thousands of barrels. There
appeared to be no limit to the size of this deposit, and now the
old-line operators who had shunned the town-site boom bid feverishly
against the promoters and the tenderfeet for acreage. Farms and ranches
previously all but worthless were cut up into small tracts and drilling
sites, and these were sold for unheard-of prices. Up leaped another
forest of skeleton towers some ten miles long and half as wide.

But this was the open range with nothing except the sky for shelter, so
towns were knocked together--queer, greasy, ramshackle settlements of
flimsy shacks--and so quickly were they built that they outran the law,
which is ever deliberate. The camps of the black-lime district, which
had been considered hell holes, were in reality models of order
compared with these mushroom cities of raw boards, tar paper, and tin.
Gambling joints, dance halls, and dens more vicious flourished openly,
and around them gathered the scum and the flotsam that crests a rising
tide.

Winter brought the rains, and existence in the new fields became an
ugly and a troublesome thing. Roads there were none, and supplies
became difficult to secure. The surface of the land melted and spinning
wheels churned it; traffic halted, vehicles sank, horses drowned.
Between rains the sun dried the mud, the wind whirled it into
suffocating clouds. Sandstorms swept over the miserable inhabitants;
tornadoes, thick with a burden of cutting particles, harried them until
they cursed the fate that had brought them thither.

But in Wichita Falls, where there was shelter overhead and pavements
underfoot, the sheep shearing proceeded gayly.

Of the men engaged in this shearing business, none, perhaps, had
gathered more wool in the same length of time than the two members of
the firm of McWade & Stoner. Mr. Billy McWade, junior partner, was a
man of wide experience and some accomplishments, but until his arrival
at Wichita Falls he had never made a conspicuous success of any
business enterprise. The unforeseen invariably had intervened to
prevent a killing. Either a pal had squealed, or the postal authorities
had investigated, or a horse had fallen--anyhow, whenever victory had
perched upon his banner something always had happened to frighten the
bird before its wings were fairly folded.

Mr. McWade had finally determined to wipe off the slate and commence
all over. Accordingly, he had selected a new field, and, in order to
make it