Stewart Edward White

The Westerners Stewart Edward White

To restore the latter, he should first of all sweep the ground bare of the buildings which nowadorn it, leaving, perhaps, here and there an isolated old shanty of boards far advanced towarddissolution. He would be called upon to substitute, in place of the brick stores and dwellings ofto-day, a motley collection of lean-tos, dug-outs, tents, and shacks, scattered broadcast over thevirgin prairie without the slightest semblance of order. Where the Oriole furniture factory nowstands, he must be prepared to see-and hear-a great drove of horses and oxen feeding onbottom-land grass. And for the latter-day citizens, whose police record is so discouraging to theambitious chief, and so creditable to themselves, he must imagine a multitude moreheterogeneous, perhaps, than could be gathered anywhere else in the world-tenderfeet from theEast; mountaineers from Tennessee and Kentucky, bearing their historic long pea rifles; softvoiced Virginians; keen, alert woodsmen from the North; wiry, silent trappers and scouts fromthe West; and here and there a straight Indian, stalking solemnly toward some one of thenumerous "whiskey joints." The court-house site he would find crowded with canvas wagons, noisy with the shrill calling of women and children. Where Judge Oglethorpe has recentlyerected his stone mansion, Frank Byers would be running a well-patronized saloon. Were he tocomplete the picture by placing himself mentally at the exact period of our story's opening, hewould find the whole town, if such it might be called, seething, turbulent, eager, and-it must beconfessed-ready for trouble