another quarrel arose. This was between the settler, or nester, as he was often called and the cattle men. These nesters often preempted the water holes which were very important and also fenced off the best grazing lands, so pitched battles ensued between the cattle men and the settlers who were frequently of foreign birth and unacquainted with our laws and customs.
About 1892 this tension between the homesteaders and the cattle kings came to a crisis. This was when the cow-punchers assembled two hundred strong, and tried to dispel a settler from his holding in which he had fenced off the best water hole in the region. This force of cattle men were promptly met by an equal body of local deputies which was largely made up of homesteaders. A pitched battle was imminent near Cheyenne, Wyoming, when the United States cavalry appeared, and dispersed both parties, and the despotic power of the cattle men was forever broken. After that, barbed wire fences appeared on many of the great ranches and the cattle business was restricted.
Then there were still other fights between the cattle men and the sheep men, and finally the goat men appeared and cleaned up what the sheep had left. So from the time when the first herds of domestic cattle appeared upon the western prairies the cattle business has been surrounded by romance and glamour,
