Some rushers had been into the new country before, however illegally, and headed directly for specific parcels. Others took the first unoccupied 160 acres they came upon. For still others, where they settled depended on where their horses' strength gave out.
Quickly the prairie became spotted with wrecked wagons and buggies, as the ravines and buffalo wallows took their toll. Horses, galloped too hard too long, fell and could not rise again. One rider went down with his horse, and became the first casualty of the race, dead of a broken neck. Another died when struck by a shot fired by another rusher to speed up his horses.
The fastest riders made the mile-and-a-half into the stage-relay station, Kingfisher, in about four minutes, dashing through the town on frantic, lathered horses. Many had already fallen trying to cross a deep ravine west of the little town. Behind them was a long line of 40 stages, crammed with people inside and on top.
The Sooners were already there before them, hiding in thickets and ravines, hurrying to claim the best parcels. Some even lathered their horses with soap, pretending they had entered legally and simply outdistanced their competition. Ugly confrontations festered between regular rushers and Sooners, between legitimate claimants and late-coming claim jumpers. One woman rusher, staking her claim near the railroad, was shot by a claim-jumping Santa Fe engineer, but managed both to survive the bullet and to hold onto her claim.
Two men on fast horses were astonished to come upon an old man already settled deep in the center of the new country. When they arrived, he had already plowed a field with his ox-team, and in his garden onions stood three or four inches high.
Why, of course there was an explanation, the old man said. He was no Sooner, not at all. It was just that his oxen were the fastest in the world, and the soil was so rich that his onions had grown that high in only 15 minutes.
Wisps of smoke began to rise into the dean blue sky as rusher camps popped up all across the prairie. On Big Turkey Creek, fertile, virgin prairie, lush with grass six to eight inches high that morning, was by evening turn into wagon-ruts a foot deep.
Those who had the least trouble were bands of men who rode into the new land together and vowed to support and protect each other's claims. One tired claimant found a pretty place and began to cut his initials into a tree to claim the land. He looked up to find a big, red-whiskered man watching him, armed with a rifle and two six-guns.
"Thinking of staying?" said the red-bearded man.
"Well, it's a pretty place," replied the newcomer, "but I'm just letting my horse rest a while."
"That would be all right," said the man with the Winchester. "But I wouldn't stay long if I were you. Sixteen of us in here have an oath to stick together. It's really quite an unhealthy place. There is lots of malaria, and some people even die of lead poisoning..." And the newcomer promptly decided there was much better land farther along.
Along Big Turkey, two men faced with waves of envious latecomers dug four-foot rifle-pits, prepared to defend their new titles with hot lead. In the end, they did not have to fight. All the same, holding the land was tense, exhausting work. After backing down still another claim-jumper, one tired settler wearily remarked: "Hits sure hell to get things regulated in a new country."
It was indeed, and nobody knew it better than the hard-riding, overworked U.S. Marshals. For inevitably there was killing. In a claim dispute west of Guthrie, a legitimate rusher died with three Sooner bullets in his body. The killer got away clean, well ahead of the pursuing marshals.
Oklahoma claim 1889 near Fort Reno, IT.
But when three claim-jumpers killed a Missouri pilgrim north of Guthrie, a local posse took the law into its own hands. Cornering one of the killers on the Cimarron River, they dealt with him without the sanction of the law. When he declined their generous summons to surrender, they "filled him with lead." It was simple Western justice, carried out without ceremony, loss of time or cost to the taxpayers.
Sometimes men competing for the same claim could solve their problem without fighting. There were incidents of real generosity, in which young, vigorous men gave up a claim to families, or older people in desperate need of a home. Sometimes one claimant would buy the other out on the spot.
Additional Sources:
personal.inet.fi
www.pbs.org
www.library.cornell.edu
www.belmont.k12.ca.us
www.geocities.com/Heartland
www.doi.gov
www.kancoll.org
rogercooke.com
gallery.unl.edu
www.oksenate.gov
www.texasbeyondhistory.net
www.rootsweb.com
www.antiquemapshop.com
