“Yes,” said he, “I will remain, no matter what the explanation may be from the Banner office,” and filled with this decision, he returned to his hotel. One evening, about a week after receiving the letter dismissing him from the Banner force, the mail brought a copy of that great New York paper. Vance eagerly perused it to see if it contained his last communication. No, it had been rejected, but in its stead he found an article entitled “Two Western Towns.” It was a three-column article devoted to Butte City and Waterville. It referred in the most vindictive manner to the members of the Waterville Town Company, and classed them as a lot of town site boomers. It warned eastern people not to be caught and misled by such wildcat speculations as were offered by them in the great Thief River Valley. It said the valley was one immense lava bed, interspersed with sage brush thickets, alkali swamps and basalt plains. The wonderful water-power, it claimed, was an absolute myth; and, in fact, the printed statements in the circulars of these “town boomers” were deliberate lies. [146] Another thing which eastern investors should bear in mind, the paper went on to say, was the fact that the property which had been platted into town lots was still government land. The town company had no title, and, perhaps, never would have. It branded the whole enterprise as the most gigantic confidence game that had ever been perpetrated on an unsuspecting public. It further said the swindling operations of these irresponsible and restless town boomers of Waterville were only exceeded in point of adroitness by the mining operations in and around Butte City, Montana. The article said the mountain sides at Butte City were perforated with prospect holes, where hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars of eastern people’s money had been expended by local managers in riotous living and debauchery, and claimed that it was a safe estimate to say that for every thousand dollars put into prospect shafts in and about Butte City, not more than one dollar had been taken out. It spoke of the inhabitants of both Butte City and Waterville as plebians of the lowest sort and condition of life. The worst cut of all to Vance, however, was the closing paragraph, where it stated that it was the habit of promoters of these western towns to bribe indiscriminately correspondents of eastern papers, and that many were weak enough to fall, which was not only unfortunate for the journal publishing these flattering falsehoods, but a base injustice to the eastern investor, who was led captive with his savings into western “booms” through [147] the machinations of unprincipled correspondents. If Vance had been nonplussed on receipt of the assistant’s letter, he was now stunned. He thought very little about his own investment in Waterville, but rather, what would his old associates on the Banner think of him? He regarded the article as a direct thrust at himself and his integrity.