the rich prairie-lands of Iowa, Nebraska,
Minnesota, Dakota and Kansas--and the choice was open to all, following
the agreement of the plains tribes to retire to reservations,--it was
not strange that the unassigned lands of Indian Territory should have
escaped notice, surrounded as they were by the Cherokee Strip, the
Osage and Creek countries, the Chickasaw Nation, the Wichita, Cado,
Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.

But other public lands were now scarce, or less inviting, and as far
back as 1879, when Lahoma was five years old, colonies had formed in
Kansas City, in Topeka and in Texas, to move upon the Oklahoma country.
The United States troops had dispersed the "boomers," but in the
following year the indefatigable Payne succeeded in leading a colony
into the very heart of the coveted land. It was in order to escape
arrest--for again the United States cavalry had descended on
settlers--that several wagons, among them that of Gledware's, had
driven hastily toward the Panhandle, to come to grief at the hands of
ruffians from No-Man's Land.

As Brick Willock told of Payne's other attempts to colonize the
Oklahoma country, of his arrests, of his attempts to bring his various
cases to the trial, she felt that Willock was, in a way, dealing with
her personal history, for had she not been named Lahoma in honor of
that country which her step-father had seen only to loose? Time and
again the colonists swarmed over the border, finding their way through
Indian villages and along desolate trails to the land that belonged to
the public, but was enjoyed only by the great cattlemen; as many times,
they were driven from their newly-claimed homes by federal troops, not
without severity, and their leaders were imprisoned.

But, at last, April the twenty-second, 1889, had been appointed as the
day on which the Oklahoma country was to be opened up to settlement,
and it was to meet this event that Wilfred Compton had left Greer
County. He was a unit in that immense throng that waited impatiently
for the hour of noon--a countless host, stretching along the north on
the boundary of the Cherokee Strip, on the south, at the edge of the
Cherokee Nation; on the east, along the Kickapoo and Pottawatomie
reservations; and on the west, blackening the extremity of the Cheyenne
and Arapaho countries. He was one of those who, at the discharge of
the carbines of the patrolling cavalrymen, joined in the deafening
shout raised by men of all condi