orrupt politics and
corrupt business affected the phases of the cattle industry as they had
affected our relations with the Indians. More than once a herd of some
thousand beeves driven up from Texas on contract, and arriving late in
autumn, was not accepted on its arrival at the army post--some pet of
Washington perhaps had his own herd to sell! All that could be done then
would be to seek out a "holding range." In this way, more and more, the
capacity of the northern Plains to nourish and improve cattle became
established.

Naturally, the price of cows began to rise; and naturally, also, the
demand for open range steadily increased. There now began the whole
complex story of leased lands and fenced lands. The frontier still was
offering opportunity for the bold man to reap where he had not sown.
Lands leased to the Indians of the civilized tribes began to cut large
figure in the cow trade--as well as some figure in politics--until at
length the thorny situation was handled by a firm hand at Washington.
The methods of the East were swiftly overrunning those of the West.
Politics and graft and pull, things hitherto unknown, soon wrote their
hurrying story also over all this newly won region from which the
rifle-smoke had scarcely yet cleared away.

But every herd which passed north for delivery of one sort or the other
advanced the education of the cowman, whether of the northern or the
southern ranges. Some of the southern men began to start feeding ranges
in the North, retaining their breeding ranges in the South. The demand
of the great upper range for cattle seemed for the time insatiable.

To the vision of the railroad builders a tremendous potential freightage
now appeared. The railroad builders began to calculate that one day they
would parallel the northbound cow trail with iron trails of their own
and compete with nature for the carrying of this beef. The whole swift
story of all that development, while the westbound rails were crossing
and crisscrossing the newly won frontier, scarce lasted twenty years.
Presently we began to hear in the East of the Chisholm Trail and of the
Western Trail which lay beyond it, and of many smaller and intermingling
branches. We heard of Ogallalla, in Nebraska, the "Gomorrah of the
Range," the first great upper marketplace for distribution of cattle to
the swiftly forming northern ranches. The names of new rivers came
upon our maps; and beyond the first railroads we began to he