generous methods of the old range now began to
narrow themselves. Even if the Little Fellow were able to throw a fence
around his own land, very often he did not have land enough to support
his herd with profit. A certain antipathy now began to arise between the
great cattle owners and the small ones, especially on the upper range,
where some rather bitter wars were fought--the cow kings accusing their
smaller rivals of rustling cows; the small man accusing the larger
operators of having for years done the same thing, and of having grown
rich at it.

The cattle associations, thrifty and shifty, sending their brand
inspectors as far east as the stockyards of Kansas City and Chicago,
naturally had the whip hand of the smaller men. They employed detectives
who regularly combed out the country in search of men who had loose
ideas of mine and thine. All the time the cow game was becoming stricter
and harder. Easterners brought on the East's idea of property, of low
interest, sure returns, and good security. In short, there was set on
once more--as there had been in every great movement across the entire
West--the old contest between property rights and human independence
in action. It was now once more the Frontier against the States, and the
States were foredoomed to win.

The barb-wire fence, which was at first used extensively by the great
operators, came at last to be the greatest friend of the Little Fellow
on the range. The Little Fellow, who under the provisions of the
homestead act began to push West arid, to depart farther and farther
from the protecting lines of the railways, could locate land and water
for himself and fence in both. "I've got the law back of me," was what
he said; and what he said was true. Around the old cow camps of the
trails, and around the young settlements which did not aspire to be
called cow camps, the homesteaders fenced in land--so much land that
there came to be no place near any of the shipping-points where a big
herd from the South could be held. Along the southern range artificial
barriers to the long drive began to be raised. It would be hard to say
whether fear of Texas competition or of Texas cattle fever was the more
powerful motive in the minds of ranchers in Colorado and Kansas. But the
cattle quarantine laws of 1885 nearly broke up the long drive of that
year. Men began to talk of fencing off the trails, and keeping the
northbound herds within the fences--a thing obviously i