The old man looked dreamily toward the towering mountains and Scott knew that he was living over a story that would be good to hear.
“You had to race for the summer range, didn’t you?” he asked.
“Race for it? Lord, yes! The whole caboodle of us would live as peaceable as a bunch of kittens down on the plains all winter, but when spring was coming we all got sort of offish and nervous. Each man was scared to start too early for fear there would not be any feed in the mountains, and he was scared to wait too long for fear the other fellow would beat him to it. I remember one time when old Tim Murphy tied a sheep bell on his dog and led him by old José’s place in the night going towards the mountains. It was two weeks sooner than any one would have dared to move, but José was so scared that he started his whole band before daylight and drove ’em ten miles before he found out that Tim had fooled him.”
“I suppose the government regulation of the range has spoiled all that now?” Scott suggested.
“Spoiled it!” the old man exclaimed, “Yes, they’ve spoiled it, and it’s a mighty good thing, too. There were lots of lambs lost in that spring race for the grass, many an acre of range spoiled, and many a small rancher ruined. Even when you succeeded in beating the other fellow to the range you never knew how long it would be ’til some bigger fellow would come along and crowd you off. Now you know a year ahead just what you are going to get, how many head you can hold over, and that the grass will be there whenever you want to go.”
“But I thought the sheep men were opposed to the government regulation,” Scott protested.
“Humph,” grunted the old man contemptuously, “some of ’em are. They are the fellows who want to hog the whole thing and crowd out the little fellow. The government will not let them do that and they are sore. Still think they are bigger than Uncle Sam. I knew better right from the first and took my medicine like a man and now I like it.”
“It is certainly building up the range,” Scott said; “they are supporting more sheep now than under the old system and doing it better.”
“Certainly they are,” agreed the old gentleman. “You seem to know a good deal about this country, young man, for any one who has never seen a mountain before,” he added suspiciously.
Scott laughed. “I don’t know nearly as much about it as I should like to. I have been reading up on it because I am coming down here to work, but it seems as though the very things a fellow wants to know most are always left out of the books.”