In due time, he said, "There is
about your southeast corner. . ." It was mighty lonesome-looking
land.
Time went on. . . My next trip out was in summer. The land had a
fair stand of buffalo grass. . . I found a young fellow who
agreed to graze the land and pay the taxes. . . I never saw him
again. He moved away before my next trip. I was also told he
grazed the land, but I know he did not pay the taxes. They went
delinquent. I got that straightened out, and incidentally learned
a minor lesson about owning land so far from home.
You can imagine my reaction when, on the next trip out, I saw the
land had been fenced and cattle were grazing on it. I went north
perhaps a half-mile to a house near the east side of the road. A
woman was there alone. Her husband was away working. They had
come from Ohio. She was terribly discouraged. She cried as she
talked. Two crop failures--possibly three. They were near
desperate. . . I asked who owned the cattle. She said the Sheriff
of the County owned them, and had also built the fence. She then
told me how she wished she had that land for her two cows. They
were almost starving, and she had little or nothing for them to
eat.
And so I was up against the High Sheriff of Kearny County, and
1,000 miles from home.
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