ers of America--not an immigrant peasant
among them; plumbers and lawyers, failures and people weary of routine,
young men from agricultural colleges eager to try scientific methods of
farming and older men from Europe prepared to use the methods they had
found good for generations; raucous land agents and quiet racketeers
alert for some way of making easy money from the tense, anxious, excited
throng.

For many of that jostling, bewildered, desperately anxious throng the
land was their last chance to establish themselves. And yet the
atmosphere was that of a local fair, loud with shouting, with barkers
crying their wares, with the exclamations of wonder of people looking
upon a new country. And the air was heavy with the tense excitement and
suspense that attends any gambling game.

McClure, the Halfway House, where my little print shop had been thrown
up, was the only stopping place in that part of the country and at the
end of the main road from Pierre to the reservation, which lay some five
miles on across the prairie.

All that day the landseekers pushed their way into the shed annex which
served as a dining room of the Halfway House, and filled the table which
stretched from end to end. If there was no room for them, they ate
lunches from the store's food supply at the counter. We who had grown
accustomed to the sight of empty prairie, to whom the arrival of the
stage from Pierre was an event, were overwhelmed by the confusion, the
avalanche of people, shouting, pushing, asking questions, moving
steadily across the trackless plains toward the reservation.

Every homesteader who had a tug that would fasten over a doubletree, a
wagon that could still squeak, or a flivver that had a bolt in it, went
into the transportation business--hauling the seekers from Pierre or
from McClure to look at the land.

A generation before people had migrated in little groups in covered
wagons to find new land. Now they came by automobile and railroad in
colonies, like a great tidal wave, but the spirit that drove them was
still the pioneer spirit, and the conditions to be faced were
essentially the same--the stubborn earth, and painful labor, drought and
famine and cold, and the revolving cycle of the seasons.

"Shucks, it's simple as tying your shoe," stage driver Bill assured the
excited, confused landseekers. "Jest take enough grub to last a coupla
days and a bottle or two of strong whisky and git in line at the Land
Office.