Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/390

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364
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

those deficiencies, There was, therefore, no occasion for the exercise of the judgment of the secretary of the interior in selecting from them, for they were all appropriated.” This language is consistent only with the assumption of an existing grant of quantity to be satisfied from the indemnity limits. It is totally inapplicable to a grant of a mere right to initiate a new right or interest in lands by a selection. Of such a right the supreme court has said: “Was there a vested right in the company during all this time to have not only these lands, but all the other odd sections within the twenty-mile limits on each side of the line of this road, awaits its pleasure? Had the settlers in that populous region no right to buy of the government because the company might choose to take them, or might, after all this delay, find out that they were necessary to make up deficiencies in other quarters? How long were such lands to be withheld from market, and withdrawn from taxation, and forbidden to cultivation? It is true that in some cases the statute requires the land department to withdraw the land within these second limits from market, and in others the officers do so voluntarily. This, however, is to give the company reasonable time to ascertain its deficiencies and make its selections, It by no means implies a vested right in said company, inconsistent with the right of the government to sell, or of any other company to select, which has the same right of selection within those imits. Each company, having the right of such selection in such case, and having no other right, is bound to exercise that right with reasonable diligence, and, when exercised in accordance with the statute it becomes entitled to the lends so selected.” St. Paul & S. C. R. Co. v. Winona & St. P. R. Co., 112 U. 8. 732, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 334. Again: “A right to select, then, within certain limits, in case of a deficiency within the ten-mile limit, was alone conferred; not a right to any specific land or lands capable of any identification by any principle of law or rules of measurement. Neither locality nor quantity is given, from which such lands should be ascertained. If, therefore, when such selection was to be made, the land from which the deficiency was to besupplied, had been appropriated by congress for other purposes, the right of selection became a barren right, for until