Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/280

Dividing the Spoils a relief from cold grub and warm water! Business is rushing, and long arms are reaching over the crowd in front. Then some one announces, "Lady coming!"

A lady! Instantly, respectfully, the crowd makes a clear way to the counter, and here comes the lady—Heaven save the name!

A bedraggled, unwashed, sand-biting human creature like the rest of us, but a female withal; she may be the forlorn wife of some boomer, or she may be the remnant of a trim maiden schoolma'am from "back East." There is no telling which; twenty-four hours next to nature have obliterated all distinguishing marks. She shuffles up to the booth, gets her creamless coffee and butterless bun, and shuffles off again.

But there is chivalry for you, put to the severest test and not found wanting. Plenty of men in that crowd who will fight, and shoot if necessary, for a prize in Uncle Sam's great lottery, but a respectable woman is safer there than on many a city street.

But human nature, and good nature, cannot long stand under these strenuous conditions, and now the exodus is on in earnest. Even the winners are ill-prepared to live in a treeless, waterless country from which nothing can be gathered for a year. Back to civilization the boomers wearily march, on horseback, on foot, in wagons,—and the prairie schooners again, 259