On reaching Chickasha,Wilfred Compton telegraphed to Kansas City asking his brother if Lahoma was still at Mr.Gledware's house in the country.In the course of a few hours the reply came that she had already started home to Greer County,Texas.After reading the message,Wilfred haunted the station,not willing to let even the most unpromising freight train escape observation.
Everything that came down the track on this last reach of the railroad into Southwest Oklahoma,was crowded with people,cattle,household furniture,stores of hardware,groceries,dry-goods--all that man requires for his physical well-being.The town itself was swarming with eager jostling throngs bound for many diverse points,and friends of a day shouted hearty good-bys,or exchanged good-natured badinage,as they separated to meet no more.
Men on horseback leading heavily laden pack-horses,covered wagons from which peeped women and children half-reclining upon bedding,their eyes filled with grave wonder at a world so unlike their homes in the East or North--pyramids of undressed lumber fastened somehow upon four wheels and surmounted in precarious fashion by sprawling men whose faces and garments suggested Broadway,New York and Leadville,Colorado--Wilfred gazed upon the unending panorama.In those corded tents he saw the pioneer family already in possession of the new land;in the stacks of pine boards he beheld houses already sending up the smoke of peace and prosperity from their chimneys;and in the men and women who streamed by,their faces alight with hope,their bodies ready for the grapple with drought,flood,cyclone,famine,he saw the guaranty of a young and dominant state.
Strangers greeted one another with easy comrade-ship.Sometimes it was just,Hello,neighbor!--and if a warning were shouted across the street to one endangered by the current of swelling life,it might be--Look out there,brother!The sense of kinship tingled in the air,opening men's hearts and supplying aid to weaker brethren.Those who gathered along the track awaiting the arrival of the trains had already the air of old-timers,eager to extend the hospitality of a well-loved land.