Cattle
9781465648525
281 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Four Alberta ranches are the scene of this story. Of these, three were quarter sections of land in Yankee Valley, and the fourth the vast Bar Q, whose two hundred thousand rich acres of grain, hay and grazing lands stretched from the prairie into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where it spread over the finest pastures and the "Chinook"-swept south slopes, where the cattle grazed all winter long as in summer-time, its jealous fingers, like those of a miser who begrudges a pinch of his gold, reaching across into the Indian Reserve. For many years the Bar Q cattle had had the right of way over the Indian lands, the agents who came and went having found it more profitable to work in the interests of the cowman than in those of mere Indians. As everywhere else in the country thereabouts, including the Indians themselves, the agents soon came under the power, and were swept into the colossal "game," of the owner of the Bar Q, the man known throughout the country as the "Bull." Few could recall when first the Bull, or to give him his proper name, Bill Langdon, had come into the foothills. His brand had blazed out bold and huge when the railroads were pushing their noses into the new land before the trails were marked. Even at that early period, his covetous eye had marked the Indian cattle, "rolling fat" in the term of the cattle world, and smugly grazing over the rich pasture lands, with the "I. D." (Indian Department) brand upon their right ribs, warning "rustlers" from east, west, south, and north, that the beasts were the property of the Canadian Government. Little Bull Langdon cared for the Canadian Government and he spat contemptuously at the name. Bull had come in great haste out of Montana, and although he had flouted the laws of his native land, away from it he chose to regard with supreme contempt all other portions of the earth that were not included in the great Union across the line. His first cattle were "rustled" from the unbranded Indian calves which renegade members of the tribe had driven to convenient forest corrals and traded them to the cowman for the drink they craved. Though the rustling of Indian cattle proved remunerative and easy, Langdon by no means overlooked or despised the cattle of the early pioneers, nor the fancy fat stock imported into the country by the English "remittance men." Slowly the Bar Q herd grew in size and quality, and as it increased, Bull Langdon acquired life-long leases upon thousands of acres of Government land—Forest and Indian Reserve. Closing in upon discouraged and impoverished homesteaders and pioneers he bought what he could not steal.
