I will never forget the first night of occupancy of this army. Unlike the hosts of the Assyrians that descended on the Israelites, their tents were not silent. On the contrary, there was a fusilade of shots on all sides from Winchesters, and Colts, and Remingtons, disturbing the stillness of the night, mingled with halloos, and shoutings, and the rebel yell, and the imitated warwhoop of the savage. I expected on the morrow to see the prairie strewn with gory corpses, but not a single corpse appeared, and I was not slow in making up my mind that nine-tenths of all the shots were fired in a mere wanton spirit of bravado to intimidate a few such nervous tenderfeet as myself. I was witness of all this magical municipal development, and could scarcely realize the miracle that was unfolding before me. The wealth-creating force that was displayed in the building up of Guthrie can not be better illustrated than in the fact that lots which had no value prior to April 22 sold in the center of the business district as high as five hundred dollars within a week thereafter, and a number changed hands before the expiration of the first month for one thousand, five hundred dollars each. [Illustration: Texas cattle being driven to the cattle rendezvous] Transcriber’s Notes --Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication. --Silently corrected a few palpable typos, leaving period spellings unchanged. --In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_. --Added subheadings in the text to match entries in the Table of Contents. --Added captions to illustrations based on the attributions in front matter. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Westward Movement 1832-1889, by Richard B. Morris and James Woodress