MODERN SHEBP: BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 245 



horsemanship to sit on a horse and to throw a rope so. as to catch 

 a cow occasionally, either of which may be mastered sufficiently for 

 the purpose in a short time by most any man of average intelli- 

 gence. He can turn his cattle loose and let them drink at some- 

 one else's water hole and eat grass on someone else's range. A 

 sheepman, that is, a man with a single flock of from one to two 

 thousand head, in New Mexico must work, and at times he must 

 work hard, while a cowman seldom ever has to work if he does not 

 feel like it and when he does work he doesn't work very hard. 

 This fact keeps many men out of the sheep business who would 

 otherwise be strong devotees of the "golden hoof." 



RANGE WAR. 



As to range war between the cattlemen and sheepmen, we are 

 of the opinion that there is less of it in New Mexico than in any 

 other state or territory of the west. Occasionally some little local 

 feud breaks out between sheepmen and cattlemen, but, as a rule, 

 it does not last long and very seldom is there any bloodshed or 

 much property destroyed, as is often the case in some of the west- 

 ern states. Sometimes the cattleman is in the wrong in these 

 little squabbles and sometimes the sheepman, but we think the 

 cattleman is wrong in the majority of cases, as he often tries to 

 run a sheepman off the range by talking loud or bad or, to use a 

 western expression that fits the case, they "try to run a sandy." 

 The sheep owner has the most trouble with cattlemen who approach 

 his herders and threaten them, but who are too cowardly to hunt 

 up the sheep owner and present their grievances to him in person. 

 Such men often send the sheep owner word by his herder not to 

 graze his sheep around some certain spot, which may be several 

 miles from the cattleman's ranch, but - at the same time his cattle 

 are running loose all over the sheepman's ranch, drinking his wa- 

 ter and breaking down his corrals to get to his salt and often en- 

 tering his house if they happen to find the door open and no one 

 watching it. The sheepman is often sorely troubled to be able to 

 see the fairness of this kind of a game. 



Of course, when it comes to a legal right one man has as 

 good a right to any field of government land as another, and when 

 the cattleman turns his stock to roam at will and the sheepman 

 herds his it is a very difficult matter to divide the range between 

 the two in a manner fair to both. The plan by which the sheep- 

 man is allowed to graze his sheep on two-thirds of the range be- 

 tween him and his cattle neighbor seems to the writer to be the 

 fairest plan that has yet been promulgated. By this plan the 

 sheepman takes all of his flock two-thirds of the distance to the 

 cattleman's ranch, while the cattleman turns his cattle loose and 

 some of them go all the way to the sheepman's ranch ; but drawing 



