“I don’t know, Esther, the homesteaders can’t come on to our deeded land, but they are filing on all the Government land. In a short time there will be no more free range, and did you ever stop to consider that our land will soon be so valuable that we can’t afford to run sheep on it?”
In that last sentence I saw the handwriting on the wall. It was only a question of time and this phase, too, of our life would pass.
In the East life seems to be static, but in the West it is in a state of flux and conditions are constantly changing.
Perhaps I had inherited the static state of mind for I had taken it for granted that all the rest of our days were to be spent there on the ranch under the shadow of the mountain. Suddenly a realization of the facts swept over me. In a sense we had been pioneers, we had blazed a trail that others were to follow and like the Indians we, too, were destined to move on. However, before you are thirty to regard yourself as a hoary-headed pioneer requires a series of mental gymnastics and, while my brain was going through a few preparatory exercises, I did not take the question of selling out very seriously. After all those years of struggle just as it had been brought to perfection, after we had put into it the best of our life, youth, energy and work, a part of our very selves, it did not seem possible that we could part with the ranch. Owen felt much as I did, but he was the first to realize that we had come again to the parting of the ways and that a decision must be made.
Yet—in the end—it wasn’t the financial consideration nor a deep conviction that the future development of the country would be retarded if we remained, but an unexpected blizzard which turned the scale and set us adrift again.
The sun rose clear on the 19th of October, but during the morning it began to grow cloudy.
Owen and several of the men were at the railroad station where they were shipping lambs. During the afternoon the wind began to blow, it grew much colder and snow fell.
The next morning it was storming very hard and Steve, after arranging to have hay hauled to the various camps, went out on horseback to see that all the sheep were kept in the corrals. I was greatly relieved when Owen got home in the middle of the afternoon. Ten thousand lambs had been loaded and started on their way in spite of the storm, but the drive back to the ranch had been very hard, for hour by hour the storm increased in fury. The ground was covered and even the dull grey sky was hidden by dense clouds of powdery snow which did not seem to fall upon the earth but was blown in long horizontal lines across the prairies by the force of a mighty gale. It filled the gulches and piled in deep drifts. It was driven against the house with such force it sifted through the smallest crack. The windows on the North and West were covered with a solid coating of snow, the wind whistled and moaned and tore at the shutters as if trying to carry them with it on a wild race over the plains. It was impossible to see the corrals, even the garden fence was lost behind the driving, swirling snow. To open the door was to inhale a freezing gust of snow-laden air, millions of icy particles blinded the eyes and took away the breath.
We knew that the sheep were all in the corrals, but we feared that unless the herders watched them carefully they would pile up as the snow drifted over the high sides of the inclosure. The rest of the stock was protected and my heart was filled with thankfulness that Owen and the men had been able to reach the ranch. They went about the place like white wraiths doing the necessary things. Above the howling of the wind not a sound could be heard; a shout was carried miles away as soon as it left the lips. By five o’clock it was dark.