"The cattlemen up in the States supply a bunch of cattle to some ranchman having a good range or lots of open country, well watered, around his house. Probably the man has a lot of corn and wants to feed the cattle over winter and take profit in so much increase of beef, pound for pound, that these cattle gain. Nearly all of the ranchmen have hogs to run with the cattle, so there is another source from which a return is anticipated. Pays, did you ask? Sure; all get rich who will work. But over there on California Creek was a young fellow who had a snap of it if ever a man did. This young fellow married the daughter of an Indian missionary, a preacher from up in Kansas, who rewrote the real Bible in the Cherokee dialect, for which the tribe made him a full-blooded Indian, as far as any rights in the nation were concerned. After they were married they came down here with their fine duds and bought a ranch over on the creek of a full-blood Cherokee. He lived there about four years. He had friends up in one of the Missouri towns in the livestock commission business and they had all kinds of cattle. They started the young fellow with four thousand fine steers in the spring, and told him to raise some corn for the next winter and feed the first lot on the range, then they would send in another bunch for winter care. Them there cattle drifted all the way to Texas, and do you suppose the lazy dude would try to round 'em up? No, sirree. He was just too nice. His hands were so soft he couldn't get a calf to the brandin' post in a corral, let alone rope a steer and brand him in the open country. The folks came down on him and he lost the ranch. His wife died and he went to Honduras, or the Philippines, or somewhere. But this yere land is all goin' to be allotted some day and then it is good-by to the freedom which we get here now. Yes, civilization kicks up a heap of dust. Good-by; stop and see me if you come back this way. Adios." Chiquita seemed amazed to hear that an educated man from the civilized States would let such a golden opportunity pass him by. Mile after mile of the fairest cattle range was passed on their way into the Kiowa Reservation. The time had arrived when Chiquita must return to college. During her visit to the old relatives who had married into the Territory tribes she learned that a distant cousin of hers was to be shot for the murder of a fellow Indian. The tribal council had tried him and sentenced him to death six months before, but on the plea which he made for leave of absence to go to his old home among the mountain Utes in Colorado to see his mother and father before he died, they had respited him. The time for his return expired at noon the very day that Chiquita was to start back.