“Well, I can’t do anything,” he said, at last. “All I can do is to let the people at Washington know what they say. But to send a commission all the way to Washington will take a great deal of money, and the cost of it will have to come out of their allowance. Tell them that. Tell them I’ll write on about it. That’s all I can do.” That night the chiefs came solemnly across parade, and said “How!” grimly to the orderly in front of the colonel’s headquarters. “You see,” said the officers, “they have come to complain, but the colonel cannot help them. If Martin wants a war, he is going just the best way in the world to get it, and then we shall have to go out and shoot them, poor devils!” I was very sorry to leave Fort Reno, not only on account of the officers there, but because the ride to Anadarko must be made in stages owned by a Mr. Williamson. This is not intended as an advertisement for Mr. Williamson’s stages. He does not need it, for he is, so his drivers tell me, very rich indeed, and so economical that he makes them buy their own whips. Every one who has travelled through the Indian Territory over Mr. Williamson’s routes wishes that sad things may happen to him; but no one, I believe, would be so wicked as to hope he may ever have to ride in one of his own stages. The stage-coach of the Indian Territory lacks the romance of those that Dick Turpin stopped, or of the Deadwood coach, or of those that Yuba Bill drives for Bret Harte with four horses, with gamblers on top and road-agents at the horses’ heads. They are only low four-wheeled wagons with canvas sides and top, and each revolution of the wheels seems to loosen every stick and nail, and throws you sometimes on top of the driver, and sometimes the driver on top of you. They hold together, though, and float bravely through creeks, and spin down the side of a cañon on one wheel, and toil up the other side on two, and at such an angle that you see the sun bisected by the wagon-tongue. At night the stage seems to plunge a little more than in the day, and you spend it in trying to sleep with your legs under the back seat and your head on the one in front, while the driver, who wants to sleep and cannot, shouts profanely to his mules and very near to your ear on the other side of the canvas. [Illustration: ONE OF WILLIAMSON’S STAGES]