainted with Dr. Webb, through whose agency our
town of Rome had fallen almost overnight. We visited him often in Hays,
and eventually he presented my partner Rose and myself each with two
lots in the new town.

Webb frequently accompanied me on buffalo-hunting excursions;