“Now, look’ee here, pard, you’re just like every other down-easter. They’re always kickin’ ‘bout this smoke. 9053 Now, let me tell you; if we didn’t have that ‘ar smoke we wouldn’t have any Butte City, and besides, it kills the bacteria, molecules, an’ all that sort o thing. It’s mighty healthy here, I can tell you, an’ a mighty pert town into the bargain.” Vance coughed immoderately, but Hank Casey who was acclimated, assured him that he was at that moment breathing the healthiest air that ever his lungs were filled with. In the course of their walk, the boomer kept up a constant conversation, explaining different points of interest, pointing out the different mining properties in sight and telling their names, until Vance felt that he had been very fortunate in falling in with one so conversant with Butte City. At parting, Vance bade his new-found friend good day, and promised to call at his office before leaving the city. When he returned to the hotel, he commenced his first letter to the Banner, but it was not finished until late that night. When it appeared in the great New York journal it surprised, in point of brilliancy and interest, even his warmest friends. His descriptions were so vivid and lifelike, and his characters so droll, and withal teeming with information, that a score of letters came to the managing editor, assuring him of the great pleasure and profit they had experienced in its perusal. Of course, Vance knew [46] nothing of this at the time, but devoted himself with unceasing diligence in searching out reliable information, and then training it into weekly letters. Butte City began to impress him as a place of more importance than he had at first thought. He learned that almost one million of dollars was paid out monthly to the miners alone, and they, as a class, are “hail fellows well met,” who believe in the doctrine of keeping money in constant circulation. He noticed in many of the mercantile houses that when the day clerks went off duty at six o’clock in the evening, another set of clerks came on, and the shops and stores, by the aid of brilliant electric lights, continued business twenty-four hours out of the day the year around. Vance frequently thought of his conversation with the managing editor, and what he had said about western towns and the over-enthusiastic town boomer. In Hank Casey he felt he had found a typical character that fully came up to all the managing editor had inferred, and had frequently used him as an inspiration, but was becoming more and more convinced that Butte City was one of those solid, substantial places which the managing editor had classed as exceptions to the rule. CHAPTER VI—THE TOWN BOOMER. 9055