The Minute Man of the Frontier Part 16

I next inquired whether the stage made connections with the train on the other road.

"Wal, yes, it gineraley does."

"Why, does it not to-morrow?"

"Guess not."

"Why?"

"Cos' of the ternado."

"Tornado?"

"Yes; didn't ye know we had a ternado?"

"No."

"Well, we did, ye know; tore the trees up hullsale, and just played Ned. Rain c.u.m down like suds."

"Well, can I get a buggy or wagon?"

"Guess not; both out in the woods; can't git home."

I felt sick at hearing this; for how to get across with two grips filled with books, theological books too, troubled me. I slept little.

My room was bare; the rain pattering on the roof, the mosquitoes inside, and my own thoughts, routed me out early Sat.u.r.day morning. I was pleased to find that the man had returned with the wagon, and after much persuasion, I engaged him for five dollars to take me across.

We started off with an axe. The old settlers laughed at our attempt, but we were young. Over the fallen trees we went b.u.mping along; but, alas, we tried too big a maple, and out came the reach-pole and left us balanced on the tree. After a tiring walk through the "s.h.i.+n-tangles"--that is, ground hemlock--we reached the road, and mounted bareback. We met some commercial travellers cutting their way through, with a settler's help, pa.s.sed a horse and buggy (minus a driver), with a bottle of whiskey in the bottom. We then had the good fortune to borrow a single wagon of a minister, who lived near on a farm. Our horses had to walk in the water by the edge of the lake, and the leeches fastened on them by the dozen. Finally we met the stage, and knew our way was clear. We were drenched with the rain, but it was clearing, and so we cheered up.

I asked the stage-driver whether I could catch the train.

He said, "Well, if ye _drive_, ye can."

The emphasis he put into the drive made us whip up. Presently the village could be seen, a half-mile away. The engine was on the turntable. How fast it went around! I was getting nervous. I asked the man to get my grips out, while I got my ticket; and rus.h.i.+ng into the office, I snapped out, "Ticket for ----!"

The man turned his head with a jerk, and stared at me so intently that I thought something was wrong. So I said, "What time does the train start?"

"In about an hour."

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I felt like Sir Francis Drake, when his vessel seemed to be going over in the Thames. "What!

have I sailed the ocean," said he, "to be drowned in a ditch?" So, I thought, "Have I come a hundred miles out of my way, to miss the train?"

I boarded the cars, cleaned my valises, and found the color running from my book-covers. My boots were like brown paper, so sodden were they. I dried myself by the stove; but my troubles were not over. The train-boy called out the station at the water-tank. The rain was pouring down; I was in for it again; so I walked down between the freight cars, went to the hotel and dried myself again, and, after dancing around the room on one foot to get my boots on, I started off to find my man.

He was out of town! Expected home with a funeral soon. I was foolish enough to make myself known as soon as he got off the cars, and he coaxed me into taking charge of the funeral. Then for the third time I was soaked, as we stood in the new cemetery, while a hymn of six verses was rendered. But what flattened me worse than all was that the young man had not received my second telegram, which I sent to relieve his supposed excited feelings, and had not been troubled in the least, but was going to make Fred. Robertson ("who being dead yet speaketh") do duty for him. Tired out, I flung myself on a bed, and slept in spite of--well never mind what. I had to change quarters next night, for I was not so sleepy.

I received a letter from the student who had taken my charge, saying, "----is burnt to the ground, and all north of the railway." In an instant there flashed on my mind the words of the woman: "Up, get you out," etc. The same words came home to the women as they saw their homes going up in smoke.

"What did the elder say?" said they to one another.

The excitement of the fire brought on brain fever in the case of the youngest child.

On my return, while trying to comfort the little one (who we thought was dying), and telling her about heaven, she cried out in her feebleness, "I don't want to go to heaven! I want to go to Injeanny."

And, sure enough, she got well, and did go to "Injeanny."

x.x.xI

THE LATEST FRONTIER--OKLAHOMA.

Collier, in his "Great Events of History," tells of a million warriors who, leaving their wives and children, crossed the Danube, and swore allegiance to Rome. Since that time a great many immigrations have taken place, but none on so large a scale. But, large or small, the settlements of the Indian Territory, now called Oklahoma, are the most unique.

It would have been hard to have devised a worse way to open a new country. Thousands of people--strong, weak, the poor settler, the speculator, the gambler--were all here, man and wife, and spinster on her own responsibility. All waited for weeks on the border-land. At last the time came, and the gun was fired, and in confusion wild as a Comanche raid, the great rush was made. Many sections being claimed by two and three parties, the occasion had its comic side, amid more that was tragic. Thousands went in on cattle-cars, and as many more filled common coaches inside and out, and clung to the cow-catcher of the engine. In places wire fences were on either side of the railway; and men in trying to get through them in a hurry, often reached their land minus a large part of their clothing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LOOKING FOR A TOWN LOT.

_Page 294._]

In one case a portly woman, taking the tortoise plan of slow and steady, reached the best section, while the men still hung in the fence like victims of a butcher-bird. It is said of one young woman, who made the run on horseback, that reaching a town-site, her horse stumbled, and she was thrown violently to the ground and stunned. A pa.s.sing man jumped off his horse, and sprinkled her face with water from his canteen; and as she revived, the first thing she said was, "This is my lot."

"No, you don't," said the man. But to settle it they went to law, and the court decided in favor of the woman, as she struck the ground first.

Among much that was brutal and barbarous, some cases of chivalry were noticed. In one case a young woman was caught in a wire fence, and two young men went back, helped her out, and allowed her to take her choice of a section. One man, in his eagerness, found himself many miles from water. As he was driving his stake, he noticed that his horse was dying; and realizing his awful situation, being nearly exhausted with thirst, he cut his horses throat, drank the blood, and saved his own life.

The work done in six years is simply marvellous. Imagine the prairie described by Loomis as the place where you could see day after to-morrow coming up over the horizon; at times covered with flowers fair as the garden of the Lord, or covered with snow, and nothing to break the fury of the wind. Seventy-five thousand Indians the only permanent residents in the morning; at night hundreds of thousands of whites--villages, towns, and cities started, in some of them a mayor chosen, a board of aldermen elected, and the staked-out streets under police control. The inhabitants were under tents for a few weeks, while sickness of all kinds attacked them. There were rattlesnakes of two varieties, tarantulas, two kinds of scorpions,--one, the most dangerous, a kind of lizard, which also stings with its tail, and with often deadly effect,--and centipedes that grow to six inches in length. One of the latter was inside a s.h.i.+rt which came home from the laundry, and planted his many feet on the breast of one of our minute-men, and caused it to swell so fearfully that he thought at one time he should die. He recovered, but still at times feels the effect of the wounds, which are as numerous as the feet. The pain caused is intense, and the parts wounded slough off.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORMING IN LINE TO VOTE FOR MAYOR.

_Page 296._]

Now imagine all this; and then six years after you visit this land, and find cities of ten thousand inhabitants, banks with polished granite pillars,--polished with three per cent per month interest,--great blocks, huge elevators, and fine hotels. And nowhere, even in Paris, will you find more style than among the well-to-do. And on the same streets where I saw all this, I also saw men picking kernels of corn out of an old cellar close by a second-hand store, where already the poor had given up and sold their furniture to get home.

I looked out of my hotel window one morning in "Old Oklahoma," and saw a lady walking past dressed in a lavender suit, a white hat with great ostrich feathers on it, by her side a gentleman as well groomed as any New York swell, an English greyhound ambled by their side, while in the rear were rough men with the ugly stiff hats usually worn by your frontier rough. Storekeepers were going to work in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves. This was in a town of two thousand inhabitants, where there were four banks, four newspapers, eleven churches, and only three saloons.

While I was there a most brutal murder took place,--a woman shot her step-daughter, killing her instantly. The husband, the girl's father, swept the blood from the sidewalk, and went down to the jail that night and stayed with the woman, while a fiddler was sent down to cheer her. This man was her fifth husband.

In the two weeks I was in that vicinity seven persons were killed.

Three men had shot down some train-robbers, and after they were dead had filled their bodies with bullets. This so incensed the friends of the dead men that a number of them went to the house where the men had fortified themselves. When they saw how large a force was against them, they surrendered, their wives in the meanwhile begging the men who had come not to molest their husbands. But the women were pushed rudely aside, and the men were carried to the hills and lynched.

One murderer cost the Territory over fifteen thousand dollars. Banks have loaded pistols behind the wire windows, where they can be reached at a moment's notice.

Still, lawlessness is not the rule; and it has never been as bad as one city was farther north, where men were held up on the main street in broad daylight. Such facts may just as well be known, because there is a better time coming, and these things are but transitory.

In the old settled parts, peach orchards are already bearing; and if there is a moderate rainfall, and the people can get three good crops out of five, such is the richness of the soil, the people will be rich. But to me the western part of the Territory seems like an experiment as yet. There are many places in the same lat.i.tude farther north utterly deserted; and empty court-houses, schools, and churches stand on the dry prairie as lonesome as Persepolis without her grandeur.

But now let us go into "The Strip." ("The Strip" is the Cherokee Strip, the last but one opened; the Kickapoo being opened this May.) It has been settled about eighteen months. It is May, 1895. We leave the train, and start across the prairie in a buggy with splendid horses that can be bought for less than forty dollars each. We pa.s.s beautiful little ponies that you can buy for ten to twenty dollars. On either side we pa.s.s large herds of cattle and many horses. Few houses are in sight, as most of them are very small and hardly distinguishable from the ground, while some are under ground. Here and there a little log house, made from the "black jacks" that border the stream, which is often a dry ditch. The rivers, with banks a quarter of a mile apart at flood can be stepped over to-day.