unscrupulous scoundrel who fattened upon other people's labors and reaped where he had not sown.
In addition to all of these menaces to the cattle industry there were the wolves and the bears, not to mention the coyotes who were not really a serious menace.
Many of the battles which the cattle men waged with their human foes were fought over the water holes, for water was most important in both the cattle and the sheep industries.
In the very early days of the industry good grazing land had been so plenty that it was not worth fighting for. In those glorious old days a cattle man had been a king indeed and he ruled with an iron hand, but gradually the homesteader had driven him farther and farther west. He had seen the best grazing land set apart by the government for homesteading and his own despotic power had gradually waned.
Up to the early '90's, however, he had been king, and no one had really questioned his authority for he always backed up his claims with force. But things had come to a head one spring morning in the early '90's when about two hundred cow-punchers, armed to the teeth, had met an equal number of sheriffs composed of homesteaders and their sympathizers. The cow-punchers had come out to eject some homesteader from land which they thought they owned. The two little armies had been drawn up face to face and a desperate encounter
