ening 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."

Although Wilfred had stayed close to his farm, near Oklahoma City, he
had kept alive to the rush and swing of the western life; and now that
he had leisure to ride with Mizzoo among the bustling camps, and view
the giant strides made from day to day by the smallest towns, he was
more than ever filled with the exultation of one who takes part in
world-movements. He began to view the hurrying crowds that overran the
sidewalks, with a sense of close kinship--these people came from all
points of the Union, but they were his people. A year ago, six months
ago, they might have been New Yorkers, Californians, Oregonians, but
now all were westerners like himself, and though they believed
themselves Texans the name made as little difference as that between
"Red River" and "Prairie Dog Fork"--in spirit, they were Oklahomans.

If Wilfred had not been a simple visitor, he would have had no time for
thought; but now he could look on the life of which he had for a few
years been a part, and study it as related to the future. It was as if
his boyhood and youth had not been passed in Chicago--the West had
blotted out the past as it ever does with relentless hand,--and every
thought-channel led toward the light of the future. Lahoma's letter had
revived the picture of other days, of another existence, without
rousing one wish to return.

The only desire it had stirred in his breast was that of seeing Lahoma
again, of taking her by the hand to lead her, not back to the old
civilization, but to the new. As he lay awake at night in the log
cabin that had been Lahoma's, his brain for a long time every night was
busy with thoughts of that new civilization, and he was stirred with
ambition to take part, so that when single statehood or doub