down with his back against the wagon wheel, rested his head on his hands, puffed solemnly on his pipe, and after a moment said, "Shall we begin with the Indians?"

"Yes."

"Well, though there were some ancient peoples in Oklahoma, the first tribes which we ordinarily think of as Indians were the Kiowas, Comanches, Arapahoes, and such. They were all warlike and for the most part depended on hunting. There was very little of any kind of farming. But there were never so many of these tribes that Oklahoma was what you might call crowded. It was a vacant land."

The youngsters remained silent, waiting for Pete to go on. After a moment, he did.

"Oklahoma came to us with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. But in those days, to anyone east of the Mississippi, Oklahoma seemed as far away as the moon seems now. Few people imagined that it would ever be any good, and almost nobody wanted to go there. In fact, very few people even knew it existed."

"What's 'Oklahoma' mean, Mr. Brent?" Alec broke in.

"It's a Choctaw Indian word meaning 'red people.' Now there weren't so many white men west of the Mississippi, but there were a lot of them east of it. There were also a lot of Indians there. What happened is what usually happened when red men crowded white; the white men wanted the land."

"Wasn't that selfish?" Mindy asked.

"Depends on how you look at it, Cindy—or Mindy." Pete grinned. "I don't know which is who, because I can't see the catsup any more. But if you mean, was it selfish for white people to grab Indian lands, it certainly was. On the other hand, it might have been selfish for a few Indians to think they could stand forever in the path of so many white men. Still depending on how you look at it, and whether you're white or red, it was either 'the march of civilization,' or 'conquest.' Anyhow, the five 'civilized' tribes, the Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Seminoles, were told that if they'd give their eastern lands to white men, the territory later to be known as Oklahoma would be theirs forever. In the words of the treaty, they were to have it 'for as long as grass shall grow and waters run.' Moving these tribes took almost twenty years, from 1828 to 1846, and it wasn't a nice thing, because some of the uprooted Indians suffered terribly, but finally they were here."

Alec interrupted again. "If the land was given to the Indians, how can we take it?" he asked.

"I was coming to that, Alec. The 'civilized' tribes were different. They knew white men. They saw that white men had a better way of living, and so they copied it. They had their farms, their schools, their churches, their stores. They lived much as we do and even owned slaves. Then came the Civil War, and almost all of them lined up with the South. The government claimed that by this 'rebellion,' the tribes had violated their treaty rights. That began it. There were a lot of people west of the Mississippi by that time, and they wanted to know why they weren't allowed to have land that no longer belonged to the Indians anyway."

"Be sure to tell about the cattlemen," Cindy murmured.

"Sure thing. Great herds of cattle, gathered in Texas for delivery to Kansas railheads, were driven across the territory. At first the cattlemen asked only that their herds be allowed to graze while passing through. Then they wanted grazing land to fatten cattle, and one way or another they got a lot of it. So there was something else to fight about. If homesteaders could have no part of Oklahoma, why were wealthy cattlemen allowed to take so much of it? Then came the 'Boomers.'"

Alec smiled. Cindy clasped her hands excitedly.

"Somebody," Pete continued, "found out that part of Oklahoma, the section soon to be opened, had been given up by the Creeks and Seminoles at the end of the Civil War and had never been assigned to any other tribe. They became the 'unassigned lands,' and the boom was on. At first it was unimportant, because only a few people trickled in. Then, just about ten years ago, a very great man, Captain David L. Payne, saw the possibilities in Oklahoma and he organized the Boomers. Captain Payne personally led several expeditions of colonists into the unassigned lands. Each time the soldiers forced them to leave."

"Is he here now?" Mindy asked.

"No," said Pete. "He died about five years ago, but Captain William Couch, and I'm sure he's on the border, took over. He made another attempt to establish a colony in 1885. When that colony was disbanded by soldiers, the Boomers decided that no one can fly in the face of the law. So they tried to have the unassigned lands legally declared open to homesteaders. There was plenty of opposition. Most of it came from the cattlemen who did not want to lose their free range, but the Indian tribes worked against it too. However, the Boomers won, and here we are."

"Were you a Boomer?" Mindy asked breathlessly.

"I was a Boomer," Pete said. "I've been in there three times, and three times I've been marched out by soldiers. But though the soldiers did hold Captain Payne and a few others prisoners for a while, about all they ever did to the rest was escort us back over the border. Because I know the country, I know where your dad and I can get ourselves two of the prettiest claims in Oklahoma if someone doesn't already have them."

"How can anyone already have them?" Alec questioned. "The border isn't supposed to be opened before high noon on the 22nd of April."

Pete sounded a little grim. "That's right, Alec, and nobody who crosses before that time is supposed to have legal title to any land he may stake. But a lot of people have gone in anyhow. They're hiding in the thickets and along the creek bottoms. They'll stake land, and some of them will get away with it. There aren't enough soldiers to find all of them and bring them back."

"What will you do if some of them are on the claims you and Dad want?" Cindy asked.

"Then there could be an argument," Pete said. "If we lose to somebody who crosses when he should, well and good. But we won't lose to anyone who has sneaked across before he should."

"Do you think there'll be trouble?" Alec sounded worried.

"I doubt it, Alec, but we must be ready if it comes."

Mindy knitted puzzled brows. "There is much I do not understand."

"If you have any questions," Pete said, "I'll try to answer them."

"Thank you, Mr. Brent. Please tell me how close we are to Oklahoma."

"We could almost throw a stone into it from this wagon," Pete said.

"Then why," Mindy asked, "can't the first people across simply stake the first claims they find?"

"They can do just that, and some of them will," Pete said. "But a great many people here on the border know where the best claims are. They're old-time Boomers, or they've been in before, or in some cases, a group of people have banded together to send a scout on ahead to find them a place. The really hot race will be for the best land."

"I see," said Mindy, "but you speak of claims. How are people to know where their claim ends and another begins?"

"All the homesteads have been surveyed and marked," Pete said. "They are, of course, a hundred and sixty acres each. Many of the town sites—they're three hundred and twenty acres—have been decided in advance too. But they haven't been measured into lots, and there's going to be trouble. People will stake anything, I believe, then find out they've located in a street, or on school property, or something like that."

"How will all these people get the things they need?" Mindy pursued.

"The railroad you came in on, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, runs through the territory. Freight wagons can take