Arizona republican., 1904-07-16
RANGE STOCK CONDITIONS
Cave Creek Has no Resource Left but
 Faith and Prayer.

| Times up here have simmered dowr
 to midsummer quiet; Houck's mer'
 cantile business as an index of loca 1 conditions yet makes a bare showing
 yet he and son need to exercise the care and caution which both are known to possess. To run station anywherl | in the territory now requires caution and executive ability. Here is due a
 worthy young man to state that the sub-management of the son, Moses H. seems to be duly careful. During six 1 days of the week Moses carries about on quite young shoulders, and uses. a very steady, old, business head. Bu. | on part of the seventh day Mos es | plays the part of humming bird to tn prettiest girls in the territory. He should permit the undersigned to help him, but he won't.
 I regret to give such bad news O. range stock. This drouth is simply ter rible in it's results on cattle and horses. The cattle of Logan Morris and Jame 8 Gibson seem to be holding up, though some cows with calves and cd sock require constant care. Goats, for suCh times as these are the safest. They thrive on growths which cattle won { touch. such as old tin dumps. over alls, shirts, socks and particularly Cn the children's sheets of the G'obe Democrat and the Phoenix Enterprisa ?. Frank Linvil,e says that they provide those sheets by the hundred and tha t it looks queer to see goats with eye rrlo ,.r fat on carricatures of themselves. burros, negroes, etc. The only thing which the Linville goat herd needs now is barber to trim their whiskers and keen their hair parted in the middle
 Away up the creek, where depend ence has been on grass, and where the browse of the lower creek is lacking the cattle are reported to be dying fast. This region cannot be doomed t) become a lifeless. Godforsaken wild wood: while elsewhere super terranean conditions are creating awful inrnda
 tons, the subterranean- conditions of tbis thin-erusted, seismic region must be near the close of fts cycle of quietude so that our foundations will upheave again and we may get nor mai rainfall But for the present it is hard to bear. If ever a sinner feels like praying or asking for prayers. it is when an old cow and a hungry calf stand bawling at his camp. Thesa dumb creatures seem to contsmpla e the two-legged bogy-man with real human intelligence; they seem to real- ize that we bipeds are. or ought to be, the intervenors between them and that supreme Providence whose eye is on the birds of the air, and whose ear is open to the hungering cries of the calves, the buro colts, the lambs, kiGs and the cubs of the wild beasts. God only knows how intense is the hungry agony of our range beasts. tramping all the night from one mesquite tree to another; hungering, hunting for every mesquite bean that falls. Innocent as they are of wrong, yet like lost souls they ever hunt and hunger. When a bunch of cows or of burros convene in veritable prayer meeting at ones camp, the thought occurs that if two or three churches of Phoenix would unite with two or three COW men and cows of Cave creek in yrayer. rain might fall even here, as we know it has faller elsewhere in answer to prayer. Bat the thing which. moves me is to recall the lines of carking care and the shadow of dispair which lately, have seen on the faces of some ccw men coming down from above, after they have used the very last rag of human resource. Two or three years ago when they had not the slightest pre- monition of this awful situation they took reasonable chances, but if rain does not come within month their l-sses will be awful, if not irrepera bla. It is not enduring hunger or enduring crushing care, but poor. dumb brutes; and better, truer men than I endur 'ng the care. Some of them were old civ war veterans: and whether they fought with or against me at Sbiloh or Cor inth, it seems to me wound be a soul less vag to look on their distressed faces unmoved, or to listen at night to the veritabie prayer meetings of their cattle. Even barbarians pray to their monstrcus ideals of a Supreme Prcvi denee. What sort of a paradox is it for we, to whom the real omnipotent Creator and Provider has revealed Himself, to turn aside from suggestions of prayer in such distress as this, and remark "We do not know: there are conditions. etc; but we must take care not to make fools of ourselves?" This reminds us of the old war, wSen a comrade received a mortal wound, if he had but a second of t'me, as be threw up his hands he exclaimed, al- ways. "Oh my God" Thus he acknow' edged the existence of God ard con- fidently trusted his departing scul to His care. They had no time to reflect on whether or not they were making fools of themselves. So it comes very natural to us up here when we see such distress to eXclaim "Oh, my Goi!"
 No matter how foolish agnotics in and cut of the church may deem me for writing the above-here goes. I would rather be a fool moved with sympathy for human and baastly woe than a gravel image fault'e~s in ex- pression, because lifeless and dumb
 E. P. MCCORMICK,