Page:Sheep Limit (1928).pdf/149

 covered by glory and a long coat. Department doors were open to him; public records were as accessible to him as the almanac hanging back of the kitchen stove at home.

What this adventurer in the Dry Wood country wanted to be informed upon through the Departments and records was, why a block of public lands shown to be open to homestead entry on the Government land-office maps should be surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and guarded against lawful entry by bad-looking men with rifles under their legs.

Was there some agreement, secret arrangement, compact of favoritism, between the Department heads and this western senator under which he was permitted to scorn the law and the rights of the landless? That was what this man from Kansas wanted to know.

Did Senator Galloway hold this big piece of grazing and agricultural land under a lease that was not a matter of public record? If not, what was there in the way, but the fence and the armed men guarding it, to prevent a qualified person exercising his right of homestead entry thereon?

These were the questions which this indignant Kansas man was going down to mail service and telegraph wires to shoot into his home congressman's ear.

As has been said, Jasper was at the end of the railroad in the kingdom of sheep at that time. It was not very important in appearance. It was very much like a beggar who goes about in tattered garments weighted down by gold pieces and padded with bank notes. Big money was so common to the daily transactions of the town that sheep-herders and others who came there