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; and before he had been on the prairie a year there were few men who could kill more buffalo than he. Once, when I was riding Brigham, and Webb was mounted on a splendid thoroughbred bay, we discovered a band of Indians about two miles distant, maneuvering so as to get between us and the town. A gallop of three miles brought us between them and home; but by that time they had come within three-quarters of a mile of us. We stopped to wave our hands at them, and fired a few shots at long range. But as there were thirteen in the party, and they were getting a little too close, we turned and struck out for Hays. They sent some scattering shots in pursuit, then wheeled and rode off toward the Saline River.