A short time after this and evidently because so many proofs had been sent back, the Interior Department made it compulsory for the claimant to put in fourteen months' actual residence on the claim, before he could offer proof. With fourteen months, they were sure to stay a full eight months at least. This system has been very successful.

When Rattlesnake Jack was ordered back, after selling me the place, she wanted me to sign a quit claim deed to her and accept notes for the money I had paid, which might have been satisfactory had it not been that she thought I had stopped to look back and failed to see the rush of progress the Little Crow was making; that the long anticipated news had been spread, and was now raging like a veritable prairie fire, and stirred the people of the Little Crow as much as an active stock market stirs the bulls on the stock exchange. The report spread and stirred the everyday routine of the settlers and the finality of humdrum and inactivity was abrupt. It came one day in early April. The rain had kept the farmers from the fields a week. It had been raining for nearly a month, and we only got a clear day once in a while. This day it was sloppy without, and many farmers were in from the country. We were all listening to a funny story Ernest Nicholson was telling, and "good fellows" were listening attentively. Dr. Salter, a physician, had just been laid on a couch in the back room of the saloon, "soused to the gills," when in the door John M. Keely, a sort of ne'er do well popular drummer, whose proof had been rejected some time before, and who had come back to stay "a while longer", stumbled into the door of the local groggery. He was greeted with sallies and calls of welcome, and like many of the others, he was "feeling good." He sort of leaned over, and hiccoughing during the intervals, started "I've," the words were spoken chokingly, "got news for you." He had by now got inside and was hanging and swinging at the same time, to the bar. Then before finishing what he started, called "Tom," to the bar tender, "give me a whiskey before I", and here he leaned over and sang the words "tell the boys the news." "For the love of Jesus Keel" exclaimed the crowd in chorus "tell us what you know." He drained the glass at a gulp and finally spit it out. "The surveyors are in Oristown."

CHAPTER XV

Table of Contents

"WHICH TOWN WILL THE R.R. STRIKE?"

CHAPTER XVI