Perhaps he brought two or three thousand dollars
with him. It usually was the industrial mistake of the
land-boomer to take from this intending settler practically all
of his capital at the start. Naturally, when the new farmers were
starved out and in one way or another had made other plans, the
country itself went to pieces. That part of it was wisest which
did not kill the goose of the golden egg. But be these things as
they may be and as they were, the whole readjustment in
agricultural values over the once measureless and valueless cow
country was a stupendous and staggering thing.
Now appeared yet another agency of change. The high dry lands of
many of the Rocky Mountain States had long been regarded
covetously by an industry even more cordially disliked by the
cattleman than the industry of farming. The sheepman began to
raise his head and to plan certain things for himself in turn.
Once the herder of sheep was a meek and lowly man, content to
slink away when ordered. The writer himself in the dry Southwest
once knew a flock of six thousand sheep to be rounded up and
killed by the cattlemen of a range into which they had intruded.
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