He was in a country where, a few years before, his quest for "real boys"-- as he affectionately termed the type nearest his heart--would have been easy enough.

But before the marching ranks of fence posts and barbed wire, the real boys had scattered.

A more or less beneficent government had not gathered them together, and held them apart from the changing conditions, as it had done with the Indians.

The real boys had either left the country, or had sold their riding outfits and gone into business in the little towns scattered hereabouts, or else they had taken to farming the land where the big herds had grazed while the real boys loafed on guard.
Luck admitted to himself that in the past two years, even, conditions had changed amazingly.

Land was fenced that had been free.