82 WESTERN GRAZING GROUNDS AND FOREST RANGES 



point for establishing a headquarters camp or cutting 

 hay for winter feeding. As a general thing, however, 

 they scorned a permanent home, and as fast as the 

 settlers came into their neighborhood crowded farther 

 and farther out into the almost unknown land ahead of 

 them. 



I well remember in 1885 the disgust which fell upon 

 my own outfit, then located upon the Little Colorado 

 River in northern Arizona, over the advent of a neighbor. 

 Our nearest had been twenty-five miles distant, and the 

 newcomer had the temerity to turn loose 1,000 head of 

 west Texas heifers at a point fully twenty miles above us. 

 Our own cattle seldom wandered more than five miles 

 away from the rough camp where we had established 

 ourselves. Between us and the new neighbor was an 

 almost untouched stretch of grass land, and back of us 

 lay a virgin country fifty miles wide with not a settler 

 or a domestic animal on it. Nevertheless, we felt much 

 aggrieved at the nerve of the newcomer to crowd in 

 on us in that fashion, and for several months there was 

 a hostile feeling between the two outfits. As the new- 

 comer had been squeezed out of his Texas ranges by 

 nesters, our lack of cordiality made no impression what- 

 ever upon him. 



This was the beginning of the end of our delight- 

 ful isolation, and we lived to see stockmen's cabins at 

 every water hole and available location all over the 

 country. Where we had felt crowded by 2,000 cattle, 

 50,000 were hunting grass and water on the same range 

 a few years later. And our case was typical of what was 

 happening all over the range country. 



Early Settlers in the Great Plains Region. While 

 the stockmen were neglecting their opportunities the 



