Stands a Calder Man by Janet Dailey Read Free Book Online

dry years with less than that, like what happened twenty years ago?”
    â€œTwenty years ago isn’t today.” Frank Bulfert dismissed that argument.
    â€œIt sounds like sour grapes coming from a cattleman.” Bull eased his stiff leg into a less cramped position. “You big ranchers are highly unpopular. Public opinion is against you. Most of the Europeanscoming into the country look on ranchers as feudal lords. They came here to escape that system of large, single landholders. There you sit on a million-plus acres. They want to bust it up so everybody can have a chunk of it. They come to America filled with dreams about owning their own land.”
    â€œIn other words, you are saying that we don’t have a chance of defeating this bill,” Benteen challenged.
    â€œWe can keep it in committee for a while,” Frank Bulfert said. “But it’s bound to pass once it gets out of there. It’s what the majority wants.”
    There was a brief lull as everyone waited for Benteen to respond. He stared into his whiskey glass, idly swirling the liquor around the sides.
    â€œThey want it because they see it as a way of taking the land out of the hands of the rancher and putting it with a bunch of immigrants,” he stated finally. “But what if they become convinced that the bill won’t accomplish that objective?”
    â€œHow?” Frank Bulfert drew his head back to study Benteen with a curious but skeptical eye.
    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 thehotel 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?”
    â€œThat 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.”
    â€œAfter listening to Giles and Mr. Bulfert, I think it will be defeated,” Webb concluded.
    â€œIt isn’t as simple as that,” Benteen stated. “This is just the first skirmish. The railroads 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