Owen was arrested on our anniversary. I went his bond. There was a long, expensive law-suit which we lost, the Judge contending that if a man wished to protect his land he should fence it. It was explained that the Government had forbidden it, but the Judge said that did not affect the verdict in this case. Owen paid the damages awarded by the Court, we gathered together our sixteen cow-puncher witnesses who had been staying with us at one of the largest hotels in Denver, an event for the cow-punchers, and returned to the ranch.
Did Owen weep on my shoulder? He set his lips a little more firmly and his face had an added sternness as he looked across those miles of rolling prairie he owned but which now were utterly useless.
He broke the silence at last. His voice had a different tone.
“I am going to have the use of my own land. They shan’t keep me out of it any longer. I am going to sell off all the cattle and put in sheep. Then we’ll see! With herders we don’t need fences and cattle won’t graze where sheep have ranged.”
Thus with the first year of our marriage, the first chapter of our ranch experience ended and a totally different life began.
VIII—THE SHEEP BUSINESS
With the coming of the sheep everything was changed. It was like living in a different age, almost as though we had slipped back hundreds of years into Biblical times and had come into intimate association with Jacob and Joseph. With the advent of the wool or lamb buyers there was a sudden transition to the more commercial atmosphere of the twentieth century, but it was so fleeting our pastoral existence was scarcely interrupted.
A few of our old men had gone, Tex among them. He left with regret, but as he said—
“Lord knows I hate to go, Mr. Brook, but cattle’s all I know and an old cow man ain’t got no business around sheep; they just naturally despise each other.” And he went up into Montana where the cattle business still flourished.