CHAPTER II.

A NEIGHBORHOOD ROW.

What was true of the people who lived in San Saba, during the days when the incident we have just recorded happened, was equally true of the people who lived in Palos and the surrounding country, at the time of which we write. They were nearly all rich—there was hardly a man among them who could tell how many horses and cattle bore his brand,—but every man and boy of them kept busy at something, and strangers who came to that country, and sported their fine clothes and did nothing, were always objects of suspicion. All the settlers knew that Uncle John and Ned were the brother and nephew of one of the most popular men who had ever lived in the county, but that did not alter the facts of the case. If the newcomers expected to be kindly received and hospitably treated, they must come down from the high position they had assumed and act like other folks.

George mourned in secret over this disagreeable state of affairs, but he knew that it could not be remedied in any way, unless his relatives could be prevailed upon to conform to the customs of the people among whom they lived. When he returned from Palos, after his interview with Hank Short, he waited and watched for an opportunity to give them a little advice, and one morning, at the breakfast-table, the chance was presented.

“I have always heard that Texans were a friendly and hospitable set of people,” said Uncle John, as he pushed his chair away from the table; “but I have learned that they are just the reverse. I have been among them a good many months, and there hasn’t been a person here to see me—not one.”

“They’re a set of boors,” observed Ned. “You and I want nothing to do with them, father. We must live entirely within ourselves, while we stay here, and we’re able to do it.”

“But they won’t let you,” said George.

“They! Who?” demanded Ned.

“The settlers about here.”

“How are they going to help themselves, I’d like to know? Isn’t this a free country?”

“Yes, it’s a free country,” answered George, with a smile, “almost _too_ free, you would think, if you had seen what I have. If you are going to live among these people, you must be one of them.”

Ned ran his eye over his cousin’s sturdy figure taking in at a glance his copper-colored face, large, rough hands and coarse clothing, and then he looked down at himself.

“How must I do it?” he asked.

“You must pull off that finery, the first thing you do,” was George’s blunt reply. “Throw it away. It is of no use to you in this country.”

“I found that out long ago,” sneered Ned. “These people look upon a red shirt as a badge of respectability.”

“And so it is, in one sense of the word,” returned George. “When you are dressed for work, you are ready for it; and when people see you at work, they know that you have an honest way of making a living. People who do nothing are of no more use here in Texas, than they are in Ohio.”

“That’s just what I have been trying to drum into his head ever since we have been here,” said Uncle John, who had not been known to do a stroke of work of any kind during the long months he had lived in the rancho. “Go on and tell him what to do, George.”

“It must be something that will bring me money,” chimed in Ned. “I shan’t work for nothing.”

“There are plenty of things that will bring you money,” replied George. “You can rent a piece of ground, fence it in and go to farming; or you can be a cattle or pig-raiser.”

“Pig-raiser!” exclaimed Ned, in great disgust.

“There’s money in it, I tell you. These post-oak belts that run across the state, afford the finest pasturage in the world—hundreds of bushels of acorns to the acre,—and all you would have to do would be to build you a little hut in some place that suited you, and call up your pigs twice a day and feed them a little corn, to keep them from straying away and going wild. If you want to make money without work,” added George, who knew very well that that was just what his cousin _did_ want, “you can’t select a better business.”

“I’m not going to live among pigs!” declared Ned, emphatically. “That’s settled. If I had a herd of cattle like yours, I might take some interest in it.”

“You can get it, if you are willing to work for it, as I did.”

“That would take too long. If I go into any business, it must be something that will yield me immediate returns. I think the easiest thing I could do would be to put in fifty or a hundred acres of wheat. That is a crop that will require the least work.”

“Well, there is land enough at your disposal,” said George. “There are ten thousand acres in this ranche. But where are you going to get the money to fence your field?”

“I don’t see why I should fence it at all. Our own cattle (Ned and his father always spoke of the ranche, and everything belonging to it, as though it were their own property) will not trouble it, for I shall tell the herders to keep them at a distance.”

“But they couldn’t always do it. Besides, suppose some of the neighbors’ cattle should stray away from the herdsmen and trespass on your field: what would you do?”

“I should tell those neighbors, whoever they were, to keep their cattle at home; and if they didn’t do it, I should watch my field and shoot the first steer that came into it. That thing has been done in this country.”

“Yes, it has,” returned George, “and what was the consequence?”

“O, it created a neighborhood row, I believe,” answered Ned, indifferently.

“It certainly did; and you would never want to live through another if you had lived through that one. You will need a fence around your field, and it must be high and strong, too; and if anybody’s cattle break in, as they will, most likely, no matter how good your fence may be, you mustn’t take satisfaction by shooting them.”

“You’ll see whether I will or not. If I can raise a fuss as easily as that, I’ll do it. The people here seem to think that I’m a nobody, but they will find that they are very badly mistaken. I can draw a trigger as well as the next man.”

“I hope you won’t draw it on anybody’s cattle,” said George, earnestly. “If you do, you’ll set the whole settlement together by the ears. I’ve seen one ‘neighborhood row,’ as you call it, and I never want to see another. I can remember, for it was not so very long ago, when my father did not dare go to the door after dark for fear that there might be somebody lying in wait to shoot him. I can remember when I used to lie awake night after night with my head under the bed clothes, starting at every sound, and expecting every minute to hear the crackling of flames, and to rush out to find the house surrounded by armed men, who would shoot us down as fast as we came out. That very thing was threatened more than once. You don’t know anything about it, for you were not here at the time; but I do, and I—Whew!” exclaimed George, pushing his chair away from the table and drawing his hand across his forehead, at the same time shuddering all over as he recalled to mind some of the thrilling scenes through which he had passed during those days and nights of horror. “If you are going to bring those times back to us you had better make arrangements to leave here at once, for the country will be too hot to hold you.”

There had indeed been troublous days in Miller county a few months previous to the beginning of our story. In the first place the county was settled by men who devoted themselves exclusively to raising cattle and horses for market. Some of them purchased land, but the majority did not own an acre. They lived in the saddle, slept in the open air the year round and subsisted principally upon the game that fell to their rifles. They followed their herds wherever they went, and the raising of them never cost their owners a dollar, for the prairie afforded abundant pasturage and was free to any one who might choose to occupy it. In process of time other settlers came in, some turning their attention to stock raising, while the others purchased farms from the government, surrounded them with fences to keep their neighbors’ cattle from trespassing on them, and put in crops.

Unfortunately ill-feeling existed between these two classes of men, the farmers and the ranchemen, almost from the very first. The latter did not want the farmers there for the reason that every farm that was fenced in took away just so many acres of their pasture; and the farmers declared that the ranchemen were a nuisance and ought to be driven out of the country, because their cattle broke through the fences and destroyed the crops that had cost so much labor.

These feelings of hostility grew stronger as the farmers increased in numbers, and the ranchemen saw their limits growing smaller every year, and the rich pastures they had so long occupied being turned up by the plough. The fences that were hastily erected by the farmers were not strong enough to keep out the half-wild cattle which roamed the unoccupied territory, and when one of these immense herds gained access to a cultivated field they made sad work with it. Whenever this happened the farmers sued the owners of the cattle in the courts for damages; and as they were by this time largely in the majority and could control the juries, they always gained their cause.

This made the stockmen very angry, and they had recourse to a law of their own—that of force. They drove off cattle belonging to the farmers, sold them and divided the proceeds among themselves. The farmers took revenge by shooting the cattle that broke into their fields; the ranchemen retaliated by shooting the farmers; and this led to a reign of terror of which our readers may have some very faint conception if they chanced to live in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Buffalo or Baltimore during the riots that took place in July 1877.

Things very soon came to such a pass that no man went abroad, even in the day time, unless he was loaded with weapons, and even then he expected to be bushwhacked by some angry neighbor. Every house was converted into a little fortress, and people were very careful how they ventured out of doors after dark, or showed themselves in front of a window opening into a lighted room.

This state of affairs might have continued until the present day, or until the thinly-settled county was entirely depopulated, had it not been for the interference of some lawless men who lived just over the border. One dark night, a party of Mexicans, headed by renegade Americans, made a raid across the Rio Grande and drove off a thousand head of cattle and horses. The robbers were so delighted with their success that they came again and again, and the settlers, being divided against themselves, could do nothing to protect their property. This brought them to their senses, as nothing else could have done. Advances and concessions were made on both sides; old differences were forgotten; the farmers repaired their dilapidated fences; the stock-raisers employed extra herdsmen to keep their cattle within bounds; and a company of Rangers was promptly organized, composed of the very men who had been bushwhacking one another for months.

The Mexican raiders did not come again immediately, for their spies told them of the preparations that had been made to receive them; and when at last all fears of another visit from them had passed away, the company which the settlers had called together for mutual protection ceased to exist as an organization. But it had served more than one good purpose. It had not only compelled the raiders to remain on their own side of the river, but it had brought the stockmen and farmers into intimate relations with one another, and led to the determination on the part of all of them that the cause of their troubles should be carefully avoided in the future.

Since that time Miller county had been one of the quietest and most orderly portions of the state. Peace and plenty reigned, and the farmers and stockmen were the firmest of friends. But now it appeared that a vindictive boy, who was too lazy to win a name for himself in any honorable way, was willing and even eager to put an end to this happy state of affairs just because he wanted the settlers to notice him—to see that he was not a nobody. The shooting of a single steer that had broken into a farmer’s field would have been like throwing a blazing fire-brand upon a dry prairie while the wind was blowing a gale. George was frightened at the bare thought of such a thing.