When Henry was up again, he built an addition of two rooms on to his house and opened a store in one of them, the stock consisting of six brooms, ten bolts of cloth, a dozen bottles of patent medicine and a few staple groceries. His first customer was Christine Reinmueller who bought brown denim for her baby’s dress. She put one corner of the goods between her teeth and pulled on it. “Everyt’ing . . . sie reis . . . rip.” She jerked the cloth to test its strength. “You t’ink dis sie reis . . . rip . . . nein?”

A few rods to the east of the Lutz combination store and house, Oscar Lutz built a blacksmith shop and hired a blacksmith-preacher to do the work. For six days Sam Mowery labored at the anvil and on the seventh day the Reverend Samuel Mowery preached three miles away in the schoolhouse known by the appropriate appellation of Sodom College. A store and a blacksmith shop! People began saying, “Over to the Stove Creek store,” and then, “Over to Stove Creek.”

Mail was brought now by a man on horseback, en route from Weeping Water to Ashland. Twice a week he would stop with the little packet at the Lutz store, as Henry had been made postmaster.

They began to talk about getting a doctor to come in. Will heard of a young Dr. Hornby, who had just arrived at Nebraska City after graduating from Rush. He rode on horseback to interview him, and the young fellow returned on his own horse behind Will, his mutton-chop whiskers blowing back against his pink-cheeked boyish face, his medicine-case and a valise tied on the saddle.

A store, a post office, a blacksmith shop, a preacher, a doctor,—and all in two buildings. The town had begun.

It was Sarah Lutz and Abbie Deal who began talking about the crudeness of the “Stove Creek” title. They were both setting out little cedar trees, Sarah in a clump behind the store, Abbie in a row in front of the soddie.

“Cedar City, Abbie,” Sarah said suddenly.

“Or Cedartown,” Abbie added.

“Yes, I believe I like that best . . . all in one word.”

Cedartown! A store and a blacksmith shop! But the Deals and the Lutzes, the Reverend Samuel Mowery and his wife and Dr. Hornby would all correct any passerby who asked innocently if this was Stove Creek.

“Cedartown,” they would say impressively. And so, Minerva-like, Cedartown had sprung forth from the brow of the prairie.

The crop of that year, 1872, was as poor as that of the previous summer. In September, Abbie’s third child was born. Sarah was there helping, now, and Christine was at home with her own new baby. The child was a son, healthy, loud-voiced, hungry. Abbie and Will joked a little over the size of their family and they argued some over the newcomer’s name. Will wanted to call him John.

“It doesn’t sound just right,” Abbie protested. “John Deal. It’s too short . . . like ‘Tick-tack’ . . . or ‘Pot-luck.’ ”