Sheep Limit/Chapter 12
Al Clemmons had worked his little flock a long way from sheep limit; Rawlins had some trouble locating him. The old man was crippling around with rheumatism, feeling rather blue, full of forebodings of hard luck for sheepmen in the Dry Wood country that year. It was starting badly, he said; no rain, no grass, sage making a slow growth. Nature was laying a conspiracy against the sheepmen, especially the little ones, trying to wipe them out for good.
The old flockmaster had ranged his sheep miles from the place where Rawlins had first encountered him, his battered wagon on top of a hill, as sheep wagons usually are stationed, overlooking a rugged and unpromising stretch of country that seemed to offer sufficient proof of the old man's contention that nature had turned its hand against the sheepmen in that place. He was about ready to quit, he declared, although not very heartily. If he could find somebody fool enough to buy him out he'd strike out for some hot springs he knew about over in the Wind River reservation and soak the misery out of his hinges. But there were no such fools as that ranging around any more. They seemed to be all used up.
To make conditions morg gloomy, the Government had notified sheepmen that only half the usual number of sheep were to be permitted in the forest reserves that summer. The reserves had been overgrazed, the rangers claimed, although the ancient flockmaster believed it was all part of a conspiracy to kill the sheepmen. True or false, the sheepmen would have to leave half their flocks on the plains that summer, where they would eat the range bare, leaving no provision for winter. It was a woeful outlook. It took the heart out of a man.
All this Clemmons poured into his visitor's ear as they sat on the sunny hillside above the grazing sheep, which were foraging industriously among the sage, the trembling complaint of the lambs rising in almost human appeal from hollows and braes.
"Well, where have you been since you got fired by that long-hungry speciment the Widder Duke's took in to raise?" Clemmons asked, after he had emptied himself of his own news and grievances, which every man considers of first importance, everywhere.
"So you've heard about that?" said Rawlins, surprised that news should travel in that thinly peopled country about the same as anywhere else.
"Elmer Tippie come by the other day. He was tellin' me."
"Oh, I see. I've been looking around a little on my own hook since Peck fired me."
"I thought maybe you'd left the country, or got a job with one of the big fellers further north."
"No, I didn't strike any of them. I've been back of sheep limit, spying out the country."
"Oh, you've been inside of Galloway's fence, heh?"
"Yes, I knocked around in there several days."
"Purty country in there along that crick."
"Fine. Grass shoe-top high over hundreds of acres, a crop of hay coming on there that would winter a lot of sheep, and not a head of cattle or a sheep in sight. Galloway seems to be hoggin' more than he can use."
"He winters up there. So you was in there lookin' around, heh? What're you figgerin' on? Tryin' to bust up his combination?"
"Nothing very startling, I guess. I just wanted to see what it was like. I'm on my way down to Jasper. Wondered if you wanted to sell a horse?"
"Might as well," said Clemmons; "might as well begin to clean up and make ready to leave." His end was in sight there, anyhow; he was a whipped man. In spite of this gloomy talk, Rawlins found the old codger shrewd enough at a bargain. He had a line of antique specimens, of about his own period, it appeared, which he tried to work off first. Seeing that he was not dealing with a man who never had met a horse face to face before, the sheepman produced a younger animal, but a scrawny one, wild and devilish, that jumped as if socked with a branding-iron when a hand was laid on it.
Unpromising as it was, Rawlins drove a bargain for the creature, a ratty, bald old saddle going with it. He considered himself pretty well skinned when he gave up thirty-five dollars for the outfit. Clemmons said the horse's name was Graball. He admonished Rawlins to be kind to him, with a watery look about the eyes as if it wrung his smoky old heart to let it go. Rawlins promised to be as kind as Graball deserved, although he knew that kindness was something the beast never had known in its life.
Graball was casting his winter coat, which was long, dingy-brown, weather-bleached. It was coming off in patches, showing a promising new covering that looked like open grass in a bushy meadow. The animal had a bumpy, bony head, but bright, alert, intelligent eyes. He never had been shod; his long hoofs were chipped as if he had begun to grow toes, like a camel. Not a very prideful mount, certainly, but one in which its owner had hope.
The journey down to Jasper fully met the best hopes which Rawlins had reposed in his unpromising steed. Graball justified his name by eating everything in sight at every opportunity, but he had wind and a good leg, and was enlivened by the spirit of youth and spring. A currycomb on the outside of him, a course of oats within, might turn Graball into a fair sort of horse in time, his new owner believed.
Rawlins had evaded Clemmons' sharp inquiry into the purpose of his visit to Jasper. He was beginning to understand the reticence of sheepmen. There was wisdom in keeping one's own business under cover in a country and a calling in which everybody was on the look-out for an advantage. Rawlins was on his way to the railroad and telegraph wires to put into practice some of the things he had learned as editor of a political paper.
There was a congressman from the wheat belt—the golden belt, they called it there—of Kansas who owed the one-time editor something on account for political favors. This man was in Washington, 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 to waste their few hundreds on its dissipations were looked upon with scorn.
The mark of sheep was on Jasper. The grease of wool was on the planks of the long platform and loading sheds at the railroad station; the grease of wool from sheepmen's clothes had polished the chairs in the hotel, and left its rancid scent on pillows and blankets.
In spite of the large money they received, especially at this season of the year for wool, sheepmen were stingy spenders. Luxury was unknown to them; the refinements, even the comforts, of life were largely despised. Due to this the hotel rate was not high. Rawlins installed himself in a wool-tainted room to wait the outcome of his investigation.
In the course of three weeks, after a telegram had been shot in to kick him along, the congressman's reply to the land-seeking wanderer's letter came. It was a long letter, full of political subtleties, insincerities, evasions; but it settled the doubt, if there had been any doubt in Rawlins' mind to be settled, concerning the legality of sheep limit at the edge of the Dry Wood country.
As far as he could find out from the Department, as far as the records showed, Senator Galloway had no lease covering the public lands in question, the congressman wrote. But why should he have a lease to something nobody ever had wanted, or ever would want? What was all this trouble and inquiry over, anyway? Rawlins knew how such things went. It might be called one of the pleasant perquisites of senatorial eminence, one of the outside emoluments of political service. Wasn't there land enough lying around unfenced in that State to give everybody a whack? What was the sense in kicking up a fuss over this particular piece?
Maybe a few covetous sheepmen wanted to get in on that land, which was no better and no worse, as far as the congressman could learn, than millions of acres open to anybody who came along. Nobody else ever had raised a complaint about it, and the general reputation of sheepmen in Washington did not place them above hogging on their own account when opportunity offered.
Let it be as it might, it was one of those things you could not do anything about. Senator Galloway had the confidence of the people in his State; they were not making any row about his fence. Just accept it as it was, and turn somewhere else for a homestead, if he wanted to take one up in that country, which was a desire in any sane man that passed the understanding of the Kansas congressman, indeed.
Rawlins was not inexperienced in such matters the congressman said; it was not the same as talking to one of the voters at home. Drop it; let it pass. He might as well try to break into the Treasury building at Washington as to pry Galloway's cinch loose on that land.
And so on. Plenty of advice, all manner of political excusing, justifying, side-stepping. But not a word of encouragement, not an offer of help. Galloway was a high man; he stood in with the Secretary of the Interior, he had a baling-wire tie with the President. Right or wrong—not admitting for a moment that there was any injustice or wrong in the fence—it was a situation that would pay an outsider to keep his hands off. Come back to God's country if he wanted land; come back to Kansas, where human life averaged five years longer than anywhere else, and the climate beat Italy and California so far you couldn't even see its dust.
All of which did not alter Rawlins' designs on Senator Galloway's fenced lands in the least. He had come to Dry Wood with his plans arranged, the very base of them being a homestead on some creek in that white place on the map. Exploration had revealed to him that Galloway had appropriated to his own use the best land in the Dry Wood section.
There were thousands of acres of agricultural land, watered by numerous streams, lying inside the fence not more than four miles from sheep limit. A half-section of that land belonged to him, under the semi-arid homestead provisions, his birthright as an American citizen, and he was going in there to take it.
Galloway might be a big man in the affairs of that State, but he was nothing in Rawlins' scheme. Galloway had not been there, designated and set down on the map, when that scheme was drawn. With the Government behind him to uphold and defend him in his rights, Rawlins the homesteader would be bigger than Galloway the usurper.
Galloway had put a personal affront upon him by building that fence; the injustice of it bore directly on him, the oppression was his load. His life had been shaping for a long time, in toil and hope and far-projected intention, towards that white spot on the map. The more he thought of it the hotter his resentment rose. That was his land; nobody had a right to fence him out of it.
Rawlins put the congressman's letter in his pocket, thinking it would be worth saving as an example of political insincerity. The registrar in the land-office looked at him queerly when Rawlins identified on the map the parcel of land he wanted, and paid the entry fee, taking in return the preliminary papers which put the United States Government back of him to warrant and defend him in his rights.
Within an hour he had Graball out of the livery barn, a little of something in the corner of a sack to sustain both of them on the way, and had turned his face towards the Dry Wood range, where the guarded fence stretched league upon league, barring the homeless from their inheritance and their rights.