They were accused of attempting to follow the precedent established by the Bay State, the Bridle Bit, Sturgis & Lane, and others, and sought to acquire title to a vast acreage of government land, through the then prevailing loose land office methods.

L. C. Baldwin, of Council Bluffs, who had several thousand cattle ranging on the Lodgepole in the vicinity of Pine Bluffs, and on Crow Creek, was accused of following the same methods of acquiring land. The best known brands of Mr. Baldwin were F-H-C and 3-3-3.

All the west knows the spasm of virtue that swept over the United States Land Department when the dominating influence of Gifford Pinchot was high under the Roosevelt regime.

The most of us thought that the land acquired was not of sufficient value to make much trouble over, much less make criminals out of men who had done only the same deeds that had been followed for generations.

Bartlett Richards, W. G. Comstock, L. C. Baldwin. Charles Tulleys, J. H. Edmiston. C. C. Jamieson, Perry Yeast, and others suffered the federal inquistion, and LI. S. Marshall Matthews lost his official head as a result. Some parts of the west were seared as by a prairie fire, and finally came President Taft and Secretary Ballinger. Pinchot sunk into the oblivion that his ill-advised activities deserved. When a man attempts to climb over the wrecks of others he has ruined, natural laws of compensation will prevail.

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

The Standard Cattle Company, with headquarters at Cheyenne, ranged fifteen to twenty thousand cattle over the headwaters of Horse Creek and the Chugwater, in the later days of the cow business.