aced Broadway; and they were pouring
out a million for every thousand that it would have cost Hale to acquire
the land on which the work was going on. Moreover they were doing it
there, as Hale heard, because they were too late to get control of
his gap through the Cumberland. At his gap, too, the same movement was
starting. In stage and wagon, on mule and horse, "riding and tying"
sometimes, and even afoot came the rush of madmen. Horses and mules were
drowned in the mud holes along the road, such was the traffic and such
were the floods. The incomers slept eight in a room, burned oil at one
dollar a gallon, and ate potatoes at ten cents apiece. The Grand Central
Hotel was a humming Real-Estate Exchange, and, night and day, the
occupants of any room could hear, through the thin partitions, lots
booming to right, left, behind and in front of them. The labour
and capital question was instantly solved, for everybody became a
capitalist-carpenter, brick-layer, blacksmith, singing teacher and
preacher. There is no difference between the shrewdest business man and
a fool in a boom, for the boom levels all grades of intelligence and
produces as distinct a form of insanity as you can find within the walls
of an asylum. Lots took wings sky-ward. Hale bought one for June for
thirty dollars and sold it for a thousand. Before the autumn was gone,
he found himself on the way to ridiculous opulence and, when spring
came, he had the world in a sling and, if he wished, he could toss it
playfully at the sun and have it drop back into his hand again. And the
boom spread down the valley and into the hills. The police guard had
little to do and, over in the mountains, the feud miraculously came to a
sudden close.

So pervasive, indeed, was the spirit of the times that the Hon. Sam
Budd actually got old Buck Falin and old Dave Tolliver to sign a truce,
agreeing to a complete cessation of hostilities until he carried through
a land deal in which both were interested. And after that was
concluded, nobody had time, even the Red Fox, for deviltry and private
vengeance--so busy was everybody picking up the manna which was dropping
straight from the clouds. Hale bought all of old Judd's land, formed a
stock company and in the trade gave June a bonus of the stock. Money was
plentiful as grains of sand, and the cashier of the bank in the back of
the furniture store at the Gap chuckled to his beardless directors as he
locked the wooden door on the