Pat busied himself rebuilding his house at the north, while Billy completed the "Palace" below the elevator on the road to the boat landing. Billy had won and soon Annie was there for permanent lodgment as mistress. The big lake being alkali, one of the first civic problems was to find a water supply for the growing new city; burgess Olaf Hanson was prevailed upon to issue bonds to pay for the drilling of the artesian well proposed by Jack Stillman. On reaching the depth of 1,425 feet, water shot up with a roar sixty feet from the surface. It spouted for three hours, while the populace went wild with enthusiasm at the prospect of riches from the soaring prices for town lots. The burgess was proclaimed as worthy of nomination for Governor; the saloons did a record business, while the flood of man-made geyser turned streets into a sea of black, soupy mud. Then, just as suddenly as this "Old Faithful" shot its miniature Niagara into the air, just as suddenly it quit; joyous celebration became a rabble of discontent and criticism; factional enmities broke out; what had been cheered as a wise course of action, now was condemned as folly and an extravagant misuse of public credit; mobs assailed the officials' homes in which Pat's humble residence was wrecked for trying to uphold the action of the meek Swedish burgess and the other peace-loving citizens; high revelry went on at the "Palace" where a half dozen brilliant satellites had come to brighten the lives of lonely frontiersmen and to assist in the duties of light housekeeping under the kindly supervision of Annie. But when Pat came with his hastily assembled deputies to quell a threatened outbreak, following a free-for-all fight and reckless gun-play amongst those who had over-imbibed, there began a dangerous rivalry and constantly widening break between Billy's gang and the Hanson contingent of order-loving citizens. With the rebuilding of the fire-stricken village on a somewhat more substantial basis and the ever growing influx of immigrants, the administrative affairs of the town took on a dignified and progressive air. Spring was great improvement; schools and churches came; sidewalks were legalized and forced; merchants erected their new buildings with attractive fronts and plate glass show windows; bank and lawyers did thriving trade. As the snows melted; when the ducks and geese were arriving from the south; when the last of the winter catch of fish caught by the squaws through holes cut in the ice which covered the big lake, had been shipped, as later were the buffalo bones, to eastern markets; when the wild roses and honeysuckles had covered the prairies like a vast flower garden, the arriving train discharged a youth who carried in one band a "satchel" and in the other, an empty basket from which he had extracted numerous sandwiches and fried chicken for subsistence while making the long journey from the far east. I was that boy. To the age of sixteen I had lived on the farm; plowed the clearings with big red oxen in summer and hauled timber with them in the winter to earn the money to buy clothes; studied by lamp light; went to business college; graduated and got a position as assistant cashier in a private bank; left it to see the life of the far west and get some of the rich free land before it was too late. Disappointment came when I discovered that homesteads were only available for those twenty-one years of age or over. Public lands were not for minors and so I applied for a job and got one. It was to rub down a racing mare being trained for a race; the job lasted from six to nine o'clock p. m. for at that hour the owner stuck his head in the door to see what his newly hired boy was doing; finding him busily at work with a wisp of straw, he began asking questions.