“I should tell those neighbors, whoever they were, to keep their cattle at home; and if they didn’t do it, I should watch my field and shoot the first steer that came into it. That thing has been done in this country.”
“Yes, it has,” returned George, “and what was the consequence?”
“O, it created a neighborhood row, I believe,” answered Ned, indifferently.
“It certainly did; and you would never want to live through another if you had lived through that one. You will need a fence around your field, and it must be high and strong, too; and if anybody’s cattle break in, as they will, most likely, no matter how good your fence may be, you mustn’t take satisfaction by shooting them.”
“You’ll see whether I will or not. If I can raise a fuss as easily as that, I’ll do it. The people here seem to think that I’m a nobody, but they will find that they are very badly mistaken. I can draw a trigger as well as the next man.”
“I hope you won’t draw it on anybody’s cattle,” said George, earnestly. “If you do, you’ll set the whole settlement together by the ears. I’ve seen one ‘neighborhood row,’ as you call it, and I never want to see another. I can remember, for it was not so very long ago, when my father did not dare go to the door after dark for fear that there might be somebody lying in wait to shoot him. I can remember when I used to lie awake night after night with my head under the bed clothes, starting at every sound, and expecting every minute to hear the crackling of flames, and to rush out to find the house surrounded by armed men, who would shoot us down as fast as we came out. That very thing was threatened more than once. You don’t know anything about it, for you were not here at the time; but I do, and I—Whew!” exclaimed George, pushing his chair away from the table and drawing his hand across his forehead, at the same time shuddering all over as he recalled to mind some of the thrilling scenes through which he had passed during those days and nights of horror. “If you are going to bring those times back to us you had better make arrangements to leave here at once, for the country will be too hot to hold you.”
There had indeed been troublous days in Miller county a few months previous to the beginning of our story. In the first place the county was settled by men who devoted themselves exclusively to raising cattle and horses for market. Some of them purchased land, but the majority did not own an acre. They lived in the saddle, slept in the open air the year round and subsisted principally upon the game that fell to their rifles. They followed their herds wherever they went, and the raising of them never cost their owners a dollar, for the prairie afforded abundant pasturage and was free to any one who might choose to occupy it. In process of time other settlers came in, some turning their attention to stock raising, while the others purchased farms from the government, surrounded them with fences to keep their neighbors’ cattle from trespassing on them, and put in crops.
Unfortunately ill-feeling existed between these two classes of men, the farmers and the ranchemen, almost from the very first. The latter did not want the farmers there for the reason that every farm that was fenced in took away just so many acres of their pasture; and the farmers declared that the ranchemen were a nuisance and ought to be driven out of the country, because their cattle broke through the fences and destroyed the crops that had cost so much labor.
These feelings of hostility grew stronger as the farmers increased in numbers, and the ranchemen saw their limits growing smaller every year, and the rich pastures they had so long occupied being turned up by the plough. The fences that were hastily erected by the farmers were not strong enough to keep out the half-wild cattle which roamed the unoccupied territory, and when one of these immense herds gained access to a cultivated field they made sad work with it. Whenever this happened the farmers sued the owners of the cattle in the courts for damages; and as they were by this time largely in the majority and could control the juries, they always gained their cause.
This made the stockmen very angry, and they had recourse to a law of their own—that of force. They drove off cattle belonging to the farmers, sold them and divided the proceeds among themselves. The farmers took revenge by shooting the cattle that broke into their fields; the ranchemen retaliated by shooting the farmers; and this led to a reign of terror of which our readers may have some very faint conception if they chanced to live in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo or Baltimore during the riots that took place in July 1877.