Gold, and Bill Steele had found it. The man who finds gold is no fool in the eye of his neighbour. And Bill Steele had known it was here all of the time, had known it for full five years! That was the incredible thing to those who did not know the man. But such as Ed Hurley, mine superintendent now at the Royal Flush, as Steele had named his strike, understood. Five years ago Steele had not needed money, his pockets being sufficiently plump at the time. Furthermore, just as he had come to be rather sure that he had made a discovery of considerable importance, he had a telegram from a friend down in Mexico. That friend was in trouble and Bill Steele, heeding the call, caught the first train for the Southland.
"Which," said Hurley, "is just exactly Bill's way of doing business."
Beatrice herself had word … not of the town which already was taking form temporarily and very crudely … but of the discovery of gold from Steele himself.
"It's a sure bonanza," he had chuckled at her over his telephone line. "The prettiest thing you ever saw unless it be the dainty colouring at times mounting to your majesty's cheek, in honour of which, by the way, I've named it the Royal Flush. A sure winner, eh, Trixie?"
"Puns are hideous!" said Beatrice, for the first time, so considerable was her emotion, replying to Steele's voice along the wire.
Boom Town, it grew to be named, this sudden human
