We made no answer, but the bed I contrived to make under his watching eyes was a hopeless tangle.
"We're on this land...." he blustered. He was trying to run a bluff, to find out whether we were on the right quarter-section or whether, like him, we were land-grabbers.
"I guess I'll have to have your identification," he said again. "What's your name?"
"Rosie Carrigan," I answered, "from Ohio. What are you doing on my land, anyway? You have no right here!"
He hesitated, weighing the situation and the possibilities.
"Get off!" I blazed at him.
He got. The two men rolled up their bedding and moved on, and Ida Mary and I sat limply on the ground watching them go.
In case they should come back we decided to hold the land for the night, gathered up the bedding, and slept in the wagon—when we slept.
At daybreak we were wakened by the rumble of a heavy-loaded wagon coming slowly over the prairie behind a limping team. A tall, slim girl and a slight boy sat high on the front seat. They drove up beside our wagon. Fastened on the back of their load was a chicken coop, and as they stopped a rooster stuck its head out and crowed.
The girl was Rosie Carrigan. The boy was her brother. And the rooster was the first of his kind to settle on the reservation. They had been delayed by footsore horses. But no land-grabbers, no one except ourselves, ever knew that Rosie Carrigan did not establish residence at ten minutes before midnight.