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 latitude 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 pass beautiful little ponies that you can buy for ten to twenty dollars. On either side we pass 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.
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.
INDIANS AT PAWNEE, 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.