e
tradesmen little chance to make their fortunes, as many of them had
confidently expected to do.

Automobiles, many bought for the occasion, lined the streets of these
border towns, ready to take the seekers over the land--if they stayed
long enough. It surprised the easterners, this evidence of modernity in
a pioneer world. And here and there a new automobile parked beside a
prairie schooner.

Curiously enough, the price of the land distributed by the Openings was
higher than that of vast tracts of untouched land in the West which was
also available to the public, and yet attention was concentrated solely
on the Rosebud; the desire for land there was at fever heat, while other
land was regarded with apathy. Whether this was due to the fact that the
other land was little known, or to the madness that attends any gambling
operation and the intensive advertising which had called attention to
the Rosebud, I do not know.

But this land was not free. For these Indian lands the government
charged from $2.00 to $6.00 an acre, according to classification. Thus
160 acres of first-class land would cost the homesteader around a
thousand dollars--one-fifth down, the rest in annual payments under the
five-year proof plan. If he made commutation proof in fourteen months,
the minimum residence required, he must then make payment in full.

The hours wore on toward midnight and the crowd grew denser. "Move on,"
droned the chant. "Move on!" The editor had turned the page of his
notebook and spoke to one of the women landseekers. "Are you a
suffragette?" he asked politely. Pushing back an elbow that had grazed
her cheek, pulling her hat firmly over her head, clutching her handbag
firmly, she looked at him, wonderingly. "Are you--" he began again, but
someone shouted "Move on," and the woman disappeared in the throng.

At the stroke of midnight a cry went up from the registrars. At 12:01
under the dim flicker of coal-oil lanterns and torches hung on posts or
set on barrels and boxes, that most famous of lotteries began.

The uproar and confusion of the hours before midnight were like a desert
calm compared with the clamor which broke out. Registrars lined both
sides of the street. "Right this way, folks! Here you are, here you are!
Register right here!" And there, on rough tables, on dry-goods boxes,
anything upon which a piece of paper could be filled out and a notary
seal stamped thereon, the crowd put in their applications as ent