There was another short pause as Benteen glanced at his son. “Webb thinks the new bill would let cattlemen get free title to more land. What do you think would happen, Bull, if certain factions heard that stockmen were in favor of this proposal to enlarge the Homestead Act?”
The burly man chuckled under his breath. “I think they’d come to the same conclusion Webb did. They’d be afraid they weren’t breaking up the big beef trusts and worried that it would make them more secure instead.” He turned to the senator’s aide. “Benteen’s found their weakness.”
Frank nodded. “That just might be the tactic that will work.” He glanced at Asa, who also nodded his agreement. “It will take some fancy footwork.”
Later, after the meeting broke up in the early-evening hours, Webb and Benteen headed back to the hotel to clean up for dinner. They walked most of the distance in silence. “Did you learn anything?”
The challenging question drew Webb’s glance to his father. “What was I supposed to learn?”
“That you came up with the right answer for the wrong reason. You didn’t think the proposal all the way through. You have to see how a thing can work against you as well as for you.”
“After listening to Giles and Mr. Bulfert, I think it will be defeated,” Webb concluded.
“It isn’t as simple as that,” Benteen stated. “This is just the first skirmish. The railro
ads still want more people out here, and the eastern cities have thousands they’d like to ship out. All we’re going to accomplish right now is postponing what appears to be the inevitable.” He lifted his gaze to scan the reddening sunset. “Those damn farmers will come—like a horde of grasshoppers; only, instead of grass, their plows will be chewing up sod.”
There was a prophetic sound to his words that licked coldly down his spine. It didn’t sound possible.
Two and a half years later, on February 19, 1909, Congress responded to the public cry for more free land and passed the Enlarged Homestead Act. Claims could be filed on 320 acres of land, providing it was nonirrigable, unreserved, and unappropriated, and contained no marketable timber. That description fit almost twenty-six million acres of Montana land.
II
Stands a Calder man,
Flesh and blood is he,
Longing for a love
That can never be.
3
Wild flowers covered the long stretches of the broken plains, wide sweeps of yellow, red, and white dancing over the low, irregular hills. The black gelding cantered through a thick mass of them growing out of the tangle of tightly matted grass. A plume of dark smoke lay against the blue sky far in the distance. Webb saw it and traced it to the locomotive bearing down on the tiny collection of buildings that made up the settlement of Blue Moon.
It was officially a town now, with a general store to supply the local ranchers, a saloon to wet the throats of the cowboys, a blacksmith shop to repair their wagons, and a church to forgive them their sins. Since the railroad had laid tracks through it, they had a freight depot and regular mail delivery.
Off to the left, a horse-drawn buckboard rattled over the rutted track across the plains that served as a road. There were supplies to be picked up and some freight due at the depot that necessitated the trip into town. Neither would be done with any amount of haste, so there would be plenty of time to catch up on local happenings and trade information.
The shrill, lonely whistle of the train punctured the quiet of the starkly masculine landscape as it let off steam and signaled its imminent arrival at the small town. The black gelding shied beneath Webb, spooking at the sound, then settling back into its rocking gait.
The buildings were growing larger, becoming more discernible now in the vast plain as the contingent from the Triple C Ranch drew closer. Webb judged that they would arrive about the same time that the train pulled in.
When they reached the outskirts of Blue Moon, Webb reined the gelding alongside the buckboard and slowed it to a trot. There were more people in the streets than he was accustomed to seeing in the little cow community.
“Busy place,” Nate observed from his seat on the buckboard.
“Probably just more people out because of the train.” It was an event that brought folks out of their houses.
But there seemed to be a lot of unfamiliar faces on the street. Webb saw only a few people he knew. A frown began to gather on his face as he tried to figure out what had brought all these strangers to town, and where they’d come from.
“Shall we go to the depot?” Nate asked as they neared the general store.
“Might as well.” Nearly everyone was heading in that direction, so they let themselves be swept along with them. Two new buildings had sprung up on the street. Nate noticed them, too, and exchanged a questioning look with Webb.
The skittish gelding danced sideways under Webb, trying to see everything at once. Ahead, the depot was crowded with empty wagons hitched to teams of horses shifting nervously at the closeness of the “iron monster.” It chugged idly, hissing puffs of steam. Nate had to swing the buckboard to the far end of the depot platform where there was room to park it, Webb reined the fractious gelding around to the far side of it as Nate set the brake and wrapped the reins around the handle.
Passengers were streaming out of the cars onto the depot, mostly men, but a few women with children, too. None of the men were dressed like cowboys or traveling salesmen. On hand apparently to greet the arrivals was a short, fox-faced man in a spanking white suit and a white straw hat. Taking it off, he waved it over his head to get the attention of the passengers.