The court record showed six quarter sections of land west of town had recently been transferred; the name of the receiver was unknown to anyone in Megory, but such prices, forty to fifty dollars per acre. The people who had sold, brought the money to the Megory banks, and deposited it. All they seemed to know was that someone drove up to their house and asked if they wanted to sell. Some did not, while others said they were only five miles from Megory, and if they sold they would have to have a big price, because Megory was the "Town of the Little Crow" and the gateway to acres of the finest land in the world, to be opened soon. "What is your price?" he would ask, and whether it was forty, forty-five or fifty per acre, he bought it.
This must have gone on for sixty days with everybody wondering "what it was all about", until it got on the nerves of the Megoryites; and even the town dads began to get a little fearful. When Ernest was approached he would wink wisely, hand out a cigar or buy a drink, but he never made anybody the wiser.
A lady came out from Des Moines, bought a lot, and let a contract for a hotel building 24 × 140, and work was begun on it immediately. This was getting ahead of Megory, where a hotel had just been completed 25 × 100 feet, said by the Megoryites to be the "best" west of a town of six thousand population, one hundred fifty miles down the road. Whenever anything like a real building goes up in a little town on the prairie, with their collection of shacks, it is always called "the best building" between there and somewhere else.
I shall not soon forget the anxiety with which the people watched the building which continued to go up west of Megory, and still no one there seemed willing to admit that Nicholson Brothers were "live," but spent their argument in trying to convince someone that they were only wind jammers and manipulators of knavish plots, to immesh the credulous.
What actually happened was this, and Ernest told me about it afterwards in about the following words:
"Well, Oscar, after Megory turned our offer down, I knew there were just two things to do, and that was, to either make good or leave the country. Megory is full of a lot of fellows that have never known anything but Keya Paha county, and when the road missed Calias, and struck Megory, they took the credit for displaying a superior knowledge. I knew we were going to be the big laughing stock of the reservation, and since I did not intend to leave the country, I got to thinking. The more I pondered the matter, the more determined I became that something had to be done, and I finally made up my mind to do it." Ernest Nicholson was not the kind of a man to make idle declarations. "I went down to Omaha and saw some business friends of mine and suggested to them just what I intended to do, thence to Des Moines and got father, and again we went into Chicago and secured an appointment with Hewitt, who listened attentively to all that we had to say, and the import of this was that Megory, being over five miles east of the Tipp County line, it was difficult to drive range cattle that distance through a settled country. They are so unused to anything that resembles civilization, that ranchers hate to drive even five miles through a settled country, besides the annoyance it would habitually cause contrary farmers, when it comes to accommodating the ranchers. But that is not all. With sixty-six feet open between the wire fences, the range cattle at any time are liable to start a stampede, go right through, and a lot of damage follows. I showed him that most of the cattle men were still driving their stock north and shipping over the C.P. & St. L. Now knowing that the directors had ordered the extension of the line to get the cattle business, Hewitt looked serious, finally arose from his chair, and went over to a map that entirely covered the side of the wall and showed all the lines of the C. & R.W. He meditated a few minutes and then turned around and said: 'Go back and buy the land that has been described.'" It all seemed simple enough when it was done.
By the time that the extension had been completed to Megory, the building that had been moved west of town had company in the way of many new ones, and by this time comprised quite a burg, and claimed the name of New Calias. The new was to distinguish between its old site and its present one. After Megory turned them down, Ernest had made a declaration or defiance that he would build a town on the Little Crow and its name would be Calias.