“The surplus bronc peelers of Texas and New Mexico have been drifting up there for the last ten years,” Nate stated. “They’re a drug on the market right now, cowhands are. And they’re irrigating that Northwest country rapid and cutting up the range. Once they settle the Strip, all the boys down there will have to go into other lines. That’s sure.” The herd was worked and reworked almost daily as cows wearing brands that ranged in different parts of the Strip were culled out and turned over to some wagon crew whose ultimate destination lay in that direction. All along a two-hundred-mile front more than a score of wagons were operating in unison. Owners ranging south of the Strip sent parties up to trail-herd back any of their stock that had wandered to these parts. These men brought with them little bunches of Half Diamond H cows and others that had drifted from the Strip to southern ranges. Some came from beyond the Canadian and at least one little assortment had been combed from the distant Washita. Younger, in common with other large owners of his neighborhood, maintained drift fences and line camps to prevent the drifting of his stock from the home range. Even with these precautions there was a certain annual leakage, but the percentage of Half Diamond H cows gathered south of the Cimarron was small. Day after day as the round-up progressed the men threshed out the fate of the unowned lands. It constituted the sole topic of discussion whenever two riders met on the circle or paused to converse as they stood their turn on night guard. It filled that brief period of general indolence in which they indulged each evening before taking to their beds with the setting sun. Carver, perhaps to a greater extent than any of them, had anticipated certain transitions. He had correctly interpreted the presence of those white-topped wagons camped along the line and knew what they portended, yet even now he found it impossible to give credence to such drastic changes as were predicted by old Nate and others of his kind. He sought for an analogous example and found it in the settling process which Kansas had been undergoing for a period of forty years; yet throughout the whole western half of that State ranches of five to fifty thousand acres were the rule. In view of this circumstance he could not quite conceive of the vast expanse of the unowned lands being cut up into quarter sections in the space of a few short years. It would all take time. He advanced this idea to Younger on a day some three weeks out from the ranch. “All this talk about men being ordered out of the Strip,” he said. “How are they going about that? I’ve seen the squatter outfits rolling up to the line and making camp. But we’ve had similar demonstrations before now; that year the boomers fired the grass for one; and nothing came of it. They were ordered out. Even if they let ’em in it will take years to settle up the Strip.”