smile, and "lowed he would turn up right and proper when the time came, which was interpreted to mean that the orbit of the Comet was sufficiently wellknown to predict any possible conjunction with such stars of first magnitude as might appear in the foothill firmament. Then came the scramble for first out. One by one the jingling chimes swung onto the road, and two by two the wagons rolled out onto the steepest hill in the Sierras. Sandy was out three teams ahead of Tommy, who had been too busy parrying sallies and thrusts to get away quickly.

Step by step the long teams wriggled and stamped and crept their way up the face of the cliff, and stone by stone the wheels bumped and rolled up and up and on up till the Widow Weeks' place looked like a miniature camp below. On up they went, a wagon length at a time, a moment's pause, another pull; big mules and little mules and mules bad and indifferent, silent and persistent, up past the Deadman's point and out of sight from below.

Sandy boasted no diploma, but he did possess an accurate working knowledge of mule psychology, and he had a mutual understanding with his intrepid little flea-bitten leader. As he swung up the grade on the high seat, his thoughts were not on the road nor the mules, but they came rudely to earth again with the sight of one of old Badluck Biddie's predicaments scattered over the road ahead.

"Head that team out of the track," he shouted in wrath, and as he edged past the stalled team, he expressed his personal opinion of the quality of the alleged intellect and equipment of the ill-natured and inefficient Badluck in language that will best grace this tale by its omission. At the next passing place, though, he pulled out till there was room to get by, and then went back and inspected Badluck's misfortune in detail. There was plenty of it, well distributed, and while one by one every team on the grade pulled by, Sandy straightened out the wretched team, made unsuccessful efforts to get started, brought back four of his own mules, pulled two wheels from under the old wagon, ignored the whining protest, chained together the broken pieces, and left Badluck on top of the ridge with a free lecture on the prob

lems of inefficiency.

But all this took time, and when Sandy climbed back onto his own wagon, he was four hours behind in the race for first in to-morrow. When Jerry picked his way through the darkness into the lower yard at the mill, he passed Tommy's wagon, loaded and set for first out in the morning. Tommy, sure of victory, waxed sympathetic.

"What'd you stop for down there, you old sardine? Nobody else would?" "That's why I stopped, I suppose," replied Sandy, wearily.

"Just like the darn fool," said Nelson. "Always fooling around helping out some no-good cuss."

"He done tank mooch of dat girl now, or he no stop that-a-way for ole Badluck," commented Pete.

Sandy ate his supper alone, and that night, after the Bearsden was dark and silent, he was pushing plank after plank onto his wagons, glad for once that his load was out of hearing in the upper yard. As the stars of the morning began to fade in the east, he put the last twist under the chains, and turned his attention to the mules.

But the news had reached the lower yard, and for once Tommy had no time to joke. As the gong rang for breakfast, he hooked up the last trace chain, and with a "Haw there, Kate!" was out on the road. "I see myself cutting out breakfast for any girl," said Nelson, in disgust.

Sandy heard the cheer from the grub house and knew its meaning. Weary and hungry as he was, this was no time for such trifles as breakfast, and he strung out his mules at once. While the coffee went around the second time, he pulled onto the road, second out, but ten minutes behind Tommy, with no chance to pass.

Down the grade the mules swung with steady step, while Sandy munched crackers from his box. After all, the world looked better in the fresh dawn than in the darkness of the night. If Nina would only be reasonable, all life might be like the glint on the firs and the odor of the tamaracks. Anyhow, she was at the other end of the road waiting for him-perhaps, and Sandy's jaw took a set that indicated that he did not consider the race lost just yet.

Two miles below the mill, the old abandoned road led off to the right across the ridge. Sandy dismounted and explored a short distance. He could hear the jangle of the bells of Tommy's mules a half mile below, and without further investigation, he swung the eight mules and two wagons down the Devil's Slide. Last year the new road was finished, and no wagon had now been down the old grade since the season's rains had torn its ruts to chasms and carved landslides out of its banks. When in good repair, its ascent was a case of doubling on one wagon, and no year had passed without its record of fatality. It saved five miles distance, but there was no complaint of the longer road.

With steady nerves, Sandy headed his team down this causeway of destruction, and whatever may serve as substitute for nerves in a mule, was steady in Jerry. After a quarter of a mile of passable road, the descent began, and with set brakes and sliding wheels the flat was reached in safety, for the rain had done little damage on the crest.

Sandy breathed easier, and was thinking of regular trips by the old road to get home quicker to Nina if-but he thought of something else, for the road ahead out of the flat had been the play path of the torrent, and for a thousand feet was cut into gullies and crevasses from one to three feet deep. It looked bad, but Nina was at the other end, and there was no retreat now.

With four mules detached and chained wheels, Jerry and his three plucky brothers dragged the load down that corrugated skidway of ruin. With a super-mulish intelligence Jerry dodged holes, climbed banks, and picked his way along precipices. Twice the trail wheels went over, but the gear was strong, and with new danger at every rod of the way, the notch was reached, and Sandy drew a long breath. Then Jerry stopped short, and Sandy's heart came into his mouth. At the next fill, the earth was washed out clear across the road. There was the perpendicular hill on one side and the yawning chasm on the other, and across the chasm a four foot log bridging the ten feet of space.

Sandy got down and examined the log while Jerry watched intently. A little

work with the shovel, a testing of the strength of the narrow footing next to the bank, and he climbed back on the seat, and Jerry began to pick his way out onto the log. Inch by inch the wheels followed, starting and stopping till the first wagon was over. The last wheel on the second wagon slipped, struck a rock, and came down on the bank, but three minutes later eight plucky mules lifted it onto the road and the gulf was passed.

The last thousand yards was steep and rough, but it was no worse than the road above, and with shoveling and side-pulling and sliding, mules and wagons were on the new grade, with no damages other than scratched paint and strained nerves. No road had ever looked so good before as this nice, smooth, dusty grade, and as he caught the faint echoes of Tommy's bells a mile above, Sandy felt like shouting, if ever a Scot feels that way. He had brought his load down the Devil's Slide in an hour and a quarter, and he would be first in to-night.

Now it happened that Tommy was so elated with his early start and so busy composing a fine speech that he did not notice the tracks leading in from the old road, and proceeded on his way in blissful ignorance of his loss of place by one of the most difficult feats of teamstership known on the mountains.

But other eyes did see the tracks. An hour later, Billy Dean, the mail carrier, passed Sandy, and inquired whether he were the blasted fool that came down the slide this morning, and went on with the comforting assurance that "Next time you'll go over, and then everybody'll say, I knew he'd break his fool neck some day.'"

At Kellog's, Sandy only stopped to water and get from the cook a substantial handout which he hungrily devoured in the dust that half the time hid the leaders. Tommy's mules were famous walkers, and the sooner it were over now the better. At this speed he would turn into the yard at the record breaking hour of 4:30 p. m. Then he would throw down his jerk line, wash up, and go to the house to hear what she would say to him. "One thing," he muttered to himself, "I ain't much to look at, and I'm no ladies' man, but if she takes me, she'll get a square deal."

Just above the Deadman's, he met Pelton, the road boss.

"Goin' to the chivaree to-night, I suppose?" he queried.

"What chivaree?" inquired Sandy, dully.

"At the Widow Weeks, of course. Have you not heard the news? The happy event came off last night."

"Happy event!" echoed Sandy. "Who?" But he knew too well the name he dreaded to hear.

"The Comet," chuckled Pelton, in glee. "Wouldn't that grieve you? He ain't been a-hangin' at that there likely widow's all this time for nothin'; long head, you

bet ?"

Sandy sat motionless on his seat. All the suspended fatigue of yesterday, the toil of the night and the tension of the Devil's Slide fell on him at once. The sun went out, and in the soul of the man was a thick darkness that could be cut, and through it there did cut something into the heart of the man. To have been beaten by Tommy would have been bad enough, but this dude that wore clean shirts and talked about the stars and could not drive a jerk-line-it was too much for flesh and blood. He had never taken the Comet seriously-Nina was too sensible a girl!

At the roadhouse he went in and brought out a black bottle with a green label, and put it in his wagon box.

Billy Deen's incredible story had spread about the flat, and it was about five o'clock that Ben came up to the house with his mouth full of news, which he heralded with the relish of those who bear ill-tidings.

"Sandy's in," he asserted, "and he's drinkin' agin. I saw the bottle in his jockey box."

Straight to the corral went Nina, flushed of face and determined of step. Sandy saw her and turned his head.

"What's this I hear ?" she exclaimed. suddenly coming upon him, pulling the harness from one of the mules.

"Nothin' bad, I hope," said Sandy, doggedly.

"Ben says there's a bottle in your box,

and there is, too; I can see it myself." "Well, the cork's never been out of it yet, but what's the use? I got nothing to live for now."

"Sandy McClellan, whatever is the matter with you?"

"Nothing," he stubbornly answered. "Nothing!" she challenged. "Give me that bottle, and don't you get another one, either. You need a guardian, you do."

Sandy braced himself. "Well, Nina, I did hope to have a guardian-a guardian angel, but now-excuse me, I forgot to congratulate you. I sure wish you” "Congratulate me!" she exclaimed. "What for? Are you crazy?"

"For getting the man you wanted, I suppose. I hope you

"Sandy, if you don't talk sense pretty soon, I will send over for the marshall." "Well," said Sandy, utterly perplexed, "Pelton said it was the Comet, and that the happy event came off last night."

Nina's contracted brow relaxed, and then she laughed, a merry, hearty laugh that rang out over the yard and up to the house.

"Sandy McClellan, you old goose, you; the Comet married Ma! Did you think I could support him?"

"Then you're not married?" ventured Sandy in cautious bewilderment.

"Not even engaged," she said, demurely, as she drew up a pile of sand with the toe of her shoe.

That night they sat on the old stone step together, close together. Her hand was in his, and she was saying: "Just to think that you worked all night and came down the Devil's Slide this morning to get here first after helping out old Badluck! I never supposed that any man would—”

"But suppose I had not got in first!" interposed Sandy.

"Oh! then I had the certificate to teach. I passed, you know. And And when Billy Deen came down the hill this morning and told what you did, I knew that you were the right one. I guess you need teaching as much as anybody I know."

"Here comes Ma's chivaree," said Sandy. "Let's git!"

to rise to the dignity of citizens of this great country with all the rights and privileges thereunto appertaining.

For many years the Legislature of our Government has invited the settler to "go West and grow up with the country." Liberal homestead and pre-emption laws have encouraged pioneers to occupy and improve great tracts of public domain. Grants to railroad companies have induced the building of highways to carry settlers from the States. And the privilege of Statehood has been freely extended these pioneers upon a fair showing of population and of the natural resources which ultimately would make a respectable State.

We have for so many years seen Uncle Sam coddling territories into States and nourishing tender young States until they acquired the strength that comes with years, that the spectacle furnished by Oklahoma of a sturdy, full-grown young State not only coming into the Union unbidden, but fairly forcing her way in by sheer strength, comes in the nature of a strange departure. Twenty-eight States of the Union were admitted in the ninety years ending 1890, averaging three States in every ten years. Thirty-two States admitted to the Union numbered at the time of admission from 6,857 in Nevada, to 376,683 population in West Virginia. The great State of Illinois came into the Union with only 34,620 souls, only a little more than the population of one averagesize Oklahoma county. As recently as 1890, the State of Wyoming was admitted with only 60,705 persons. North and South Dakota together had only 100,000 population.

In 1906 Oklahoma was pounding at the doors of the Union clamoring for the admission of a State of a million and a half people. Congress had turned a deaf ear to her claims theretofore, but her remarkable growth of recent years gave such force to her persistent claims for recognition that Congress was at last obliged to take notice. Reluctantly the law-makers said that if Oklahoma and Indian Territory would unite as one State and apply for admission as the State of Oklahoma, she might be admitted, subject, however, to certain conditions named in the enabling act. This apparent discrimination against

Oklahoma, the fact that this great unorganized civilization should have grown up here, surpassing many of the States in wealth, population, thriving cities, railroad mileage, energy and development, before Congress grudgingly gave it statehood to better conserve its wealth and strength, suggests something out of the ordinary in its organic nature.

Unlike most other States of the Union, the pioneers of Oklahoma, the early settlers who claimed the country from the aimless prodigality of nature, were not white people, but Indians, and anomalous as it may seem, these pioneers and settlers reduced this wilderness to civilization without bloodshed, and their appropriation of the land did not dispossess others of prior rights.

The five civilized tribes, the Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasawa, Choctaws and Seminoles, less than eighty years ago lived upon their own lands within the boundaries of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida. Even in those days they were regarded as civilized Indians. They had schools and churches, they trafficked in the crops, fruits and vegetables they raised. They built roads and kept inns. They had mills and workshops, and they manufactured cotton and wool. A young Cherokee named Sequoyah had invented an alphabet which has been used since 1826 in publishing Cherokee newspapers

and books.

The fact that these Indians had made such progress in civilization, promising to become fixtures in the States, worried not a little the white citizens of those States who are hoping and striving to ultimately possess the fine lands owned by these Indians.

It would be a long story that would tell how these States passed laws to circumscribe the Indians, the enactment and execution of which contravenes the treaties made between them and the Government of the United States. How the President refused to enforce the laws of Congress to protect the Indians from the oppression of their covetous neighbors; how he and Congress finally decided to banish the trouble from their minds and at the same time conciliate the States named by sending these five civilized tribes to a remote end of our possessions recently acquired