Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/274

 As he thinks of it his breath comes hard, and his eye has a dangerous light. He turns to his friends. Will they bear witness that at the crack of the gun he was the first to claim this tract? Will they stand by him?

His friends gaze down the line of thousands and turn apprehensively away; they have seen the same dangerous light in too many eyes that morning.

Each man has a little flag to thrust into the ground as soon as he thinks he has reached a square half-mile of land without a claimant. But suppose there is another flag, and another claimant? Well, each man has a little gun, and if he can convince his unwelcome neighbor by argument that he is the better shot, there need be no bloodshed.

It lacks fifteen minutes of twelve o'clock. The tension of the supreme moment brings silence to the trembling line, save only low mutterings over the final adjustment for places. Men who have never seen a hundred dollars at one time in their lives now see thousands in their grasp if only they can place themselves among the winners; and there are five men to every prize. Out one hundred yards in front, and twice as far apart, stand soldiers with loaded rifles. Some, already drunk with the anticipated excitement, care more for the game than for the stakes to be won or lost, but to many a man in that line who has staked his last dollar on the one chance to win more than he can ever earn, those