"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."
XXXI
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.