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 button, 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 God 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 cañons 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 masse 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.