The Minute Man of the Frontier Part 17

Fifty miles of riding bring us to a county town. All the county towns in "The Strip" were located by the Government, and have large squares, or rather oblongs, in which the county buildings stand. It is the day before the Indians are paid. Here we find every one busy. Streets are being graded, and a fine court-house in process of erection.

Stores are doing an immense business, one reaching over one hundred thousand dollars a year; another, larger still, being built. By their sides will be a peanut-stand, a sod store, another partly of wood and partly of canvas, and every conceivable kind of building for living in or trading. And here is a house with every modern convenience, up to a set of china for afternoon teas, and a club already formed for progressive euchre.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INDIANS AT p.a.w.nEE, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY.]

The Indian is not a terror to the settlers, as in early days; but he exasperates him, stalking by to get his money from the Government. He spends it like a child, on anything and everything to which he takes a notion. He lives on canned goods, and feasts for a time, then fasts until the Great Fathers send him more money. On the reservation, gamblers fleece him; but he does not seem to care, for he has a regular income and all the independence of a pauper.

It seemed very strange to look out of the car window, and see the tepees of the Indians, and on the other side of the car a lady in riding-habit with a gentleman escort--a pair who would have been in their place in Rotten Row.

Now we must turn westward for a hundred miles, and in all the long ride pa.s.s but one wheatfield that will pay for cutting; and that depends on rain, and must be cut with a header. Dire distress already stares the settler in the face; and even men, made desperate by hunger in Old Oklahoma, are sending their pet.i.tions to Guthrie for food.

There are hundreds of families who have nothing but flour and milk, and some who have neither. When a cry goes up for help, it is soon followed by another, saying things are not so bad. This latter cry comes from those who hold property, and who would rather the people starve than that property should decrease.

I saw men who had cut wood, and hauled it sixteen miles, then split it, and carried it twelve miles to market, and after their three days'

work the two men had a load for themselves and one dollar and a quarter left. And one man said, "Mine is a case of 'root hog or die,'"

and so got fifty cents for his load of wood he had brought fourteen miles; while another man returned with his, after vainly offering it for forty cents. In one town I saw a horse,--a poor one, it is true,--but the man could not get another bid after it had reached one dollar and a half.

Of course there are thousands who are better off; but in the case of very many they were at the very last degree of poverty when they went in. Many of our minute-men preached the first Sunday. They were among the men who sat on the cow-catcher of the engine, and made the run for a church-lot and to win souls. They preached that first Sunday in a dust-storm so bad that you could scarcely see the color of your clothes. To those who never saw one, these dust-storms are past belief. Even when the doors and windows are closed, the room seems as if it were in a fog; for the fine particles of dust defy doors and windows. And should a window be left open, you can literally use a shovel to get the dust off the beds.

You may be riding along, as I was, the hot wind coming in puffs, the swifts gliding over the prairie by your side, the heat rising visibly on the horizon, when in a flash, a dust-storm from the north came tearing along, until you could not see your pony's head at times, drifts six inches deep on the wheat, and your teeth chattering with the cold at one P.M., when at eleven A.M. you were nearly exhausted with the heat.

Strange when you ask people whether it is not extremely hot in the Middle West, they say, "Yes; but we always have cool nights." And, as a rule, that is so; but now as I write, July 9, 1895, comes the news of intense heat,--thermometer a hundred and nine in the shade, and ninety-eight at midnight, followed by a storm that shot pebbles into the very brickwork of the houses.

Every man who can, has a cyclone cellar. Some are fitted up so that you could keep house in them. In one town where I went to speak, the meeting was abandoned on account of a storm which was but moderate; but such is the fear of the twister that nearly all the people were in their pits.

In the Baptist church, where they had a full house the night before, I found one woman and two men; and they were blowing out the lights. The telegrams kept coming, telling of a storm shaking buildings, and travelling forty miles an hour; but it was dissipated before it reached me, and I escaped. Yet I found a man who had lived over a quarter of a century in the West, and had never seen one.

It is a big country. A friend of mine in England wrote me that they feared for me as they read of our fearful cyclones. I was living near Boston, Ma.s.s. I wrote back, saying I felt bad for them in London when the Danube overflowed. I had to go over and explain it before they saw my joke.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AFTER A STORM, GUTHRIE, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY.

_Page 306._]

The cyclone, however, is no joke. Nevertheless, it performs some queer antics. One cyclone struck a house, and left nothing but the floor and a tin cuspidore. The latter stood by a stove which weighed several hundredweight, and which was smashed to atoms.

In another house a heavy table was torn to pieces, while the piano-cover in the same room was left on the piano. In one house all had gone into the cellar, when they remembered the sleeping baby. A young girl sprang in, and got the baby; and just as she stepped off, the house went, and she floated into the cellar like a piece of thistle-down. A school-teacher was leaving school, when she was thrown to the ground, and every bit of clothing was stripped from her, leaving her without a scratch.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIRST CHURCH AND PARSONAGE, ALVA, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY.

_Page 307._]

Perhaps the most remarkable escape was a few years ago in Kansas City.

When a young school-teacher reached home, her mother said, "Why did you not bring your young brother?" She hastened back; and as she reached the room where her brother was, she grasped him around the waist, and jumped out of the window just as the building was struck.

She was carried two blocks, and dropped without injury to either of them. These things are hard to believe, but no one will be lost who does not believe them.

But to return to our journey. We had three churches to dedicate in three days, two on one day. And here let me say, a church could be organized every day in the year, and not trespa.s.s on any one's work.

We could see the little building loom up on the horizon, appearing twice its size, as things do on the prairie with nothing to contrast them with, for the houses were almost invisible. The place was crowded, so that the wagon-seats were brought in; and a very affecting sight it was to see the communion-wine brought in a ketchup bottle.

The people were good, but very poor, although nearly all owned horses, for in that country this is no sign of wealth.

After a few hours' drive, we came to our second church. The prairie here was broken up by small canons, interspersed with streams, and was quite pretty. A grocery and a blacksmith-shop, the latter opened Tuesday and Thursday only, comprised the village. A small house where the proprietor of the store lived, and the church, were all the buildings one could see. The people were very cordial and intelligent.

The daughters of mine host were smart, handsome girls, that could do almost everything,--ride a wild broncho, and shoot a rattler's head off with a bullet, and yet were modest, well-dressed, and good-mannered young ladies.

I was taken down stairs cut out of the clay, and covered with carpet, into a room the sides of which were the canon. It looked out over the great expanse. The beds were lifted up so as to form walls around the room, and take up less s.p.a.ce.

After a bountiful supper, I looked at the church, which stood on a sightly hill. I wondered where the people were coming from, but was told it would be filled. It was on a Thursday night. I looked over the prairie; and in all directions I saw dark spots in motion, that grew larger. I said, "They appear as if rising from the ground."

"Well," said mine host, "most of them are."

By eight o'clock three hundred were there, most of them bringing chairs; by 8.30, there were four hundred; at 9 o'clock, by actual count, five hundred people crowded in and around the door of the church. It was a sight never to be forgotten, to see this great company start off across the prairie in the full moonlight. I spoke to some of them, saying, "Why, you were out at the afternoon meeting."--"Yes," said the man, "I should have come if we had to ride a cow all the way from Enid." This was a place thirty miles away.

This church was built by the people, one man working for a dollar a week and his dinner, the farmers working his farm for him while he was at the building.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AT A CHURCH DEDICATION.

_Page 310._]

The church had not yet received its chairs, and was seated with boards laid across nail-kegs.

Here our minute-man preaches in houses so small that the chairs had to be put outside, and the people packed so thickly that they touched him. It ought to touch the Christian reader to help more. We had fifty miles to ride the next day, into a county town. We found it all alive; for nearly four hundred lawsuits were on the docket, mostly for timber stealing.

"Poor fellows," I thought, "Uncle Sam ought to give you the timber for coaxing you here."

However, the judge was a fine, well-read man, and let them off easy.

Deputy-sheriffs by the score were stalking about, with their deadly revolvers sticking out from under their short coats.

The best hotel was crowded, and I had for that night to sleep in another one. The house was old, and had been taken down and brought here from Kansas and rebuilt. The doors up-stairs once had gla.s.s in them; rough boards covered the broken places. One door was made up entirely of old sign-boards, which made it appear like so many Chinese characters, such as Pat said he could not read, but thought he could play it if he had his flute with him.

I was ushered into a room, and requested to put the light out when I was through with it; meaning I was to place it outside, which I did not do. But what a room! The wainscoting did not reach the floor.

Small bottles of oil, with feathers in them, looked awfully suspicious. There was no washstand or water. The pillow looked like a little bag of shot, and was as dirty as the bed-clothes. The door was fastened with a little wooden b.u.t.ton, which hung precariously on a small nail.

I took off my coat, and put it on again, and finally lay down on the bed, after placing something between my head and that pillow.

I had to go several blocks in the morning to find a place to wash, so dirty were the towels down-stairs. I was then given a house to myself, which consisted of a single room, eight by ten, or ten by twelve, I forget which. It was originally the church and parsonage. Here the church was organized, and the first wedding took place.

A fine church, the largest and handsomest in the Territory, was next door, and was to be dedicated the next day, which would be Sunday.

This building had been brought all the way from Kansas, and the very foundation-stones carried with it, and put up in better shape than ever. Three times next day it was crowded, even to the steps outside, many coming twenty miles to attend. One lady came twice who lived six miles away, and said, "Oh, how I wish I could come again to-night! But I have six cows to milk, and it would mean twelve miles to ride there and back, and then six miles to go home; yet I would if I could. Oh!

sometimes I think I should die but for G.o.d and my little girl."

As the people came in, I said to myself, "Where have I seen these ladies before,--pink and lemon-colored silk dresses, pointed buff shoes, ostrich feathers in their enormous hats,--oh! I have it, in the daily hints from Paris."

The men wore collars as ugly and uncomfortable as they could be made, which made them keep their chins up; and right by their sides were women whose hats looked like those we see in boxes outside the stores, your choice for five cents; there were four or five little sunburned children, some of whom were in undress uniform, and their fathers in homespun and blue jeans.

Close by in the canons crouched a fugitive from justice. Two men started out to take him, but came home without their guns. Then a brave, cool-headed man of experience went, and slept in the timber where our desperado lay concealed, thinking to catch him in the morning before the robber awoke; but while he was rubbing his own sleepy eyes the words, sharp as a rifle report, came, "Hold up your hands!" And number three came home minus his shooting-irons.

Oklahoma differs in many ways from other frontiers. You find greater extremes, but you also find a higher type intellectually. The _Century_ and _Harper's_ and the popular magazines sell faster, and more of them, than the _Police Gazette_.

On the other hand, settled _en ma.s.se_ as it has been, the church has not begun to reach the people except in county towns, where, as usual, it is too often, but not always, overdone. In one case I found a man who was trying to organize with one member; and in another a man actually built a church before a single member of his denomination was there, and there were none there when I left. In some cases I found our minute-man an old soldier; and more than once for weeks at a time he had to sleep in his clothes, and keep his rifle by his side.

In some cases the Government had located a county town, and the railway company had chosen another site close by. Then the fight began. The railway at first ignored the Government's site, and ran their trains by; built a station on their own site, and would have no other. Then the people on the Government site tore up the tracks, and incendiarism became so common that the insurance agent came and cancelled all the policies except the church and parsonage where our minute-man stood guard. This was done in several places, and the end is not yet.