Jack had learned that a plug of tobacco had "open sesame" qualities among certain species of human beings, and in his war bag were several pounds cut into goodly sized pocket pieces. One of them he handed to the "half-breed," who tore off a corner with his teeth, absentmindedly putting the rest in his pocket. The "tip" had the desired effect, for "Ladder Legs" recounted in the drawl of the Cherokee half-breeds, with its characteristic aspirating, all the crooks, turns, fords and distances to the Kiowa Reservation. In response to Jack's inquiry regarding the limited cultivation of the land so near the Kansas border, "Ladder Legs" vouchsafed this information: "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.