CHAPTER XI
THE TRAGEDY OF THE RANGE
Justin was startled by the changes which had come to Paradise Valleyin the closing weeks of his long isolation in the mountains. SteveHarkness and Pearl Newcome were married, and Lucy Davison had beensent East to school. The latter filled him almost with a feeling ofdismay. Among the other changes to be noted was that William Sandershad written letters to a number of farmers, some of whom were now inthe valley and had taken government land or purchased mortgagedquarter-sections.
Justin discovered, in talks with them, that these men had beenneighbors of Sanders on the irrigated lands at Sumner. They had soldout there, as Sanders had done, and having heard from him of thepossibilities of Paradise Valley, they had moved to it, with theirfamilies and belongings. Others, it was reported, were coming. Some ofthem brought a few cows, as well as horses; and before the winterstorms came they erected cheap dug-outs for themselves, and preparedflimsy shelters and cut wild hay for their stock. It was theirintention to try irrigation.
Justin soothed his disappointment at not seeing Lucy Davison bywriting many letters to her, to which she replied sparingly. He wasaway from home much of the time, riding lonely lines with othercowboys. Whenever he came home and found no letter from Lucy he feltdiscouraged; when one was there, he returned to his work cheered andcomforted. As for Ben, Justin saw little of him. Davison kept themwell apart, by giving them separate assignments.
In the severest of the winter storms, when the grass of the range hadbeen covered with snow for many days, the cattle breached the fences,and mingling with cattle from other ranches they began to roam overthe mesas and valley, a terror to the settlers, and as destructive asthe locusts of Egypt. The cowboys could do nothing with them; couldnot hold them on the open lines, and could not repair the brokenfences in the bitter cold and the blinding snow. It was a repetitionin miniature of the days when the whole of the Great Plains was anopen range, and cattle, shelterless and without food, wandered in thewinter storms in pitiable distress, dying by thousands.
As it was useless and perilous to try to ride any line, Justin and theother cowboys came home. Justin's feet and hands were frosted, and hewent to Clayton's, where he remained, to have the benefit of Clayton'smedical skill as well as his companionship.
Clayton was so troubled by the sufferings of the cattle that he couldtalk of little else. From his frost-covered windows weary bands of thestarving animals could be seen ploughing through the drifts. In eachband the largest and strongest were usually in the lead, breaking away through the snow; the others followed, moving slowly and weakly,in single file, across the white wastes, their legs raw and bleedingfrom contact with the cutting snow-crust. Their hair was so filledwith fine snow beaten in and compacted that often they resembled snowbanks, and they were wild-eyed, and gaunt to emaciation.
Now and then a band would turn on its course and move back along thepath it had broken, eating the frozen grass which the trampling haduncovered. Nothing in the way of food came amiss. The dry pods andstalks of the milk-weed and the heads of thistles protruding throughthe snow were hungrily snatched at. Unfenced stacks of wild hayprepared by the farmers and settlers for their own stock, disappearedlike snow drifts in the spring sun, unless the owners were vigilantand courageous enough to beat back the desperate foragers. Many wildcombats took place between the cattle and the exasperated farmers, andmore than one man escaped narrowly the impaling horns of someinfuriated steer. It seemed cruel to drive the cattle from the foodthey so much needed, but the farmers were forced to it.
Even Clayton and Justin found it necessary to issue forth, armed withprodding pitchforks, and fight with the famishing cattle for the stackof hay which Clayton had in store for his horse. He had fenced it in,but the cattle breached the fence and he could not repair it perfectlywhile the storm lasted.
"The cattle business as it is carried on in this country is certainlyone of the most cruel forms of cruelty to animals," Clayton declared,as he came in exhausted by one of these rights for the preservation ofhis little haystack. "The cattlemen provide no feed or shelter; infact, with their immense herds that would be an impossible thing; andyou see the result. Their method works well enough when the wintersare mild, but more than half of them are not mild. Yet," he continuedsarcastically, "the cattlemen will tell you that it pays! If they donot lose over twenty per cent, in any one year the business can standit. Think of it! A deliberate, coldblooded calculation which admitsthat twenty out of every hundred head of cattle may be sacrificed inthis method of raising cattle on the open range! And the owners of thecattle will stand up and talk to you mildly about such heartlesscruelty, and dare to call themselves men! Even Fogg will do it. As forDavison, I suppose he was born and bred to the business and doesn'tknow any better. But it's a burning shame."
Justin was stirred as deeply. Clayton's viewpoint had become his own.It lashed his conscience to feel that he was in some slight measureresponsible for the condition he was witnessing. He was connected withthe Davison ranch, if only as an employee. As for holding the cattlebehind the fences and the open lines, that had not been possible; yet,if it could have been done, their condition would have been worse. Bybreaking away they were given more land to roam over, and that meantmore milk-weed pods and thistle heads, and more slopes where a bit offrosted grass was bared by the knife-like winds, to say nothing of thestacks of hay now and then encountered.
Yes, it was a burning shame. Justin felt it; and he grew sick at heartas day by day he watched that tragedy of the unsheltered range, wherehundreds of hapless cattle were yielding up their lives.
Justin Wingate, Ranchman Page 11