Crossword-Solution: BOOMTOWN 8 letters, 18 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 15

CONCLUSION 128 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- THE MOCCASIN RANCH I MARCH Early in the gray and red dawn of a March morning in 1883, two wagons moved slowly out of Boomtown, the two-year-old "giant of the plains." As the teams drew past the last house, the strangeness of the scene appealed irresistibly to the newly arrived immigrants.

The Boomtown _Spike_ told in each issue how the men of the chain and compass were pushing westward; but still they did not come, and the settlers' hopes of getting their claims filed before winter grew fainter.

Some of the girls went back never to return; others settled in Boomtown, with intent to visit their claims once a month through the winter; but a few, like the Burkes, remained in their little shanties, which looked still more like dens when sodded to the eaves.

The people of Boomtown invariably spoke of Henry Wilson as the oldest settler in the Jim Valley, as he was of Buster County; but the Eastern man, with his ideas of an "old settler," was surprised as he met the short, silent, middle-aged man, who was very loath to tell anything about himself, and about whom many strange and thrilling stories were told by good story-tellers.

The railway surveyors came through, locating a town about three and another about twelve miles away, and straightway the bitter rivalry between Boomtown and Belleplain began.