After that Andy Green continued to stare out of the
window, seeing nothing of the scenery but the flicker
of telegraph posts before his eyes that were visioning
the future.

The Flying U ranch hemmed in by homesteaders from the East,
he saw; homesteaders who were being urged to bring all the
stock they could, and turn it loose upon the shrinking range.
Homesteaders who would fence the country into squares, and
tear up the grass and sow grain that might never bear a
harvest. Homesteaders who would inevitably grow poorer upon
the land that would suck their strength and all their
little savings and turn them loose finally to forage a
living where they might. Homesteaders who would ruin the land
that ruined them.... It was not a pleasing picture, but it
was more pleasing than the picture he saw of the Flying U
after these human grass hoppers had settled there.

The range that fed the Flying U stock would feed no more and
hide their ribs at shipping time. That he knew too well. Old
J. G. Whitmore and Chip would have to sell out. And that was
like death; indeed, it IS death of a sort, when one of the
old outfits is wiped out of existence. It had happened
before--happened too often to make pleasant memories for Andy
Green, who could name outfit after outfit that had been
forced out of business by the settling of the range land; who
could name dozens of cattle brands once seen upon the range,
and never glimpsed now from spring roundup until fall.