THE EARLY WESTERN RANGE 



29 



wake of dead and maimed sheep and throwing the whole 

 25,000 into one almost inextricable mass of bleating, ter- 

 rified animals. 



As soon as the horses were well launched into the 

 sheep the rascals who engineered the job swung around 

 the place to a safe distance, while the horses finally 

 drifted on into the darkness, leaving some dead ; but this 

 was a small loss in those days of cheap range horses. 

 It took the sheep-herders a full week to untangle the 

 mess and separate the various brands and marks into 

 their respective bands. Nor were the sheepmen back- 

 ward about obtaining revenge so far as lay in their 

 power. While some of these predatory losses were great, 

 still in the end they obtained the grass for their 

 sheep, and had the satisfaction of knowing that their 

 enemies suffered by the devastated ranges far more than 

 did they from the loss of a few sheep. 



Happily, however, the days of such deeds have pas- 

 sed. Today looking back over it one wonders what we 

 were all thinking of and how it was that more lives were 

 not lost than were. Only those who have passed through 

 these times can fully appreciate the reasons and causes 

 which led up to such apparently lawless acts. There 

 was no legal justification for any of them, and they were 

 certainly discreditable to all concerned. In spite of all 

 such attempts to curb its progress, the sheep industry 

 has gone on almost without a pause, until today it is 

 too firmly intrenched in the West to be disturbed or 

 forced back by any other class of domestic stock. 



Government Control of Grazing Lands. Then came 

 the demand for some sort of Government control of the 

 ranges. It came from the cattlemen at first, and for sev- 

 eral years the sheepmen have refused to admit its value 



