Ingalls was a quiet western Oklahoma town in the eastern part of Payne County. The town was first established with a livery stable, saloon, and hotel. And by the winter of 1890 a post office was built. The citizens, some of them settlers, had come to Oklahoma to stake a claim along the Cimarron River just on the edge of cowboy flats. And at any given moment of time a change from peacefulness could erupt to reckless violence, like a thunderstorm without warning as it rolls across the plains.