While waiting for Lahoma's letter,Wilfred Compton spent his days in ceaseless activity,his evenings in dreamy musings.Over on the North Fork of Red River--which was still regarded as Red River proper,and therefore the dividing line between Texas and Indian Territory--he renewed his acquaintance with the boys of Old Man Walker's ranch.Henry Woodson,the cow-puncher,still known as Mizzoo was one of the old gang who greeted Wilfred with extravagant joy which shaded away to easy and picturesque melancholy in lamenting the passing of the good old days.
These is the days of fences,complained Mizzoo,as Wilfred,in answer to his invitation,rode forth with him to view the changes.Time was,our cattle was bounded on the south by nothing but the south wind,and on the north by nothing but the north wind;hut these unmitigated settlers has spiled the cattle business.I'm looking for the old man to sell out and quit.Why,look at all the little towns that has sprung up so confusing and handy that you don't know which to choose to liquor up.They comes like a thief in the night,and in the morning they're equipped to rob you.I can't keep no change by me--I've asked the old man to hold back my wages till the end of the year.But I'm calculating to make something out of these very misfortunes.You know I always was sort of thrifty--yes,as they GOT to be a settled county round us,it'll needs call for a sheriff,and if all signs don't fail,I'll get the job this week.Then there'll be no more riding of the line for old Mizzoo.
Wilfred rode with him to Mangum,and other villages,with names and without,and he tingled to the spirit of the bounding West.There might be only a few dugouts,some dingy tents and a building or so of undressed pine,but each hamlet felt in itself the possibilities of a city,and had its spaces in the glaring sands or the dead sagebrush which it called the Squareand Main Streetand possibly the park.The air quivered with expectations of a railroad,maybe two or three,and each cluster of hovels expected to find itself in a short time constituted the county-seat,with a gleaming steel road at its back door.
This spirit of optimism was but a reflection of the miraculous growth of the new country of which Greer County,though owned by Texas,felt itself,in a sense,an integral part.Eight years before,Indian Territory was the hunting-ground of the Indian,and whosoever attempted to settle within its limits was driven forth by the soldiers.It was then a land of dim twilight,full of mystery and wildness,with vast stretches of thirsty plains and bleak mountains around which the storms,unbroken by forests,shrieked in the straight windsof many days,or whined the threat of the deadly tornado.And suddenly it became a land of high noon,garish and crude,but wide-awake and striving with all the tireless energy of young blood.
Scarcely had the Oklahoma country been taken possession of before the settlers began agitating the question of an organized territory,and too impatient to wait for Congress to act,held their own convention at Guthrie and divided the land into counties.Congress made them wait five months--an age in the new country--before approving the Organic Act.The district,which a short time before had been the Unassigned Lands,became the counties of Logan,Oklahoma,Cleveland,Canadian,Kingfisher and Payne.To these was added Beaver County which in Brick Willock's day had been called No-Man's Land,and which the law-abiding citizens,uniting against bandits and highwaymen,had sought to organize as Cimmaron Territory.
Then came the rivalry between Guthrie and Oklahoma City for the capital,adding picturesqueness to territorial history,and offering incitement to many a small village to make itself the county-seat of its county.The growth of the new country advanced by leaps and bounds.In 1891,the 868,414acres of the surplus lands of the Iowa,Sac,Fox and the Pottawatomie-Shawnee reservations formed the new counties of Lincoln and Pottawatomie and increased the extent of some of the old ones.The next year,3,500,562acres belonging to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians were taken to increase several of the older counties,and to from the new ones of honest old American names--Blame,Custer,Washita,Dewey,Roger Mills,Beckham and Ellis.In the year following,the Cherokee strip was opened for a settlement together with the surplus lands of the Pawnee and Tonhawa--5,698,140acres;besides increasing other counties,this land furnished forth the new counties of Alfalfa,Garfield,Grant,Harper,Major,Woods,Woodward,Pawnee,Kay and Noble.At the time of Wilfred's visit to Brick Willock,the winter of 1894-5,the opening of the Kickapoo reservation was already a near certainty;while the vast extent of Greer County itself,so long in dispute between Texas and the United States,would in all likelihood be added to the swelling territory of Oklahoma.
The territory,so young but so dauntless,was already agitating the question of statehood--not only so,but of single statehood,meaning thereby the prospective engulfment and assimilation of Indian Territory,that all the land from Texas to Kansas,Missouri and Arkansas might be called by the one name--Oklahoma;a name to stand forever as a symbol of the marvelously swift and permanent growth of a white people,in spite of its Choctaw significance--Red People.
