Handy seemed puzzled. He looked at the landlord, and his face bore a quizzical expression as he said: "Say, mister, what in thunder kind of a place is this Gotown, anyway—a cemetery?"
The landlord laughed, Handy wondered, and neither spoke for some time. It perplexed the veteran to reconcile with his mind the fact that there happened to be hid away, a town in the United States that had not yet been tapped by the industrious and ubiquitous showman. Reflection, however, might have convinced him that it was not such an extraordinary circumstance, after all. In this glorious and growing country cities and towns spring up in an unprecedentedly brief period through the magic influence of intelligence and industry. The discovery of some product that for ages has laid sealed up in the secret laboratories of nature in a little time has transformed the seeming sterility of a wilderness into the productiveness of a cultivated garden. The labor of brains and hands, preceding the employment of energy and capital, breaks the silence of time and makes way for the music of practical development. Active brain and toiling hands had won from mother earth rich stores and transformed the apparent barrenness of the ground convenient to where Gotown sprang up into the nucleus of a flourishing city. Someone had struck oil.
"Is it a cemetery? you ask," said the landlord, after he had enjoyed Handy's amusing inquiry. "A cemetery, eh? Well, all I can say is that you'll find in Gotown the liveliest lot of ghosts you ever tackled in your life, if you visit the place. Gotown, a cemetery! Well, I'll be darned if that ain't the best I've heard in a blue moon!" and again he started in laughing. "Why, bless your soul, man, no one has had time to die there yet. Not on your life! Gotown will be Petroleum City before it gets out of its knickerbockers, or I'm a Dutchman."
Handy opened his eyes in surprise. The actual situation flashed suddenly on him.
"Struck oil there, eh?"
"Rich."
"Many wells?"
"Let me see! There's the Anna Held, the Billy Brady, the Bob Hilliard, the Peerless One, the Teddy on the Spot, the——"
"Oh, never mind the names. Skip them. Oil wells by any old names smell just the same. How many of them?"
"Ten, fifteen—maybe double that. Can't exactly tell. They are boring all the time and striking it rich."