Crawford avalanche. (Grayling, Mich.) 1879-19??, 1894-11-08
A GENTLE BOOMER.
BY GRACE MAcGowAN COOKE.


bard, an old, original Oklahoms
boomer. She was sweet-spoken
girlish looking little woman, with O
round, rosy chin. and big, soft eyes.
A type Of the Southern woman whose
appealing dependent expression and
gentle accents concealed much in
domitable resolution and courage.
Hubbard hailed, originally, from
Vermont, and married her four years
before, in Louisiana. When he died,
leaving her very helpless with hei
three year old twins, named
Peach and Honey, n few hun
dred dollars, and a camping outfit,
she had come to her sisters at Ar
kansas City, and there, six months
after it's fathers death, another baby
was born, which was now nearly a
year old.
Ansel Hubbard had been fifteen
years the senior of his pretty young
wife. A keen trader but an inveter-
ate boomer and prospector, he had
made good living for her and the
children. but her four years of mar
ried life had been passed mostly in a
wagon. She had learned to make
home OF the spot where the wagon
stopped, to contrive wonderfully
dainty and appetizing meal from the
most unpromising materials and
amid the most unfavorable surround.
ings, and to bring to all the vicissi-
tudes Of that nomadic life always the
same unquenchable joyousness, in.
domitable hope, and buoyant trust.
And she had not lived this life and
made the best of it for four years
without being somewhat infected by
the prospector's spirit; without COM
ing to belive, in q vague way, that all
their troubles would be over, the sun
would not smite them by day, nor
the moon by night, when they we've
established on that hundred and sixty
acres in Oklahoma.
But now Hubbard had been more
than year in land where-though
it is fairer than prospector's dream
of Oklahoma-there are neither
booms, boomers, nor border rushes /;
and his widow, scarcely more than a
child herself, was left to grapple the
hard problem Of how the children
were to get that quarter section
which their father had picked out
ten years before, and upon which he
had annually promised her, since
their marriage, she should eat that
homecoming feast of the typical
Yankee-Thanksgiving dinner.
Now the hordes were gathering for
that historic rush when, on the
morning of the twenty-second of
April, 1889, ten thousand crossed the
line into the Territory at the sound
of the bugle. The little town of
Arkansas City, lying on the southern
edge Of Kansas, almost due north OF
Oklahoma, was full of prospectors,
boomers, gamblers, toughs, waiting
the day and the word to overrun the
new lands. The prairie for miles
around was dotted with white COW
cred wagons, moving in or standing
camped.
Myra watched them from her sis
ter's doorway, and her blood quick
ened to the old gypsying tune at the
sight and sound Of it all. Appar-
emily no emotion is so contagious as
this senseless, frantic enthusiasm OF
crowd for q new country-this
mad, unfounded belief in a region
and it's resources, simply because
they have not seen it. 1t carried
hundreds on that wild campaign,
from comfort, even luxury, through
incredible hardship and privation, to
poverty, disaster and even death.
Myra felt that it had come at last
tho great time Ansel had talked of,
when the government should tardily
yield their rights to the boomers and
open the land to settlement; and
was she to sit down and see her chill
dren's inheritance-for so she re-
garded it-taken by others?
Peach and Honey were playing on
the floor, striking out claims and
pre-empting quarter sections-hard-
ened prospectors that they were
with bit of red clay.
sis Mandy" their mother broke
out ut the end of a long mental argu-
ment, II got to go. Hyuh's me an
the chil'en. Yo' mans good man,
an does TO- yo' an yo' chil'en JUS
splendid; but it ain fair to ask him
to suppobt me an mine. / ain got
much sense, Sis, an that what l got
! ain got right good the sayin' is
but / see got to strak out" show
ing a flash OF little teeth like rice
grains in u sudden smile.
'He promus' Peach an he promus'
Honey that we all goin' to eat GU
Thanksgivin' dinneh on ou' owr
quarteh section in Oklahoma-didn't
he, sweetness?-an' I'm goin' to cay
out his wishes. Somethin' in my
bones won't let me stay behind when
/ see 'em all goin'. They're mos y
gen lemen, these prospectors (by gen.
tlemen Myra meant the male of the
human species), an they'll certainly
be kind to a woman, all alone, tryin'
to do for her little chil'en."
Upborne by the pathetic trust In
q mob Of humanity from which NO
strong man would dare expect favor,
the little woman had her team and
wagon gotten ready, and leaving
Peach and Honey with her sister, SET
forth with her baby in her arms fol
the promised land.
On the first day out the eighteen.
year-old boy she had brought along
to drive deserted her-bound, prob.
nhly. on border-rushing enterprises