incessant, voicing the soul of good comradeship, and but for the
difference between heavy bass and fluty soprano, a listener might
have supposed himself overhearing a conversation between two Brick
Willocks.

There was nothing about the second range of the Wichita Mountains
to distinguish it from the one farthest toward the northeast except
a precipice at its extremity, rising a sheer three or four hundred
feet above the level plain. Beyond this lofty termination, the
mountain curved inward, leaving a wide grassy cove open toward the
south; and within this half-circle was the settler's dugout.

The unprotected aspect of that little home was in itself an eloquent
commentary on the wonderful changes that had come about during the
last seventeen years. The oval tract of one million five hundred
thousand acres lying between Red River and its fork, named Greer
County, and claimed by Texas, was in miniature a reproduction of the
early history of America. Until 1860 it had not even borne a name,
and since then it had possessed no settled abodes. Here bands of
Indians of various tribes had come and gone at will, and here the
Indians of the Plains, after horrible deeds of depredation, massacre
and reprisal, had found shelter among its mountains. The country
lay at the southwest corner of Indian Territory for which the
Indians had exchanged their lands in other parts of the United
States on the guarantee that the government would "forever secure
to them and their heirs the country so exchanged with them."

At the close of the Civil War the unhappy Indians long continued in
a state of smoldering animosity, or warlike activity, tribe against
tribe, band against band; they had inherited the rancor and