rode the range, until he could have told at a distance one half his holdings of cattle by flesh marks alone.  A few days before the date set for the trial, Enrique brought in word one evening that an outfit of strange men were encamped north of the river on the Ganso Tract.  The vaquero was unable to make out their business, but was satisfied they were not there for pleasure, so my employer and I made an early start the next morning to see who the campers were.  On the extreme northwestern corner of our range, fully twenty-five miles from headquarters, we met them and found they were a corps of engineers, running a preliminary survey for a railroad.  They were in the employ of the International and Great Northern Company, which was then contemplating extending their line to some point on the Rio Grande.  While there was nothing definite in this prior survey, it sounded a note of warning; for the course they were running would carry the line up the Ganso on the south side of the river, passing between the new tanks, and leaving our range through a sag in the hills on the south end of the grant.  The engineer in charge very courteously informed my employer that he was under instructions to run, from San Antonio to different points on the river, three separate lines during the present summer.  He also informed us that the other two preliminary surveys would be run farther west, and there was a possibility that the Las Palomas lands would be missed entirely, a prospect that was very gratifying to Uncle Lance.

“Tom,” said he, as we rode away, “I’ve been dreading this very thing for years.  It was my wish that I would never live to see the necessity of fencing our lands, and to-day a railroad survey is being run across Las Palomas.  I had hoped that when I died, this valley would be an open range and as primitive as the day of my coming to it.  Here a railroad threatens our peace, and the signs are on every hand that we’ll have to fence to protect ourselves.  But let it come, for we can’t stop it.  If I’m spared, within the next year, I’ll secure every tract of land for sale adjoining the ranch if it costs me a dollar an acre.  Then if it comes to the pinch, Las Palomas will have, for all time, land and to spare.  You haven’t noticed the changes in the country, but nearly all this chaparral has grown up, and the timber is twice as heavy along the river as when I first settled here.  I hate the sight even of a necessity like a windmill, and God knows we have no need of a railroad.  To a ranch that doesn’t sell fat beeves over once in ten years, transportation is the least of its troubles.”