A Daughter of the Middle Border, page 309 by Hamlin Garland
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ith a crowd looking on. The ranger has only his own conscience as spectator. For many weeks he does not even see his supervisor.
To the writing of Cavanagh I came, therefore, in the spirit of one who had discovered not only a new hero but the reverse side of the squatter's shield. Just as in my studies for The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop, I had come upon the seamy side of the cattleman's activity, so now I perceived that many of the men who had settled on the national forests were merely adventurers trying to get something for nothing. To filch Uncle Sam's gold, to pasture on his grass, to dig his coal and seize his water-power--these were the real designs of the claim-holders, while the ranger was in effect a federal policeman, the guardian of a domain whose wealth was the heritage of us all. He was the prophet of a new order, the evangel of a new faith.
The actual composition of Cavanagh began as I was riding the glorious trails around Cloud Peak in the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming in the summer of 1908, one of the most beautiful of all my outings, for while the Big Horns are low and tame compared to the Wind River Range, yet the play of their lights and shadows, their clouds, and their mist was as romantic as anything I had ever encountered.
I recall riding alone down the eastern slope one afternoon, while prodigious rivers of cloud--white as wool and soundless as light--descended the cañon on my right and spread above the foothills, forming a level sea out of which the high dark peaks rose like rocky islands. This flood came so swiftly, flowed so marvelously and enveloped my world so silently that the granite ledges appeared to melt beneath my horse's feet.
At times the vapor closed densely round me, shutting out even the rocks of the trail and as I cautiously descended, I almost bumped astonished steers whose heads burst from the mist as if through a covered hoop. The high granite crags on the opposite side of the rav