and
treeless wastes spread forth uninviting landscape, marked at intervals
with the houses of the ambitious ranchmen, who, by preoccupation or
purchase, obtained title to the soil. Alkali dust smarted the nostrils,
and the glare of the noonday sun scorched the faces of travelers.
Plowmen, making ready for the season's planting, rested their teams as
the pleasure seekers stopped to inquire the road to California Creek.

To the south of the highway rolled a grass-covered prairie that seemed a
great poly-chromed rug of velvet. The hand of man had not chiseled the
virgin soil with plowshare, nor riveted its surface with post and rail.
A well defined road led zigzag over its undulating bosom until the
hideous regularity of section lines disappeared behind a friendly
stretch of upland. Cottonwood, elm and oak became frequent as they
entered the valley of the Verdigris and great stretches of forest-dotted
park enchanted the eye and gave rest to tiresome monotony of treeless
plain. Occasionally an unpretentious, unpainted shanty gave evidence of
man, and inquiry proved it to be the abiding place of one of the
precivilized occupants of unfettered expanse of the American continent,
the other a "squaw man," who had made matrimonial alliance with the
partially civilized companion.

"Jack," said Chiquita, after the inspection of one of these abodes of an
Indian, who had adopted some of the ways and customs of his white
brethren, "Cherokee once big Indian, now half man, half coyote; little
plow, little hunt, little eat--little good," and she curled her lip in
disdain as she contemplated the work of onwardness. Continuing the
conversation in the more polished language of a college student, "Did
not the Great Spirit, the one God of the Indians, put his people here in
this paradise--this continent of flower-carpeted, forest-grown hills and
vales, a people noble in thought, noble in dignified demeanor, with a
belief in a religion simple and effective? Among Indians are no infidels
or agnostics. All Indians believe in the Happy Hunting Ground and the
Great Spirit. Do you know, Jack, of any country where the native race,
indigenous to the land, compare with the noble red man as he was when
the first white settlers occupied America?"

"Possibly the Arabs or early Egyptians might compare more favorably than
any other nation that I know of," Jack replied.

"Yes, but Egypt and Arabia are of today, whereas the Indians are wards
of a great