l their flocks on foot. The feud
between the two varieties of stock-raisers became worse and worse."

Donald listened breathlessly.

"More men took up stock-raising as time went on, and in consequence more
herds were turned onto the range. Soon the results began to show. The
young trees of the forest lands were trampled down, or nibbled and
destroyed; water-holes, which the settlers had used as their water
supply, began to be polluted; homesteaders, who had built houses and
settled in the sheep-raising districts, were driven off the range and
had no place where they could be sure of feeding their flocks. The worst
evil, though, was that one band of sheep after another would feed in the
same spot. The first flock would nip off the top of the grass; the next
flock had to eat it closer in order to get food enough; and when the
last flocks came they burrowed into the earth with their sharp noses and
dug the grass up by the roots. Whole stretches of land that had once
been green and beautiful were left bare so that nothing would grow on
them for years and years. Cattle do not eat the turf so close as that,
and I do not wonder that the vaqueros complained, do you?"

"I should think they would have!" agreed Donald heartily.

"Then, too, the sheep have small, sharp hoofs, you know; these hoofs cut
through the soil so that if many sheep travel over a place they grind
the earth to powder. Well, that is just what happened. The sheep left
the hillsides nothing but patches of brown dust. Things went on from bad
to worse until our government stepped in."

Donald kept his eyes intently on Sandy's face.

"What could our government do?" he asked earnestly.

"Well, it could do a good many things, and it did. First, it took about
160,000,000 acres of land as National Forests. It was no longer free
pasture. It belonged to the United States."

"I should think the herders would have been pretty cross about that!"

"They were. You can see just how they felt. They made their living by
raising stock, and to be deprived of pasturage angered them. At first
the government intended to stop all herds from feeding in these National
Reserves. They thought it was time to protect the forests that we might
not have floods, landslides, and forest fires. They called it conserving
the forests. Afterward, though, they considered that the western people
made their living by raising cattle and sheep, and they worked out a
plan whereby every owner who