ays in memory--but
try as they will they may not go back. With intelligent, persistent
effort they may retard further change considerably, but that is the most
that they can hope to do. Civilization and Time will continue the march
in spite of all that man may do.

That is the way it was with the Flying U. Old J. G. Whitmore fought
doggedly against the changing conditions--and he fought intelligently
and well. When he saw the range dwindling and the way to the watering
places barred against his cattle with long stretches of barbed wire, he
sent his herds deeper into the Badlands to seek what grazing was in the
hidden, little valleys and the deep, sequestered canyons. He cut more
hay for winter feeding, and he sowed his meadows to alfalfa that he
might increase the crops. He shipped old cows and dry cows with his fat
steers in the fall, and he bettered the blood of his herds and raised
bigger cattle. Therefore, if his cattle grew fewer in number, they
improved in quality and prices went higher, so that the result was much
the same.

It began to look, then, as though J. G. Whitmore was cunningly besting
the situation, and was going to hold out indefinitely against the
encroachments of civilization upon the old order of things on the range.
And it had begun to look as though he was going to best Time at his own
game, and refuse also to grow old; as though he would go on being the
same pudgy, grizzled, humorously querulous Old Man beloved of his men,
the Happy Family of the Flying U.

Sometimes, however, Time will fill a four-flush with the joker, and then
laugh while he rakes in the chips. J. G. Whitmore had been going his way
and refusing to grow old for a long time--and then an accident, which
is Time's joker, turned the game against him. He stood for just a second
too long on a crowded crossing in Chicago, hesitating between going
forward or back. And that second gave Time a chance to play an accident.
A big seven-passenger touring car mowed him down and left him in a heap
for the ambulance from the nearest hospital to gather on its stretcher.

The Old Man did not die; he had lived long on the open range and he was
pretty tough and hard to kill. He went back to his beloved Flying U,
with a crutch to help him shuffle from bed to easy chair and back again.

The Little Doctor, who was his youngest sister, nursed him tirelessly;
but it was long before there came a day when the Old Man gave his crutch
to the Kid to use