It was also burning some operator’s ear along the way, for the great secret, which was to be handed only to the high command in Washington, made its way on that very day into the editorial rooms of the old _Chicago Inter-Ocean_—where, naturally, it was treated with great respect and splashed across the headlines with all the vigor of an announcement of the Second Coming. There was actually a genuine religious fervor in the proclamation, for the locust had been upon the land for many months in the eastern cities, and the bread lines had been growing. It had threatened to be a cold winter until ... until this last bonanza burst upon the nation. Men had all but forgotten what a gold rush was like. It had been so long since the last great hegira to the Pikes Peak region that a new generation had come into manhood, a generation that knew California only as a state, Colorado as a prosperous territory, and the Union Pacific as the proper way to cross the empty West. There were none of the desperate winter marches up the Continental Divide this time, no lost wagon trains on the salt deserts, no Indian massacres. This rush left Chicago on the “cars,” as noisy and as highhearted as fans following a football club. And there was another great difference between the foray to the Black Hills and the earlier gold rushes. In this case the argonauts did not get to the diggings. The troops saw to that. Deploring the untimely leak of official intelligence concerning the presence of the yellow metal in the Dakota outcropping, the War Department issued stern warnings to all settlers to keep away. The existence of the treaty with the Indians was proclaimed in every paper—and, though less resoundingly, the danger from the Indians was also mentioned. Nonetheless, before the end of that crucial year a sizable group of foolhardy settlers broke through the blockade and made themselves at home. Erecting a strong stockade at the scene of the first strike, they soon carved themselves a town in the wilderness, gratefully naming it Custer, and even that early providing for the wide main street where ox teams could make a U-turn. Throughout the first winter these illegal townspeople managed somehow to survive the cold, the lack of rations, and the danger of Indian attack; but late in the spring General Crook’s cavalry arrived to “escort” them out of the Hills and back to the railroad at Cheyenne.