g rooms continued to run twenty-four hours a day.

In spite of precautions, not a few of the trusting folk from farms and
small towns to whom this event was a carnival affair found themselves
shorn like sheep at shearing time before they knew what was happening.
One farm boy lost not only all his money but his fine team and wagon as
well. A carnival it was, of course, in some respects. Amusement stands,
in tents or shacks, lined the streets and never closed. Warnings came by
letter to Superintendent Witten, describing crooks who were on their way
to the Rosebud.

Motion pictures ran day and night, their ballyhoo added to the outcries
of the other barkers. And the registration never stopped. Clerks and
others employed as assistants by the government were hired in four-hour
shifts. Post offices stayed open all night.

The government's headquarters were at Dallas, with a retinue of
officials in charge. Thus the little town at the end of the North
Western Railroad was the Mecca of that lottery. There the hysterical mob
spirit appeared. And one day in the midst of the Opening, a prairie fire
broke out, sweeping at forty miles an hour over the land the people had
come to claim, sweeping straight toward Dallas. The whole town turned
out to fight it--it had to. The Indians pitched in to help. And the
tenderfeet, including reporters and photographers from the big city
newspapers, turned fire fighters, fighting to save the town.

In spite of their efforts the fire reached the very borders of the town,
destroying a few buildings. And at the sight of the flames the
government employees caught up the great cans which contained the
seekers' applications for the land and rushed them out of town toward
safety. That day the cans contained 80,000 applications.

That great, black, charred area extending for miles over the prairie put
a damper on the spirits of the locating agents. But these people had
come for land, and they were not to be daunted. All over the great
reservation groups could be seen investigating the soil, digging under
the fire-swept surface, driving on into the regions of tall grass and
scattered fields bordering the Rosebud. They were hoping to win a piece
of that good earth.

As the close of the registration drew near, the excitement was
intensified. Letters to Superintendent Witten poured in, asking him to
hold back claims for people who were unable to register. The
registration closed on October 17, 1908. No r