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"It's a dirty transaction to round up a man's team in a ten-mile paddock, and stick a bob a head on them, but that's a thing that I'm very familiar with; it's a dirty transaction to refuse water to perishing beasts, but I've been refused times out of number, and will be to the end of the chapter; it's a dirty transaction to persecute men for having no occupation but carting, yet that's what nine-tenths of the squatters do, and this Montgomery is one of the nine.
Anyway, he had taught Tess Skinner to keep her brat out of his way. His efforts to discipline her had resulted in an open breach with his brother-in-law and caused discord between himself and his wife. His disputes with Deforrest about the squatters had not turned out to his satisfaction.
Naturally he was eager to develop them, to encourage squatters to settle within their borders, and for that purpose to give them an assured position and a form of stable government. If he could have effected this without touching the Slavery Question I think that he would gladly have done so.
Here no doubt his descent from generations of herdsmen had stood him in good stead. He sold his knowledge to rich squatters in the settled districts who employed him to take up new country for them and to manage the hundreds of square miles and the thousands of stock from which they derived the best part of their wealth.
At the period of which we write the valley had just been taken possession of by several families of squatters, who, tired of the turmoil and the squabbles of the then frontier settlements, had pushed boldly into the far west to seek a new home for themselves, where they could have "elbow room," regardless alike of the dangers they might encounter in unknown lands and of the Redskins who dwelt there.
The anti-Nebraska fusion carried the legislature, defeated Shields and, after a brief contest between Trumball, the anti-Nebraska Democrat, and Lincoln, the anti-slavery Whig, elected the former Senator. Congress had confessed its incompetency to deal with the Kansas problem and referred it to the decision of rude squatters on the frontier.
I came up with her before long, and as I passed her she turned her head and I saw she was one of two girls that we had seen in the landlady's parlour one afternoon. She thought she was that simple that we were up-country squatters from some far-back place, or overseers. Something in the sheep or cattle line everybody could see that we were. There was no hiding that.
You are going to traverse the most difficult portion of Victoria, a desert, where everything is wanting, the squatters say; plains covered with scrub, where is no beaten track and no stations. You will have to walk hatchet or torch in hand, and, believe me, that's not quick work."
This was an excellent scheme for the poorer class of farmers; but it was not looked upon with favour by the squatters, whose runs were only rented from the State, and were, therefore, liable, under this new Act, to be invaded by selectors, who would pick out all the more fertile portions, break up the runs in an awkward manner, and cause many annoyances.
And with him had vanished Alec McTurpin, though a sly-eyed little man now and then brought messages from the absent leader. In the end Shillaber triumphed, for he persuaded Captain Keyes, commander at the Presidio, that the squatters were defying Federal law.
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