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From habit our eyes swept the surrounding country, and in a moment we observed other groups of mounted men, an equal distance apart and traveling in the same general direction like a round-up sweeping over a cattle-range. "They're out for somebody. I shouldn't be surprised if they have smelled out our friends," said MacRae.
We smile now at such a supposition; yet it was not unreasonable then. No man knew that tremendous country that lay beyond the mouth of the Missouri. The explorers crossed one portion of a vast land which was like to nothing they had ever seen the region later to become the great cattle-range of America.
My grandmother had sung it then to her beaux; officers they were; no wonder she chose it "Oh, she loved a bold dragoon" and now I heard it sung on an Idaho cattle-range to quiet two thousand restless steers. Our talk at first, after the cattle had quieted down, ran upon all manner of subjects. It is astonishing to note what strange things men will talk about at night and in a solitude.
He bought large quantities of smoking-tobacco and brown cigarette-papers, "swapped the news" with the storekeeper, and clanked his way across to the saloon. He did not appear to have seen Conniston. "The girl's father run a cattle-range out there?" "Uh-uh. The Half Moon an' three or four smaller ranges. He's old man Crawford p'r'aps you've heard on him?"
"Mr. Cavanagh's work interests me very much. It seems very important; and it must be new, for I never heard of a forest ranger when I was a child." "The forester is new at least, in America," he answered. "My dear young lady, you are returned just in the most momentous period in the history of the West. The old dominion the cattle-range is passing. The supremacy of the cowboy is ended.
Just as fads will for a time sway human life, so crazes may run through all animals of a given kind. This was the year when a beef-eating craze seemed to possess every able-bodied Grizzly of the Sierras. They had long been known as a root-eating, berry-picking, inoffensive race when let alone, but now they seemed to descend on the cattle-range in a body and make their diet wholly of flesh.
That was all, so far as I could see, and if dulness and an unpeopled wilderness make for the reformation of man, it struck me that I was in a fair way to become a saint if I stayed here long. I had heard the cattle-range called picturesque; I couldn't see the joke.
"How many head of cattle can you run on your ranch?" "About ten thousand one to every ten acres. If I could develop water for irrigation in the San Gregorio valley, I could raise alfalfa and lot-feed a couple of thousand more." "What is the ranch worth?" "About eight per acre is the average price of good cattle-range nowadays.
As she rode the five miles down to the office at the Lower End, her thoughts were constantly charged with an appreciation of the wonders which had been worked about her everywhere since that day, ten years ago, when she had first come with Luke Sanford to the original Blue Lake ranch. Then there had been only a wild cattle-range, ten thousand acres of brush, timber, and uncultivated open spaces.
A man at Boxelder Ranch had twenty Sheep. The rules of the county did not allow anyone to own more, as this was a Cattle-range. The Sheep were guarded by a large and fierce Collie. One day in winter two of the Coyotes tried to raid this flock by a bold dash, and all they got was a mauling from the Collie. A few days later the band returned at dusk. Just how Tito arranged it, man cannot tell.
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