He and the city fought it out for months, and, for all I know, are at it still. At three o’clock, just three hours after the Territory was invaded, the Oklahoma Colony declared the polls open, and voting began for Mayor and City Clerk. About four hundred people voted. Other land companies at once held public meetings and protested against this election. Each land company was mapping out and surveying the city to suit its own interests, and every man and woman was more or less of a land company to himself or herself, and the lines and boundaries and streets were intersecting and crossing like the lines of a dress pattern. Night came on and put a temporary hush to this bedlam, and six thousand people went to sleep in the open air, the greater part of them without shelter. There was but one well in the city, and word was brought to Captain Stiles about noon of the next day that the water from this was being sold by a speculative gentleman at five cents per pint, and that those who had no money were suffering. Captain Stiles found the well guarded by a faro-dealer with a revolver. He had a tin basin between his knees filled with nickels. He argued that he owned the lot on which the water stood, and had as much private right to the well as to a shaft that led down to a silver or an iron mine. Captain Stiles threw him and his basin out at some distance on to the prairie, and detailed a corporal’s guard to see that every one should get as much water as he wanted. [Illustration: CAPTAIN D. F. STILES]