426 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



voirs for stock- watering purposes, in order to retain their hold on the 

 grazing lands, as is not unlikely to occur, this will operate much in 

 the same way as cultivation of the land to increase the rainfall of the 

 region. 



The rules framed to govern the operation of the law stipulate that 

 for any forty acre tract on which entry is made under the law within 

 two years after filing his application the holder, if he is to retain 

 control of the land, must construct a reservoir of not less than 500,000 

 gallons capacity; fer eighty acres, not less than 1,000,000 gallons, and 

 for 160 acres, not less than 1,500,000 gallons. 



The action of the ranchmen in making large numbers of land 

 entries was taken, they admitted when making their entries, to prevent 

 the possibility of outsiders crowding them off their long used ranches 

 by taking advantage of the law. None of these ranchmen, so far as 

 known, has begun the building of reservoirs. The law gives them 

 two years from the date of filing applications in which to complete 

 the work. If in that time the reservoirs are not made according to 

 specifications, the applicant loses his control of the land. Title he 

 does not acquire under this act in any case. But land office officials, 

 ranchmen, and the farmers agree that if the s*tock- raisers build any 

 great number of reservoirs the result will be eventually toward mak- 

 ing the land they thus seek to hold for grazing purposes really that 

 much more available for farming. 



It is not believed in Nebraska that any future influx of home- 

 steaders will be marked by such conflicts between them and the ranch- 

 men as were common in that State thirty years ago, the last of which 

 did not occur until ten or twelve years later. There is hardly a 

 country on the boarderland between farming lands and grazing lands, 

 and few even in the strictly agricultural districts of Nebraska, that 

 has not its story of ranchmen killing homesteaders for driving off or 

 killing their cattle, or homesteaders killing ranchmen for trying to 

 drive them away from their farms. 



KILLING OF HOMESTEADERS. 



The latest ocourance of this kind, and one of the most famous, 

 was the killing of two homesteaders, Mitchell and Ketcham, in Ouster 

 County, eighteen miles southwest of Broken Bow, early in the '80s 

 The homesteaders had been accused of branding for their own the 

 cattle of ranchmen ''slow elk," as cattle were called on the ranges in 

 those days and of killing cattle and defying arrest for the same. 



A deputy sheriff, who for reasons had adopted the name "Bob'' 

 Stevens, but whose real name was Olive, went with Ira Olive, Prent 

 Olive, Marion Olive, and others to arrest the two belligerent home- 

 steaders. One of the two, in resisting arrest, shot and killed "Bob'' 

 Stevens. The two were arrested then and were to be tried for the 

 murder. 



