"Hello!" Jack sang out to the man thus referred to.
As the buckboard stopped a few rods from the shack, called a "hoos," the individual addressed pulled at his galluses and hat, then walked over to the fence, which enclosed fifty acres of newly plowed ground, said, "How?" and stood gaping at the travelers.
"Good morning," cheerily said Jack. "We are on our way to Pryor Creek and then want to go into the Kiowa Reservation. Can you tell us anything about the road?"
"Waal, I reckon yes. It's good goin' 'til yer git to the Verdigris. Thet nigh ho'se (meaning horse, pronounced with long o and aspirate s) uster belong to the "
" outfit."
The answer was given in a drawling, sing-song tone, with full rests between every third word, when the speaker stopped to pick up a stick to whittle, to halloo at his steer or to show how straight he could expectorate a small freshet of tobacco juice between his teeth at some real or imaginary mark. His skin was a dirty soot color, and his raven black eyes and straight hair emphasized his ghastly pallor. He was tall and thin—built on the Arkansas plan of constructing ladders. His hips and shoulder blades seemed to meet, giving his long, lank legs the appearance of a man's head on jointed stilts. Jack made no reply to the remark about the horse with the "Lazy L" brand, but inquired the distance to the Verdigris.
"It's quite a patch. I reckon yer mought hev some 'navy' about yer close; jess the same if yer moughten—thanks."
Jack had learned that a plug of tobacco had "open sesame" qualities among certain species of human beings, and in his war bag were several pounds cut into goodly sized pocket pieces. One of them he handed to the "half-breed," who tore off a corner with his teeth, absentmindedly putting the rest in his pocket. The "tip" had the desired effect, for "Ladder Legs" recounted in the drawl of the Cherokee half-breeds, with its characteristic aspirating, all the crooks, turns, fords and distances to the Kiowa Reservation. In response to Jack's inquiry regarding the limited cultivation of the land so near the Kansas border, "Ladder Legs" vouchsafed this information:
"A 'squaw man' has little ambition, and a half-breed none. The environments of Indian life make a 'States' man dejected and he soon outgrows the infant ambition which prompted him to marry a squaw that he might 'take up' land in the territory. A white man cannot live on the Indians' ground except he marries a squaw or the daughter of a man who has had tribal rights conferred upon him; then he becomes an Indian and can have a fifty-acre pasture fenced, all the land he will cultivate, and the 'range' for his stock to feed upon. You see that bend in the river? Waal, a white man from the States married the widow of a well-to-do Cherokee half-breed. He is educated and has grown-up daughters almost as white as you be, and a nice house well furnished, and he rents out a part of his land on shares to some 'niggers,' or half-breeds, and they cultivate all the land he can put under fence. Some day when this land is allotted he will own an immense tract."