Читать книгу The Freebooters of the Wilderness - Agnes C. Laut - Страница 3

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I have been asked how much of this tale of modern freebooters is true? In exactly which States have such episodes occurred? Have vast herds of sheep been run over battlements? Have animals been bludgeoned to death; have men been burned alive; have the criminals not only gone unpunished but been protected by the law-makers? Have sheriffs "hidden under the bed" and "handy men" bluffed the press? Have vast domains of timber lands been stolen in blocks of thousands and hundreds of thousands of acres through "dummy" entrymen? Have the federal law officers been shot to death above stolen coal mines? Have Reclamation Engineers, and Land Office field men, and Forest Rangers undergone such hardships in Desert and Mountain, as portrayed here? Have they not only undergone the hardship, but been crucified by the Government which they served for carrying out the laws of that Government? In a word, are latter day freebooters of our Western Wilderness playing the same game in the great transmontane domain as the old-time pirates played on the high seas? Is this a true story of "the Man on the Job" and "the Man on the Firing Line" and "the Man Higher Up" and the Looters?

I answer first that I am not writing of twenty years ago, or yesterday, or the day before yesterday, but to-day, the Year of our Lord 1909–1910 in the most highly civilized country the world has ever known; in a country where self-government has reached a perfection of prosperity and power not dreamed by poet or prophet. The menace to self-government from such national influences at work need not be described. The triumph of such factors in national life means the wresting of self-government from the people into the hands of the few, a repetition of the struggle between the Robber Barons of the Middle Ages and the Commoners.

It seems almost incredible that such lawlessness and outrage and chicanery can exist in America—many of the outrages would disgrace Russia or Turkey—yet every episode related here has ten prototypes in Life, in Fact; not of twenty years ago, or yesterday, or the day before yesterday, but to-day. For instance, the number of sheep destroyed is given as fifteen thousand. The number destroyed in two counties which I had in mind when I wrote that chapter, by actual tally of the Stock Association for the past six years, is sixty thousand. Last year alone, five thousand in one State suffered every form of hideous mutilation—backs broken, entrails torn out; fifteen hundred in an adjoining State had their throats cut; three men were burned to death; one herder in a still more Northern State was riddled to death with bullets.

Or to take the case of the timber thefts, I refer to two hundred thousand acres in California. I might have referred to a million and a half in Washington and Oregon.

Or referring to the mineral lands, I mention two thousand acres of coal. I might have told another story of fifty thousand acres, or yet another of three hundred thousand acres of gold and silver lands. When I narrate the shooting of a man at the head of a coal shaft, the stealing of Government timber by the half million dollars a year through "the hatchet" trick, or the theft of two thousand acres by "dummies," I am stating facts known to every Westerner out on the spot.

In which States have these episodes occurred? Take an imaginary point anywhere in Central Utah. Describe a circle round that point to include the timber and grazing sections of all the Rocky Mountain States from Northern Arizona to Montana and Washington. The episodes related here could be true of any State inside that circle except (in part) one. Such forces are at work in all the Mountain States except (in part) one. That one exception is Utah. Utah has had and is having tribulations of her own in the working out of self-government; but, for reasons that need not be given here, she has kept comparatively free of recent range wars and timber steals.

This story was suggested to me by a Land Office man—one of the men on the firing line—who has stood the brunt of the fight against the freebooters for twenty years and wrested many a victory. I may state that he is still in the Service and will, I hope, remain in it for many a year; but these episodes are hinged round the Ranger, rather than the Land Office or Reclamation men, because, though the latter are fighting the same splendid fight, their work is of its very nature transitory—dealing with the beginning of things; while the Ranger is the man out on the job who remains on the firing line; unless—as my Land Office friend suggested—unless "he gets fired." As to the hardships suffered by the fighters, to quote one of them, "You bet: only more so."

Just as this volume goes to press, comes word of fires in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, destroying dozens of villages, hundreds of lives and millions of dollars worth of property in the National Forests; and it is added—"the fires are incendiary." Why this incendiarism? The story narrated here endeavors to answer that question.

The international incidents thinly disguised are equally founded on fact and will be recognized by the dear but fast dwindling fraternity of good old-timers. The mother of the boy still lives her steadfast beautiful creed on the Upper Missouri; and the old frontiersman still lives on the Saskatchewan, one of the most picturesque and heroic figures in the West to-day. I may say that both missionaries support their schools as incidentally revealed here, without Government aid through their own efforts. Also, it was the stalwart man from Saskatchewan who was sent searching the heirs to the estate of an embittered Jacobite of 1745; and those heirs refused to accept either the wealth or the position for the very reasons set forth here. Calamity's story, too, is true—tragically true, though this is not all, not a fraction of her life story; but her name was not Calamity.