The Iron Furrow | Page 6

right at the start, selling me this place for twenty-five thousand--twenty
thousand down and a mortgage for the remaining five thousand--when
the place was just five thousand acres of sagebrush, with no more water
than runs in this creek. I was a tenderfoot all right! The land agent at
Kennard showed it to me in June when the Perro was booming, and I
believed him when he said it ran that way all the year around. Look at it
now! I didn't have sense enough to inquire and learn about it, being in a
hurry to get into the sheep business and thinking I should be rich in no
time. That agent sold it to me for irrigated land, and a bargain at five
dollars an acre. Menocal, who owned it and deeded it to me, pretends
he isn't responsible for what the man said. Five dollars an acre! It's
worth about fifty cents for winter range, and no more."
"If it could be irrigated, it would be a bargain sure enough at five
dollars," Lee stated. "And there's another water right for the place you
said when I was here before."
"Yes, there is--on paper. Water was appropriated out of the Pinas River,
but that's eight miles north of here, and it would cost a hundred
thousand dollars, if not more, to build a dam and a canal along the
mountain side. No, sir; that appropriation was just some more of
Menocal's tricky work! He jammed it through the land office thirty
years ago and, they say, never did any more to comply with the law
requiring delivery of the water on this ground than to have a man drive
around pouring a bucketful out of a barrel upon each quarter section."
"Some pretty shady transactions were put across in those early days,"
Bryant commented.

"Well, ain't matters just as bad now?" Stevenson asked, quickly. "He
still has the appropriation, or rather I'm supposed to have it with this
ranch. Because Menocal controls the Mexican vote hereabouts, which
is about all the vote there is, why, nobody has ever disturbed him about
that water right. And he's using that water, belonging to me, to irrigate
a lot of bottom farms along the river, for which no water can be
appropriated, the Pinas not carrying enough. I rode over one day and
looked at those farms--all grain and alfalfa. Well, he'll get this ranch
back, anyway. The mortgage he holds on it is due next week and I can't
pay it. Wouldn't even if I had the money. We're going to pull up stakes
and leave."
Bryant silently regarded the other's haggard face and stooped figure,
whose expression and resigned attitude revealed clearly Stevenson's
surrender. He was a man discouraged, disheartened, whipped.
"What's wrong with the sheep?" he questioned, at length.
"Not much that isn't wrong. When I started five years ago, I invested in
three thousand head. One time I had them increased to fifty-five
hundred--three bands. Thought I was doing first rate; and I was then.
But everything began to go against me. It seemed as if I always got the
worst herders; and not having any water to raise alfalfa I had to buy
winter feed, which was expensive; and a lot of them got the scab and
died; and last year I lost nearly all my lambs at lambing time, the band
being caught out in a storm and being in the wrong place. Just one
thing after another, to break my back. Had trouble about the range, too.
When I started them off this spring, they were down to seven hundred;
and I've been losing some right along from one cause or another. No
lambs, either, this spring, except dead ones. I thought I could hang on
till my luck changed, but losing a hundred head two weeks ago was the
last straw. I'm done now."
"What happened, Stevenson?"
"One of Menocal's herders mixed his flock with my six hundred, did it
deliberately, I'm convinced; there were three thousand head of his.
Billy was tending ours--and Billy is only fourteen, you know. I had

come down here for some supplies and when I returned, I found him
crying. The Mexican had separated the sheep and we were a hundred
short, gone with his, and he would pay no attention to Billy, swearing
he had only his own band. And he drove them away. I went to Menocal,
who was very polite, but he said I must be mistaken as his herders were
all honest men; and I've not got my sheep back, and I'm not likely to.
For that band is now thirty miles away somewhere. No use to go to
court--Menocal owns everything and everybody around here. So I'm
quitting."
"The sheep business isn't all roses,