"

The settlers were almost as excited as the landseekers. For many of them
it was the first opportunity they had had since their arrival to earn a
cash dollar. And while the gambling fever was high it was easy to
persuade the newcomers to spend what they could. Coffee, sandwiches,
foods of every description were prepared in great quantities and
disposed of to clamoring hordes. It seemed a pity I couldn't find some
way of making some money too. I would. Without wasting time I wrote some
verses on the land opening, made a drawing to accompany them, and sent
it to a printer at Pierre to have postcards made of it.

Wilomene White had made some belts and hatbands of snakeskins, and she
planned to put them, together with my cards, wherever we could sell them
as souvenirs.

I rode in at daylight for the cards, but the town was already astir.
People stood in line in front of the Land Office waiting to get in to
register. Some of them had stood there all night. Some sat on the steps,
cold, hungry and exhausted. But they had come a long way and could not
afford to miss their chance.

Every train that came in was loaded with men and women. The little state
capital became a bedlam, and the Land Office was besieged. They crawled
along in a line that did not seem to move; they munched little lunches;
a few fainted from exhaustion and hunger. But they never gave up.

Here at last was news that was news--for which the press of the country,
and Europe, clamored. These land openings were a phenomenon in the
settling of new territory, beyond the conception of foreign countries.
Reporters, magazine writers, free lancers pushed in for their stories of
the spectacular event.

The mere size of it, the gambling element, the surging mobs who had
risked something to take part in it were material for stories. The real
hero of the stories, of course, was the land itself--the last frontier.
There were a few who pondered on what its passing would mean to the
country as a whole.

I ordered 500 extra ready-prints by wire from the Newspaper Union and
persuaded a bronco-buster to turn the old press for me.

Bronco Benny rode bucking horses during the day for the entertainment of
the tenderfeet passing through and helped me at night, relating in a
soft western drawl the events of the day as he worked: "Did you see that
little red-headed gal--wanted one o' my spurs as a souvenir--haw haw!"

"Bronco, wait a minute," I would interrupt; "you've ru