and where water was scarce and
hard to come by, drove their stakes along the north line of the
quarter-section; and having named their last station Alphonse, christened
this one Gaston.

From the stake-driving of the engineers to the spike-driving of the
track-layers was a full decade. For hard times overtook the Western
Pacific at Midland City, eighty miles to the eastward; while the State
capital, two days' bronco-jolting west of Dry Creek, had railroad outlets
in plenty and no inducements to offer a new-comer.

But, with the breaking of the cloud of financial depression, the Western
Pacific succeeded in placing its extension bonds, and a little later the
earth began to fly on the grade of the new line to the west. Within a
Sundayless month the electric lights of the night shift could be seen,
and, when the wind was right, the shriek of the locomotive whistle could
be heard at Dry Creek; and in this interval between dawn and daylight
Jethro Simsby sold his quarter-section for the nominal sum of two thousand
dollars, spot cash, to two men who buck-boarded in ahead of the
track-layers.

This purchase of the "J-lazy-S" ranch by Hawk and Guilford marked the
modest beginning of Gaston the marvelous. By the time the temporary
sidings were down and the tank well was dug in the damp sands, it was
heralded far and wide that the Western Pacific would make the city on the
banks of Dry Creek--a city consisting as yet only of the Simsby ranch
shacks--its western terminus. Thereupon followed one of the senseless
rushes that populate the waste places of the earth and give the
professional city-builder his reason for being. In a fortnight after the
driving of the silver spike the dusty plain was dotted with the
black-roofed shelters of the Argonauts; and by the following spring the
plow was furrowing the cattle ranges in ever-widening circles, and Gaston
had voted a bond loan of three hundred thousand dollars to pave its
streets.

Then under the forced draft of skilful exploitation, three years of high
pressure passed quickly; years named by the promoters the period of
development. In the Year One the very heavens smiled and the rainfall
broke the record of the oldest inhabitant. Thus the region round about
lost the word "arid" as a qualifying adjective, and the picturesque
fictions of the prospectus makers were miraculously justified. In Year Two
there was less rain, but still an abundant crop; and Jethro Simsby,
drifting in fr