There was a town down the road which I had first heard discussed nigh
twenty years ago by a broken-down prospector in a box-car. 'Young
feller,' said he, after he had made a professional prophecy,' you'll
hear of that town if you live. She's born lucky.'
I saw the town later - it was a siding by a trestle bridge where Indians
sold beadwork - and as years passed I gathered that the old tramp's
prophecy had come true, and that Luck of some kind had struck the little
town by the big river. So, this trip, I stopped to make sure. It was a
beautiful town of six thousand people, and a railway junction, beside a
high-girdered iron bridge; there was a public garden with trees at the
station. A company of joyous men and women, whom that air and that
light, and their own goodwill, made our brothers and sisters, came along
in motors, and gave us such a day as never was.
'What about the Luck?' I asked.
'Heavens!' said one. 'Haven't you heard about our natural gas - the
greatest natural gas in the world? Oh, come and see!'
I was whirled off to a roundhouse full of engines and machinery-shops,
worked by natural gas which comes out of the earth, smelling slightly of
fried onions, at a pressure of six hundred pounds, and by valves and
taps is reduced to four pounds.
