Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/317

 They've got a long wait ahead of 'em till fall, and if they ain't got something to live on—and no boomer I ever run into never had nothin'—they'll be in a mighty poor fix to face the winter on their claims. I reckon they'll scratch around somehow, railroad a little and cut hay, and manage to pull through. You can't kill a boomer."

"If starvation could have done it they'd have been pretty thin in Oklahoma the first year, from what I've been told. I look for a better class to come down for the opening of the Strip than rushed Oklahoma—farmers who have sold out in other places on the hunt for new land. They're always on the jump after new land out here in the west; they haven't learned how to make it last more than fifteen or twenty years."

"Land 'd last always if they'd use it out here for what it was intended," Waco said. "This prairie country wasn't made for farmin', the ground's too thin, but you could raise cattle on it a million years and leave it as good as it was when you started. I ain't knockin' farmin', but it sure gits my gizzards to see all this good country fenced off and plowed up, Tom."

"I know, old chap."

"But if I don't make a go of my business I'll bust over with the rush and grab me off a claim in the Strip. I'm out of the cattle business for good—worked at it twenty years and never owned a calf. All I had to show for that lifetime of ridin' the range from Texas to Montany when Sid Colburn fired me was three old crowbaits and a sixty-dollar saddle. Wel-l-l-l," a long, regretful sigh—"I had a good time while it lasted, anyhow."

"Yes, there were times and experiences in our cow-