Atlas linked his fingers together on the desk and leaned forward. “In Independence, we look out for each other. ” He opened the top drawer of his desk and slid a hand in. He could select from two circulars sitting side by side. One circular advertised, for a fee, his service of procuring a guaranteed unclaimed homestead or town lot for a willing buyer. Atlas picked up the other circular, which simply outlined the procedures for willing homesteaders to make their own effort during the upcoming land run to secure a homestead. No fee.

“The good news is,” Atlas said, sliding the circular across the desk to Artemis. “You can still get a homestead free and clear. All you have to do is be ready to run like hell come September twenty-first. I did it myself, just more than two years ago now.”

Artemis’s eyes held Atlas’ for a moment, then drifted down to the circular.

Atlas always considered March 23, 1889, about two and a half years earlier, as the day that revealed the true path of his life. He was sitting on the front steps of his small rented cottage in Mexia in the dying light of the day, reading T. Thomas Fortune’s Black and White, when one of his law clients brought a newspaper to him to read out loud. As other students and parents gathered around, they learned that President Benjamin Harrison had proclaimed that the Unassigned Lands would be open to settlement. Thirty days later, on April twenty-second, Atlas was one of the thousands who lined up. He ran successfully for a town lot in what later that very day would become Destry, the Territorial capital of Oklahoma Territory. A year later, he sold the rights to that lot at a profit and moved to Independence.

Ophelia kept her eyes on Atlas. “That’s still two weeks away,” she said. “We thought we was coming to a home, Mr. Reed. We got nowhere to go, and precious little money to get there.”

“Precious little,” Artemis said.

“Once again,” Atlas said as he stood, “the people of Independence are here for you.” When he first moved to town last year, Atlas bought a town lot at the far west end of Main Street, but he kept his eye on the center of town. The McManns were one of the first families of Independence, and their restaurant often served as the gathering place for town meetings. Edward McMann was a co-founder of the town, after all, and he still spent many of his days promoting the town and its opportunities to Negroes throughout the south.

Atlas felt it was in his best interest, and, of course, his best opportunity to help grow the town if he cultivated as close and supportive a relationship with Edward as he could. So, when the Mullers, who owned the shoemaker’s shop directly across from McMann’s, announced they were selling the two-story building and moving on to New Mexico, Atlas pounced. The front part of the lower level of the building now served as his law office. What had been the shoemaker’s workshop at the back was now where Atlas and Edward printed their newspaper, the Independence Tribune. Atlas lived in the three small rooms on the second level.

“First,” Atlas said. I publish the city’s newspaper, and I hire on boys to sell it around the city and in Destry. So, if your older son is capable, I would be happy to hire him.”

“Samuel is very capable,” Artemis said.

“Of course.” Atlas walked to the window, which provided an excellent view of Main Street and the entrance to McMann’s Restaurant and Rooming House. The sign above his office — Atlas Reed, Attorney At Law, Specializing in Homestead Claims — kept a steady flow of patrons through his doors. But Atlas also used the office’s visibility, his law background, and his public friendship with Edward McMann and Hale Alcorn to get himself elected mayor just three months after he arrived.

“But, as mayor of Independence, I feel it is my duty to provide help however else I can. Our people know that we will rise together in freedom, but some forget that freedom also means the freedom to prey on our own, and the freedom to forget our struggles.”

“The struggles ain’t over, sir,” Ophelia said with a shake of her head. “These struggles ain’t over.”

“But we have more weapons now, Mrs. Timmins,” Atlas said. Through the front window, he watched Augustus “Gus” Whitlock and Sarah McMann walk up the boardwalk steps into the restaurant. Atlas kept his eyes on Sarah. Although they were sisters, Sarah and Abigail did not favor each other very much in looks. Abigail took after Edward, wiry and almost vibrating with energy. She believed as wholeheartedly in the promise of Independence as Atlas. Sarah favored her mother, softer, gentler. It was not Atlas's opinion alone that Sarah was the acknowledged beauty of Independence. Only her impending marriage to Gus kept many of Independence's bachelors from calling on her. Both of the women would make excellent wives to any man interested in the future of Independence.

Atlas said to the Timmins as Sarah disappeared into the restaurant, “And one of those weapons is the Independence Ladies Benevolent Society.”

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Atlas sat behind the large desk that was the focal point of his small, wood-walled office. The Timmins’ sat in the two chairs on the other side of the desk, their backs to the large window that looked out onto Main Street.

“I told you that man was no good,” Ophelia Timmins said with a nod of her head at her husband and a confirming slap of her large palm on her large thigh swathed in yellow homespun. A gaily-colored handkerchief covered Ophelia’s braided hair, and a dusty, brown, coarsely-woven wrapper swathed her stout body. A swaddled infant nestled in the crook of her arm.

Artemis’s broad-brimmed hat sat on his jean-covered lap. No fat on him, and close, deep-set eyes gazed out of a long, thin face.

Sweat pooled in the clay dust that coated skin the color of Mississippi soil. Beyond the window, their two young children, neither appearing older than ten, stood on the boardwalk looking up and down Main Street.

At least they were young, Atlas thought, as he looked from Ophelia to Artemis. The Timmins’ were likely in their late twenties or early thirties, and both looked to be strong and healthy. Atlas figured they maybe had as good a chance as any who came to the Territory if they could make it through the winter, if they knew how to farm, if...

“Said he was a reverend, too.” Ophelia directed the last remark at Atlas. “You would think our own people would look out for us.”

“I am sorry that you crossed Gunther’s path,” Atlas said. “He is well-known throughout Texas and the Territory as an unscrupulous character.”

Ophelia cast a close and suspicious eye upon Atlas. “He had a picture on his wall just like that one.” She threw a scathing look at the wall behind Atlas.

Atlas turned and looked. There was a time when just a glance at the framed certificate would fill him with such pride and hope. Now, everything was so much more complicated. As he turned back to Ophelia, he explained. “That is a graduation diploma from Wilberforce University, the first Negro-owned and operated college in these here United States.”

The Timmins’ eyes latched on to his and stayed there.

“I earned a bachelor’s degree in the Classics in 1882. Then I went to be a schoolteacher in Mexia, Texas. I felt the need to help our people, Mrs. Timmins, not prey on them as Colin Gunther does. I met him in Mexia, and, unfortunately, I believe that is where he saw my diploma and learned how to make one of his own.”

“Huh,” Artemis said.

“What’s the classics?” Ophelia asked.

“Greek, Latin, Homer, Plato.”

He had seen the Timmins' blank stares many times.

“It doesn’t matter.” Atlas’s students in Mexia had been eager to learn anything, and he had been eager to lead them through a classical education. But, to his surprise, he found himself struggling to see the sense of carving out time to teach the history of ancient Rome and the Renaissance when the children were tired from the work they had done that morning and would go home to do that night, and what might truly advance their opportunities were basic lessons in math, English, reading, comprehension, deportment, and hygiene. Even he had no time or energy at the end of the day to read his beloved Homer and Milton because he spent most of his evenings counseling parents on how to read and sign the documents needed to clarify the legal status of their marriages, siblings, children, property, and not so occasionally, their freedom. Like the Timmins. They needed help, for there were many, black and white, willing to take advantage of their inexperience and ignorance.

“The study of Latin was particularly helpful when I began to pursue a career in law in Texas.”

“The fella at the livery —,” Artemis said.

“Grady Washington.” Atlas nodded his head.

“He said you were a lawyer, and you could help us.”

“Unfortunately, Colin Gunther is not only a fraud, but he is a nomadic one. I will write a letter to him on your behalf, but he will surely no longer be at this address.”

“I can’t do nothing to get the money back? Or put that paper toward another lot?” Artemis asked, only the faintest thread of hope tilting the last syllable up.

Atlas shook his head. “Nothing practical. I will tell the sheriff about this, but you are not the first person Gunther pretended to sell this land to. Someone has already filed a claim for this lot with the Land Office in Destry. Two years ago.”

Artemis shook his head and looked down at the hat in his hands. “That was all the money we had.”

Atlas watched as Ophelia gave Artemis a long look. “Not all,” she said after a moment.

“Pretty darn near,” Artemis said, his eyes on the infant.

Ophelia nudged him gently with the arm holding the baby. “He fooled me, too,” she said.

As down as they were, without even thinking, Ophelia lifted Artemis up. “I believe I can help you,” Atlas said.

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By the time Owen joined Will’s Wild West Show, the show employed three hundred cast and staff members, including twenty cowboys, six cowgirls, and fifty Indian men, women, and children, and one shootist. The show fed them all three times a day, and they lived in a small traveling city of wall tents and twenty-foot-long cooking ranges. Will never stopped complaining that the whole set-up cost him more than two-thousand dollars a day, but Owen could not deny that Will did not lack for customers. Taming the west in a traveling show was a popular business.

So, at this very moment, the screaming women and children and cheering men in the wooden benches that encircled the corral were excited to see Homesteader Husband Owen protect his Homesteader Wife Marianne by roping the wild buffalo that charged their covered wagon as they crossed the Missouri River toward Dakota Territory. The problem was the bull that pawed at the ground a hundred feet from the wagon was not the gentle, almost timid cow Owen had worked with the last ten times he had done this show. The patrons thought it was part of the show, but somehow, this bull had taken the cow’s place. It had been over two years since Owen roped a steer, and this buffalo was bigger than any steer Owen had ever faced.

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Still, Owen could not help but admire the massive bulk and strength of the creature as its hoof hit the packed dirt with a solid thud that rippled through its massive shoulder muscles to its hindquarters. Red dust floated in the air as the animal shook its woolly mane. Owen knew that if the bull hit the wagon full-on broadside, the wagon would not stand.

“Save me, my love,” Marianne yelled as she picked up the Winchester rifle next to his feet and shoved it into his hands. “Shoot him!”

Owen stared at Marianne. She only played an obedient wife in the show. She was as familiar with the ways of the west as he was, and she knew the rifle held ammunition only good enough for shooting turkeys. Ammunition for bringing down birds on the wing would be no match for a two-thousand-pound charging buffalo.

Which was what the buffalo did just then.

With a bellow that sounded like a gravelly lion’s roar, the buffalo lowered his head and pushed off his front legs, and charged the wagon with a speed Owen had to see to believe. So shocked was he that he forgot to fire the rifle. The buffalo hit the wagon, pushing it sideways. One of the buffalo’s horns stuck in the wagon wood, and it bellowed and shook its head as it tried to free itself. Women grabbed their children, and the men grabbed their guns. The wagon shook, and Marianne jumped off the other side and ran screaming toward the fence that encircled the corral. Owen reckoned she was anticipating the ‘death do us part’ part.

The buffalo ripped its horn from the wagon, busting a hole in the wood. It barely took a moment as it stepped backward, turned ever so slightly, and rammed inches from Owen and the horse. Owen’s horse's eyes were wide and wild, and the reins in his hand shook. With one hand on the reins, shushing the horse, he rotated his other wrist to decock the rifle. He could not outrun the buffalo. He would not hesitate to kill it to save his life. He would likely anger it even more with his birdshot. But he had nowhere to go.

Owen aimed the rifle at the buffalo.

And then a Negro in cowboy gear, roping gloves, and woolie chaps rode up around the back of the wagon, whipping a lasso in the air. As the buffalo freed itself from the wagon, stepped backward, and lowered its head for its next charge, the cowboy expertly dropped the lasso around the bull’s horns and pulled the buffalo’s head up. The bull shook its mighty mane and pulled back, but the cowboy wrapped the ends of the lasso around his arms as his horse danced backward, pulling that strong woolly head back with him. All Owen could do was stare.

The buffalo resisted, and a tug of war began between cowboy and animal. Owen kept his rifle trained on the buffalo, just in case, but the patrons had stilled their exodus and now watched the battle between man and beast with anticipation.

The buffalo had turned its full attention on the cowboy now. With its quick twitch front leg muscles, the buffalo hurled itself at the man. With a quick, graceful leap, man and horse parted ways. The horse turned away as the Negro jumped from the horse’s back, grabbed the buffalo’s horns midleap, and twisted the mighty head toward himself. As he loped alongside, holding the agitated bull, the crowd hollered in awe and excitement. The buffalo snorted and bucked, and the black cowboy held on, twisting the beast’s neck so it never could find its balance.

With his hold on the beast’s horns, the black cowboy pulled himself up to the buffalo’s mouth, almost as if he were to kiss the beast.

The cowboy bit the bull on the lips, and then held on as the startled buffalo snorted, and bucked, and shook its mighty frame.

A man wants to be good at something, Owen thought.

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Owen had done many things he had never imagined in his life. He stowed away on a steamboat when he was fourteen, forded a river with a stampeding herd of cattle, survived a rattlesnake bite, survived a scorpion bite, and survived a prairie fire that killed his horse. But he had never seen anything like what the Negro cowboy did.

The crowd hooted as the startled and confused buffalo lost its stride, and the cowboy pulled it down onto its side. More cowboys rode out to rope the buffalo’s legs. Only when the bull’s legs were tied together did the Negro loosen his teeth from the bull’s lips.

Owen patted his horse's mane and gentled it with his voice as the horse snorted and danced in its reins. "It's all right, girl," he said softly and firmly. "It's all right."

As the horse calmed, Owen jumped from the wagon and approached the cowboy as he dusted himself off. “That was fine riding,” Owen said as he held out his hand. “Owen Lander.”

The other man pulled off his roping gloves, and they shook hands.

“Gilbert Donney,” the black man said.

Owen nodded his head to where the cowboys led the buffalo away. “What happened to the old cow?”

“Will thought we needed to make it more exciting,” Ray said as he gathered his horse’s reins. “When I saw your face, I figured Will didn’t get around to telling you about the change of plans.”

“Where did you learn to ride like that?”

“That ain’t nothing. You should see the real fella. Bill Pickett. I'll never be as good as him.”

“A man wants to be good at something,” Owen said. There was a man that could do something another man could not do.

Gilbert’s eyes widened, and he nodded. “That’s right.”

“How about a whiskey?” Owen asked. “My own personal brand.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Gilbert said.

The two men walked around to the back of the wagon. Owen removed a jug and two glasses and poured them each a shot of whiskey.

"This is good whiskey," Gilbert said.

"Might be what I'm good at," Owen said and he realized he was grinning like a fool. Why should the world suddenly feel like a place in which he could make something of himself?

Gilbert nodded thoughtfully. "I'm going to the Territory. Putting together a Wild West Show of my own. For the homesteaders on the border. You heard about that?”

“About what?”

“The land run. For Indian Territory.”

“I’m not much for settling down,” Owen said, but he thought about his two covered wagons.

“What right-minded man is?” Gilbert said. “But they’s just sitting there, them homesteaders with everything they own. They can’t go nowhere, afraid someone’ll take their spot. And they sitting there with all the money they got in the world. You know what I call that?” Gilbert grinned. “I call that a paying audience.”

“Best kind,” Owen admitted.

“Chances are they get thirsty, too.”

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Owen only signed on to play a homesteader husband in Wild Will’s Wild West Show because developing his recipe for Lander’s Bourbon Whiskey proved more expensive than he anticipated. Since he stowed away on a steamboat out of Natchez, Mississippi, when he was fourteen, he had become a man used to carrying just what his horse could. Yet, somehow, in the last two months, he had acquired not just one but two, two! covered wagons. Now, he found women looking at him a certain sort of way that made his clothing feel hot and scratchy.

Marianne was one such woman, which surprised him, because if ever there was a woman who could look out for herself, it was Marianne Halloway. She was just about as good as he was at shooting game and skinning them, and she sure as heck was better at talking herself out of a situation. He had met her in a saloon in Kentucky, where she apparently needed to get out of town on account of owing the saloon-keep some money. Next thing Owen knew, he was headed out on a buckboard with Marianne for Wild Will's Wild West Show.

"When he sees the way you shoot, Wild Will will hire you on for sure," Marianne had said. "But since I'm helping you, you got to say you can't do without me. Wild Will thinks I'm trouble."

Owen was realizing that Wild Will might be on to something there. He didn't shoot dead any of the men that came after Marianne when she left Kentucky, but he did wing a few to show what he could do if he wanted. That seemed to be enough warning for them to forgive the debt. But the showmanship he demonstrated in delivering the message was something Owen had always suspected in himself, which explained how he came to be playing Homesteader Husband to Marianne’s Homesteader Wife in Wild Will’s Wild West Show.

He was the shootist. So here he was, as he was at six every evening on the weekdays and half-past-two on Saturdays and Sundays, standing on the buckboard as Marianne whipped the horses around the corral encircled by an excited audience of men, women, on children on stacked wooden benches.

In a sudden rumble of flapping wings, a covey of ten bobwhite quail rushed up from the sea of yellow wood-sorrel flowers blanketing the bank of the Cimarron River. Owen turned in the seat of the covered wagon, aimed the shotgun, and fired. As one fat bird twirled to the ground, the announcer on the wooden platform in front of the seated crowd boomed out. “Often the pioneers were skilled in hunting, and feasted on roasted quail, prairie chicken, jackrabbit, or even catfish.”

The children hidden in the wood sorrel released another covey, and again Owen aimed and brought one down.

Marianne squealed. “Oh, honey. You’re a sharpshooter, that’s for sure! Don’t he make a fine husband, ladies and gentlemen? Shot himself right into my heart!”

The women in the audience cheered, and the leer Marianne threw Owen’s way made his blood run cold. Lately, Marianne had been talking about how his wagons and whiskey were a good start for a real homesteader.

Made Owen nervous, for there were none that would call Owen Lander a man of the family kind. He had left family behind when he left a mean, drunkard father and the long-suffering woman who longed only for widowhood. He had looked back just once.

Those wagons meant freedom.

Owen was only doing the show to make up the money he needed to buy the supplies for his whiskey operation. Two years ago, he had been tired of cowpunching but had no idea what to do next. Owen had been many things in his twenty-nine years, and he was good with a gun. He had briefly considered a career in the law, but the law paid less than cowpunching and most of the law he had come across were crooks, anyway. As much as had been on the move for fifteen years, Owen did not like being chased. He had felt then the need to move on again, but with no idea where to go, he had taken to drinking.

That’s what he was doing in that saloon in Lexington when he met Marianne. The saloon’s whiskey was rotgut, but it bore the saloon owner’s name. Owen was impressed. Here was a man who put his name on something. What Owen tasted was something he could make himself, though better. The idea of having his name on something his own stirred something in his chest he had not known existed.

So, Owen needed the wagons for his new copper pot still and the three oak barrels that would make Lander’s Bourbon Whiskey the talk of the west. Well, the talk of Oklahoma Territory, maybe. Well, the talk of Destry, Oklahoma Territory, anyway.

Because that where he now found himself staring down two-thousand-odd pounds of angry bull buffalo.

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When he met Edward McCabe in Kansas two years earlier, Hale saw the chance to grow the market for the railroad by meeting the desire among Negroes hungry for land, security, and homes. He and Edward formed the Independence Town Company and platted the town on land unclaimed during the 1889 land run.

When Edward McMann and Hale Alcorn conceived of Independence, they started by surveying the land. Then Mr. Alcorn filed the land patent with the federal government and paid for the one-hundred-and-sixty-acre townsite. Edward formed the Independence Town Real Estate and Immigration Association, which he ran from an office on the eastern side of McMann’s Restaurant & Rooming House.

Now, Edward traveled the southeast, promoting Independence to blacks with the means to carry themselves to the Territory and make a new life. For a commission of the fee that went to Mr. Alcorn, Edward guaranteed homesteaders a town lot upon their arrival, the promise of even more land when the Kiowas land run opened, and the dream of a genuine chance at freedom and prosperity.

Hale used his own travels as a railroad immigration agent and his increasing political power in the Territorial Capital in Destry to promote the town to blacks around the country.

Now, as Hale stepped away from the coach’s door, a tall, dark-skinned man in a tailored waistcoat, frock coat, and pressed trousers stepped down from Grady’s buggy. The newcomer appeared mature, perhaps around forty, and delight lit his round brown eyes as he looked at his welcome party.

"Well, good morning, ladies," he said in a smooth, deep voice.

Elsa Tindall stepped forward. “Good morning, Mr. Lloyd. I am Mrs. Elsa Tindall, a widow."

"You have my condolences, Mrs. Tindall," Cedric said, with a small dip of his afroed head.

"I have persevered, Mr. Lloyd,” Elsa said, straightening her spine, which pushed her meager breasts against her bodice. “A necessary trait in this land. On behalf of the Independence Ladies Benevolent Society, please allow me to welcome you to Independence.”

“And what a welcome it is," Cedric said as he beamed at the women. "I could not have dreamed of a more promising arrival." He grinned at Hale. “Such a bevy of angelic faces suggests that Independence may well be the Negro paradise of which you have boasted.”

“Oh, I assure you it is, Mr. Lloyd,” Elsa said, stepping forward to Cedric even as Hale opened his mouth to respond. “Our young town is no more than two years old, but already we boast a barbershop, a watch shop, a bank, a common school, and two churches."

"And now I have come to build a cotton mill," Cedric said.

"Indeed," Elsa said as she placed his hand on her arm and turned Cedric toward the boardwalk stairs. “Tell me,” she said, as she led him into the McMann Restaurant and Rooming House. "Is there a Mrs. Lloyd who might enjoy our bakery and our dress shop?”

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Two years ago, red dirt and coyotes ruled where now Abigail hurried past the livery, a barber shop, the seamstress, and the shoemaker. And now Mr. Alcorn was bringing Mr. Cedric Lloyd to Independence.

Mr. Lloyd’s visit was a matter of great interest for the ladies of the Independence Ladies Benevolent Society. Several of the ladies were unmarried, after all, and there had been no mention of a Mrs. Lloyd. Mr. Alcorn said that when he observed Mr. Lloyd consulting, in a train station in Louisville, Kentucky, a fourteen-carat gold pocket watch and wearing a custom-fitted twelve-dollar suit and three-dollar leather Oxford shoes, he knew Mr. Lloyd was just the sort of man whose patronage the town of Independence, Oklahoma Territory, sought to encourage. The Independence Ladies Benevolent Society could not agree more.

Abigail was unmarried, too, but town sheriff Atlas Reed had shown an interest of late, which she was, late that was. She had been selling newspapers in the crowd of more than three hundred people, many of them Negroes, who gathered in camps and settlements of tents, dugouts, sod houses, and wagons along Independence’s border with Indian Territory. The government would open the Sac and Fox lands on the other side of the border to settlement on September 21, 1891, two weeks hence. Edward McMann built Independence on the border for the very purpose of encouraging Negroes to use it to prepare for the run. Any person over eighteen could claim a parcel of one hundred and sixty acres if he or she could plant the first stake upon it. Dreamers had come from far and wide for an opportunity of free land and freedom. The crowd of hungry homesteaders only grew as the time grew nearer.

Abigail rounded the boardwalk onto Main Street and saw Grady Washington’s horse-drawn buggy riding from the west side of town through the middle of the packed-dirt, crowded Main Street. Four times a week, Grady and his covered coach met the train in Destry, the county capital city sixteen miles to the west. Many Independence newcomers came on the train, and Grady’s coach provided the most comfortable journey for Negroes to get to Independence.

Abigail picked up her pace. The Ladies Benevolent already gathered outside McMann’s Restaurant & Rooming House, just as they had planned, but Elsa Tindall stood at the front.

Elsa’s husband had made the land run of 1889 and claimed a homestead one mile outside of Independence. Unfortunately, Elsa and Isiah had not farmed the claim for one full year before Isiah Tindall fell under his plow and died. Everyone knew “Elsa the Unmarried” was in search of a husband.

Before Abigail could finally reach the rooming house entrance, Elsa stepped down into the street to meet the coach. As Abigail screeched to a halt at the top of the steps, she was left to stare at Elsa’s sharp collar bones and shoulder blades pushing against the threadbare cotton at the back of her shirtwaist.

Grady jumped down from the coach’s driving bench and tied up the horses. “Morning, ladies,” he said with a knowing smile as he pulled open the coach door.

Ever polite, the Ladies Benevolent returned his greeting, but their eyes remained fastened on the coach door as Grady stepped aside.

First emerged Hale Alcorn, a white man of average height in a well-fitting wool suit. A knowing smile similar to Grady's lit blue eyes under thick brows and curved the bushy black mustache above his thin lips. Deep-set eyes focused on each of the ladies as Hale greeted them by name. “Mrs. Tindall, Mrs. Green, Mrs. Washington, Miss Labreau, Miss Hargreaves, Miss McMann. What a marvelous welcome for the newest resident of Independence.”

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