THORNTON HAS A REPRIMAND
Donald had now been long enough at the ranch so that he had discovered a
number of ways in which he could be of use. Most of his efforts, to be
sure, were confined to aiding Sandy; but as Sandy had almost more work
than he could do he greatly appreciated the boy's help. Donald carried
meal to the feeding-troughs, fed the dogs, ran errands, and carried
messages from one pasture to another. He was not a little proud when one
day Sandy bestowed on him the title of first assistant. To think of
being the assistant of Sandy McCulloch! Donald's heart bounded! Of
course he got tired. The days were long and the work was real. It was,
however, good wholesome work in the open air--work that made his muscles
ache at first and then grow steadily stronger.
One evening after he had put in an unusually active day and was sitting
in the lamplight with his father Sandy came to the door of the room and
asked:
"Might I come in and speak to you and Donald, Mr. Clark?"
Mr. Clark laid down his book. He always enjoyed a talk with Sandy.
"Certainly," he answered. "Come up by the fire, Sandy. The chilly
evenings still hang on, don't they?"
"They do so. I'm thinking, Mr. Clark, that now Thornton is back again it
is time I started for the range. Some of the herders have gone already,
as you know; the rest will be off to-morrow. I ought to be getting under
way soon if I want to land my flock in high, cool pasturage before the
heat comes."
"Very true, Sandy. I have kept you behind because your aid in starting
off the wagons and the other herders was invaluable. But, as you say,
there is no need to detain you longer. How soon could you get away?"
"I could start to-morrow if I had my permit."
"How is that?"
"As you remember, sir, we must have permits to graze on the range. You
have paid enough money to the government to realize that."
"Yes, indeed. And I never grudge the money, either."
"What are permits, Sandy?" put in Donald eagerly.
"Well, laddie, long ago people who raised horses and sheep wandered over
all the mountainsides with their herds, and fed them wherever grass was
plenty. It was free land. Anybody could graze there. It was a fine thing
for a man with thousands of sheep not to have to pay a cent for their
food, wasn't it?"
"Of course."
"You would have thought there would have been enough for everybody to
feed their stock peaceably, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, indeed!"
"Well now, it didn't work out so at all. The sheepmen and the cattlemen
came to actual war. The cattlemen declared that their herds would not
graze where the sheep had been because of some queer odor the sheep left
behind them; they argued, moreover, that sheep gnawed the grass off so
close to the roots that they destroyed the crop and left barren land.
The sheepmen, on the other hand, complained because the cattle--loving
to stand in the water--waded into the water-holes and spoiled them. Each
faction tried to crowd the other off the range. Dreadful things
happened. Vaqueros, or cowboys, would dash on horseback right into the
midst of a flock and scatter the sheep in every direction. Often many of
the sheep fled into the hills and their owners never could find them
again. Or sometimes the cowboys would drive the sheep ahead of them over
high precipices. Cattlemen, being on horseback, had a great scorn for
sheep-herders, who were obliged to trail their flocks on foot. The feud
between the two varieties of stock-raisers became worse and worse."
Donald listened breathlessly.
"More men took up stock-raising as time went on, and in consequence more
herds were turned onto the range. Soon the results began to show. The
young trees of the forest lands were trampled down, or nibbled and
destroyed; water-holes, which the settlers had used as their water
supply, began to be polluted; homesteaders, who had built houses and
settled in the sheep-raising districts, were driven off the range and
had no place where they could be sure of feeding their flocks. The worst
evil, though, was that one band of sheep after another would feed in the
same spot. The first flock would nip off the top of the grass; the next
flock had to eat it closer in order to get food enough; and when the
last flocks came they burrowed into the earth with their sharp noses and
dug the grass up by the roots. Whole stretches of land that had once
been green and beautiful were left bare so that nothing would grow on
them for years and years. Cattle do not eat the turf so close as that,
and I do not wonder that the vaqueros complained, do you?"
"I should think they would have!" agreed Donald heartily.
"Then, too, the sheep have small, sharp hoofs, you know; these hoofs cut
through the soil so that if many sheep travel over a place they grind
the earth to powder. Well, that is just what happened. The sheep left
the hillsides nothing but patches of brown dust. Things went on from bad
to worse until our government stepped in."
Donald kept his eyes intently on Sandy's face.
"What could our government do?" he asked earnestly.
"Well, it could do a good many things, and it did. First, it took about
160,000,000 acres of land as National Forests. It was no longer free
pasture. It belonged to the United States."
"I should think the herders would have been pretty cross about that!"
"They were. You can see just how they felt. They made their living by
raising stock, and to be deprived of pasturage angered them. At first
the government intended to stop all herds from feeding in these National
Reserves. They thought it was time to protect the forests that we might
not have floods, landslides, and forest fires. They called it conserving
the forests. Afterward, though, they considered that the western people
made their living by raising cattle and sheep, and they worked out a
plan whereby every owner who wanted to graze on the range should pay a
certain sum to the United States Government for a permit, and should be
allotted a particular pasture for his herd. The only restriction was
that if an owner was granted a permit he must promise to obey the rules
of the range. It was a wise and just arrangement. Only a certain number
of sheep are now allowed to graze on a given area; there is therefore
plenty of grass and no need for the flocks to eat the herbage down close
and destroy it. The money for the permits, in the meantime, goes to the
government, and enriches the United States treasury. Much of this money
is spent in paying men to work on the range and better the conditions
there, so really it comes back to the people who pay it."
"I understand," Donald replied quickly, when Sandy paused for breath.
"It is very interesting isn't it, father? But I do not see how they can
prevent herders who have no permits from grazing on the range."
"They ought not to have to prevent them!" answered Sandy, hotly. "The
herders ought to be decent enough to obey the law. If you are granted a
favor you ought to be a gentleman in accepting it. Now I'm born of
generations of shepherds--poor country folk they were, too; but my
people ever had a sense of honor--they were gentlemen."
Sandy drew himself up and threw back his head as he spoke the words.
"I cannot imagine a McCulloch being anything but a gentleman, Sandy,"
said Mr. Clark, who had been listening carefully to Sandy's story of the
range.
Sandy was pleased.
"It's many would not think so, Mr. Clark," he replied, as he stretched
out his rough, brown hands.
"One can tell nothing from hands," laughed Mr. Clark. "The heart is the
thing that tells the tale. A clean, honest heart makes a gentleman, and
no one is a gentleman without it."
"But you are not telling me how they kept the herders without permits
off the range," put in Donald mischievously.
"I almost forgot. The question always ruffles me. You did a bad thing to
stir me up about it. I'll tell you. The United States had to put
soldiers on the range--think of it--soldiers to protect the government
from its own people! And when the government was working to help those
very people, too. They called these soldiers rangers. It was their duty
to patrol the dividing line of the National Reserves. Every herder who
passed in must show his permit and let the ranger see that he had with
him no more sheep than he ought to have. That was fair, wasn't it?"
"Perfectly!" nodded Donald.
"Alack! It is a sad thing that there are people in the world who do not
love their country well enough to obey her laws. If they are too stupid
to see the laws are for their good why can't they trust the government?
Here the government was going to give the herders better pastures and
keep their flocks from being molested in them. Wouldn't you think a man
with a grain of sense would see the wisdom of the plan!" Sandy's temper
began to rise once more. "But no! The herders just felt the rangers who
had been stationed to carry out the laws were enemies who had taken away
their freedom. So when the rangers did not see them they tried every way
to steal into the reserves without permits. Two men would start with
their flocks; one would take the attention of the ranger by showing his
permit and while the ranger was busy with him the other man would slide
into the reserve far down the line where he was not noticed."
"What a mean trick!" cried Donald. "And what if the ranger happened to
see him?"
"Oh, he would gallop after him and ride into his flock, scattering it
every which way as he tried to drive the sheep out of the reserve. Often
the herder would lose hundreds of them."
"Served him right!"
"That's what I think, too," grinned Sandy. "The like are not all dead
yet either--worse luck! And this brings me back to the matter of my
permit, Mr. Clark. We are two permits short, sir. The new herds that
came from Kansas City are not counted into our old rating. Did you think
of that? Having more sheep this year we must pay in more money. You
didn't happen to remember, did you, to get permits for those extra
flocks?"
"No, Sandy, I didn't; but of course Thornton has attended to it. See,
here he comes. We will ask him. Thornton," he called, as the big fellow
passed the door, "what are we going to do about permits for the new
herds? They are not included in the tax we now pay."
"Don't you worry about more permits, Mr. Clark. I can save you a penny
on that," declared Thornton with a knowing wink. "You pay the government
enough as it is. Leave it to me, sir. I'll see that the herds get into
the range all right, and that it costs you no more. When Sandy goes in
he can talk with the ranger. All the rangers know him and they never
will suspect him. In the meantime Owen can take the Kansas City herd and
slip in further down the line. There is no danger of our being caught.
Many a herder has done it and had no trouble."
"There will be no sliding sheep into the reserves without permits while
I own Crescent Ranch, Thornton," said Mr. Clark sternly. "We will pay
what we owe the government or we will keep fewer sheep."
"I was only trying to save you money, sir," Thornton hastened to
explain.
"You took a very poor method to do it," was Mr. Clark's cold reply. "The
money part of wool-growing is not your care. You are here to raise sheep
in conformity to the laws of your country."
"A mighty poor set of laws they are," grumbled Thornton sullenly.
"You may not like them, but they are for your good nevertheless, and
since you are an American it is up to you to obey them. I keep no man in
my employ who is not--before everything else--a good citizen."
Thornton flushed, but made no reply.
Then darting an angry glance at Sandy from beneath his shaggy brows, he
left the room.
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