The hand
descended noiselessly.
"Ain't I got my rights, same as another man?" he asked, more reasonably.
"Just because I left out some little piece of their cussed red-tape am I
a-goin' to be turned out bag and baggage, child, kit, and kaboodle,
while fifty big men steal, just plain steal, a thousand acres apiece and
there ain't nothing said? Not if I know it!"
He talked on. Slowly Bob came to an understanding of the man's position.
His argument, stripped of its verbiage and self-illusion, was simplicity
itself. The public domain was for the people. Men selected therefrom
what they needed. All about him, for fifty years, homesteads had been
taken up quite frankly for the sake of timber. Nobody made any
objections. Nobody even pretended that these claims were ever intended
to be lived on. The barest letter of the law had been complied with.
"I've seen a house, made out'n willow branches, and out'n coal-oil cans,
called resident buildin's under the act," said Samuels, "and _they_ was
so lost in the woods that it needed a compass to find 'em."
He, Samuels, on the other hand, had actually planted an orchard and made
improvements, and even lived on the place for a time.
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