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Updated: June 20, 2025
The Drovers' Association, and especially the president of it, was being defied in that section, where probably a hundred homesteaders had settled with their families of long-backed sons and daughters. They were but a speck on the land yet, as Chadron had told the smoky stranger when he had engaged him to try his hand at throwing the "holy scare."
He was one of the first to advocate free grants of the public lands to homesteaders. His bill to grant one hundred and sixty acres to actual settlers who should cultivate them for four years, was the first of many similar projects in the early fifties. Southern statesmen thought this the best "bid" yet made for votes: it was further evidence of Northern demagogism.
Orde dropped his oars across his lap to fill and light a pipe. "That title was deliberately clouded by an enemy to prevent my raising money at the time of the Big Jam, when I was pinched," said he. "Frank Taylor straightened it out for me. You can see him. As a matter of fact, most of that land I bought outright from the original homesteaders, and the rest from a bank. I was very particular.
The Woodsdale boom attracted even homesteaders who had cast in their lot with Hugoton. Many of these forgot their oaths in the land office, pulled up and filed on new quarter sections nearer to Woodsdale. The latter town was jubilant.
Won't till summer's here, and the blame'-fool homesteaders see that Paloma Rancho's worth ten times what the government land's worth. The work on the grade is nearin' completion, and the steel's creepin' closer every day. Every mornin', when it's still, you c'n hear the whistle o' the track-layin' engine. The camps are finishin' and movin' on, one by one.
"Are they all rustlers up there in the settlement? are there no honest homesteaders among them who would combine with you against this wild man and his unlawful followers?" the colonel wanted to know. "Not a man amongst 'em that ain't cut the brand out of a hide," Chadron declared. "They've been nestin' up there under that man Macdonald for the last two years, and he's the brains of the pack.
Not only the eyes of the landseekers but those of industry and finance were turning west. I stared after the stagecoach until it was swallowed up in distance. My own phrases kept coming back to me. There was a job to be done, a job for a frontier newspaper, and soon the McClure Press would be a thing of the past as soon as the homesteaders had made proof. Slowly an idea was taking shape.
He gave her a cold good-morning, and sat in the attitude of a man pricking up his ears as he leaned a little to peer into the ranks of the force ahead. The homesteaders had come to a halt a hundred yards behind Macdonald; about the same distance behind Major King and his officers the cavalry had drawn up across the road. Major King sat in brief silence, as if waiting for Macdonald to begin.
Despite the times and the manners, Bud's girth increased insidiously. His hard-riding days were past. Progress marched steadily onward, leaving an after-guard of homesteaders intrenched behind miles of barbed-wire fence and mazes of irrigating-ditches.
One of the girl homesteaders came over with an incredible tale to tell. She had visited one of the settlers outside the reservation gate who had a real well. And his wife had rinsed the dishes when she washed them. Ma prophesied that she would suffer for that. Heine said one day, "My Pa don't wanta leave. We ain't got no moneys to take us, Pa says." There were many families in the same position.
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