Page:BM Bower - Her Prairie Knight.djvu/123

 the State is getting pretty well settled up with small ranchers, and then the sheep men keep crowding in wherever they can get a show—and sheep will starve cattle to death; they leave a range as bare as a prairie-dog town. So there's only one good bit of range left around here, and that's the Pine Ridge country, as it's called. That's our main dependence for winter range; and now when this drought has struck us, and everything is drying up, we've had to turn all our cattle down there on account of water.

"Ever since I took charge of the Pool, Keith and I threw in together and used the same range, (worked our crews together, and fought the sheep-men together. There was a time when they tried to gobble the Pine Ridge range, but it didn't go. Keith and I made up our minds that we needed it worse than they did—and we got it. Our punchers had every sheep herder bluffed out till there wasn't a mutton-chewer could keep a bunch of sheep on that range over-night.

"Now, this lease law was made by stockmen, for stockmen. They can lease land from the government, fence it—and they've got a cinch on it as long as the lease lasts. A cow outfit can corral a 119