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Updated: May 3, 2025
Far away Malapi rose out of the caldron, its cheapness for once touched to a moment of beauty and significance. In that glorified sunrise it might have been a jeweled city of dreams. The prospector's words flowed on. Crystal dawns might come and go, succeeding mist scarfs of rose and lilac, but a great poet has said that speech is silver. "No, sir.
The young man knew he was dismissed, but he left the office elated. Graham had been favorably impressed. He liked the proposition, believed in its legitimacy and its possibilities. Dave felt sure he would send an expert to Malapi with him to report on it as an investment. If so, he would almost certainly agree to put money in it.
"Movin' fast, are they?" "You're damn whistlin'. They're hivin' off for parts unknown. Malapi first off, looks like. They got friends there." "Steelman and his outfit will protect them while they hunt cover and make a getaway. Miller mentioned Denver before the race said he was figurin' on goin' there. Maybe " "He was probably lyin'. You can't tell. Point is, we've got to get busy.
"I tell you the whole country'll go up like powder." If Steelman had not just reached Malapi from a visit to one of his sheep camps he would have known, what everybody else in town knew by this time, that the range for fifty miles was in danger and that hundreds of volunteers were out fighting the menace. His eyes glistened. "I'll not wear mournin' none if it does just that."
They came at first on horseback, singly, and later by twos and threes. A buckboard appeared on the horizon, the driver leaning forward as he urged on his team. "Hart," decided the driller, "and comin' hell-for-leather." Other teams followed, buggies, surreys, light wagons, farm wagons, and at last heavily laden lumber wagons. Business in Malapi was "shot to pieces," as one merchant expressed it.
For Malapi had been a cowtown before the discovery of oil. It lay on the wide prairie and not in a gulch. The street was broad and dusty, flanked by false-front stores, flat-roofed adobes, and corrugated iron buildings imported hastily since the first boom. At the Stag Horn corral Dave hired a horse and saddled for a night ride.
"You stay here for two-three days and sell enough stock to keep us off the rocks, then you hot-foot it for Denver too. By the time you get there I'll have it all fixed up with the Governor about a pardon." Dave found no difficulty in disposing of a limited amount of stock in Malapi at a good price. This done, he took the stage for the junction and followed Crawford to Denver.
He was a man of peace and always had been, in spite of the valiant promise of his tongue. "None of my funeral," he said, his lips white. "I'm hittin' the trail for Malapi right now." He wheeled his horse and jumped it to a gallop. The roan plunged through the chaparral and soon was out of sight. "We'll fix Mr. Miller so he won't make us any trouble during the rookus," Crawford told Dave.
With a word of explanation they helped themselves to his mounts while he stared after them in surprise. "I'll be dawggoned if they-all ain't three gents in a hurry," he murmured to the breezes of the night. "Well, seein' as I been held up, I reckon I'll have to walk back while the hawss-thieves ride." Five minutes later the fire-bell clanged out its call to Malapi.
Saloons and gambling-houses, which did business with such childlike candor and stridency, became offices for the sale and exchange of stock. The boom at Malapi got its second wind. Workmen, investors, capitalists, and crooks poured in to take advantage of the inflation brought about by the new strike in a hitherto unknown field. For the fame of Jackpot Number Three had spread wide.
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