But though the Indian wars in the Territory had been bloody and vindictive, they had not been protracted as in the old days. Around the country of the red man was drawn closer and more securely, day by day, the girdle of civilization. Within its constricting grasp the spirit of savagery, if not crushed, was at least subdued. Tribes naked but for their blankets, unadorned save by the tattoo, found themselves pressed close to other tribes which, already civilized, had relinquished the chase for agricultural pursuits. Primeval men, breathing this quickened atmosphere of modernity, either grew more sophisticated, or perished like wild flowers brought too near the heat. It is true the plains were still unoccupied, but they had been captured--for the railroad had come, and the buffalo had vanished. Brick Willock and the man he had come to see were very good types of the first settlers of the new country--one a highwayman, hiding from his kind, the other a trapper by occupation, trying to keep ahead of the pursuing waves of immigration. It was the first time Lahoma had seen Bill Atkins, and as she caught sight of him before his dugout, her eyes brightened with interest. He was a tall lank man of about sixty-five, with a huge gray mustache and bushy hair of iron-gray, but without a beard. The mustache gave him an effect of exceeding fierceness, and the deeply wrinkled forehead and square chin added their testimony to his ungracious disposition. But Lahoma was not afraid of coyotes, catamounts or mountain-lions, and she was not afraid of Bill Atkins. Her eyes brightened at the discovery that he held in his hand that which Willock had described to her as a book. "Does he read?", she asked Willock, breathlessly. "Does he read, Brick?" Willock surveyed the seated figure gravely. "He reads!" he responded. The man looked up, saw Willock and bent over his book--discovered Lahoma on the pony, and looked up again, unwillingly but definitely. "You never told me you had a little girl," he remarked gruffly. "You never asked me," said Willock. "Get down, Lahoma, and make yourself at home." The man shut his book. "What are you going to do?" "Going to visit you. Turn the pony loose, Lahoma; he won't go far." "Haven't you got all that north range to yourself?" Bill Atkins asked begrudgingly. "Yap. How're you making it, Atkins?" "Why, as long as I'm let alone, I'm making it all right. It's being let alone that I can't ever accomplish. When I was a boy I began my travels to keep out where I could breathe, and I've been crowded out of Missouri and Kansas and Colorado and Wyoming and California, and now I've come to the American Desert thinking I could die in peace, but oh, no, not ME! I no sooner get settled and made my turf dugout, than here comes a stranger--"