The site was a good one. Big Creek was hard by, and it was near enough to the fort to afford settlers reasonable security against Indian raids. Will regarded the enterprise favorably. Besides the money sent home each month, he had put by a small sum, and this he invested in the partnership with Rose.
The town site was surveyed and staked off into lots; a cabin was erected, and stocked with such goods as are needed on the frontier, and the budding metropolis was weighted with the classic name of Rome.
As an encouragement to settlers, a lot was offered to any one that would agree to erect a building. The proprietors, of course, reserved the choicest lots.
Rome boomed. Two hundred cabins went up in less than sixty days. Mr. Rose and Will shook hands and complimented each other on their penetration and business sagacity. They were coming millionaires, they said. Alas! they were but babes in the woods.
One day Dr. W. E. Webb alighted in Rome. He was a gentleman of most amiable exterior, and when he entered the store of Rose & Cody they prepared to dispose of a large bill of goods. But Dr. Webb was not buying groceries. He chatted a while about the weather and Rome, and then suggested that the firm needed a third partner. But this was the last thing the prospective millionaires had in mind, and the suggestion of their visitor was mildly but firmly waived.
Dr. Webb was not a gentleman to insist upon a suggestion. He was locating towns for the Kansas Pacific Railroad, he said, and as Rome was well started, he disliked to interfere with it; but, really, the company must have a show.
Neither Mr. Rose nor Will had had experience with the power of a big corporation, and satisfied that they had the only good site for a town in that vicinity, they declared that the railroad could not help itself.
Dr. Webb smiled pleasantly, and not without compassion. "Look out for yourselves," said he, as he took his leave.
And within sight of Rome he located a new town. The citizens of Rome were given to understand that the railroad shops would be built at the new settlement, and that there was really nothing to prevent it becoming the metropolis of Kansas.
Rome became a wilderness. Its citizens stampeded to the new town, and Mr. Rose and Will revised their estimate of their penetration and business sagacity.