"Two things influenced me in naming it Bullfrog," Shorty said. "Ed had asked, 'what'll we name it?' As I looked at the green ore in my hand, a frog bellowed. 'Bullfrog,' I said." (One writer has stated erroneously that there is not a bullfrog on the desert.)
The tycoons of mining and their agents appeared as if borne on magic carpets and in a little while men who would have turned him from their doors, were fawning around the little man with the golden smile and the ugly brawl for the Bullfrog was on--a struggle between cheap promoters who gave him cheap whiskey and moguls who gave him champagne.
Scores of yarns have been written about the sale of the Bullfrog. It was one of the few things in Shorty's life which he discussed with reserve. In my residence two years before he died and in my presence he told my wife, to whom he was singularly devoted, the sordid story. "Cross had a good head," Shorty said. "He attended to business, sold his interest and retired to a good ranch.
"I woke up one morning and judging from the empties, I must have had a grand evening. I reached for a full pint on the table and under it was a piece of paper with a note. I read it and learned for the first time that I'd sold the Bullfrog."
"The law would have released you from that contract," I said.
I thought of the crumbling adobe on the Ballarat flat and the lean years that followed.
"At that, I got good money for a fellow like me," he added. "I've never wanted for anything."
A fortune blown like a bubble meant absolutely nothing--stopped no laugh; dimmed no hope; quenched no fire in his eager eyes.
"If I'd got those millions the big boys would have hauled me off to town, put a white shirt on me. Maybe they would have made me believe Shorty Harris was important. 'Mr. Harris this and Mr. Harris that.' I've got something they can't take away. I step out of my cabin every morning and look it over--100 miles of outdoors. All mine."
The future of Rhyolite seemed assured when Bob Montgomery sold to Charles M. Schwab, president of Bethlehem Steel Company, his interest in the claim known as the Montgomery Shoshone for more than $2,000,000.
The discovery of this claim has been accredited to Shoshone Johnnie and historians have said that Montgomery bought it from Johnnie for a pair of overalls, a buggy, and a few dollars. Actually Bob Montgomery was among the first on the scene following Shorty's discovery strike and located the claim himself. Even if Johnnie had located it Montgomery would have been entitled to one-half interest for the reason that he had been grubstaking Johnnie for years.