"A 'squaw man' has little ambition, and a half-breed none. The
environments of Indian life make a 'States' man dejected and he soon
outgrows the infant ambition which prompted him to marry a squaw that he
might 'take up' land in the territory. A white man cannot live on the
Indians' ground except he marries a squaw or the daughter of a man who
has had tribal rights conferred upon him; then he becomes an Indian and
can have a fifty-acre pasture fenced, all the land he will cultivate,
and the 'range' for his stock to feed upon. You see that bend in the
river? Waal, a white man from the States married the widow of a
well-to-do Cherokee half-breed. He is educated and has grown-up
daughters almost as white as you be, and a nice house well furnished,
and he rents out a part of his land on shares to some 'niggers,' or
half-breeds, and they cultivate all the land he can put under fence.
Some day when this land is allotted he will own an immense tract."

"How about the range you spoke of?" asked Jack.

"The cattlemen up in the States supply a bunch of cattle to some
ranchman having a good range or lots of open country, well watered,
around his house. Probably the man has a lot of corn and wants to feed
the cattle over winter and take profit in so much increase of beef,
pound for pound, that these cattle gain. Nearly all of the ranchmen have
hogs to run with the cattle, so there is another source from which a
return is anticipated. Pays, did you ask? Sure; all get rich who will
work. But over there on California Creek was a young fellow who had a
snap of it if ever a man did. This young fellow married the daughter of
an Indian missionary, a preacher from up in Kansas, who rewrote the real
Bible in the Cherokee dialect, for which the tribe made him a
full-blooded Indian, as far as any rights in the nation were concerned.
After they were married they came down here with their fine duds and
bought a ranch over on the creek of a full-blood Cherokee. He lived
there about four years. He had friends up in one of the Missouri towns
in the livestock commission business and they had all kinds of cattle.
They started the young fellow with four thousand fine steers in the
spring, and told him to raise some corn for the next winter and feed the
first lot on the range, then they would send in another bunch for winter
care. Them there cattle drifted all the way to Texas, and do you suppose
the lazy dude would try to round 'em up? No, sirree.