Like most of his cowboy contemporaries, Russell blamed the farmers for the death of the open-range cattle industry. This drawing vividly illustrates the artist’s feelings. Even so, Montana laws and politics favored the expansion of agriculture at the expense of ranching, and the transition was bitterly opposed in some areas. “The granger has turned the range grass side down, but thanks to a few like you the cowman has left a trail in history the farmer can’t plow under,” Russell wrote late in his life to the author of a history of the old frontier. “Cow men made history; farmers made seed catalogs, and I don’t care for seeds until they’re cooked, but raw history is good any time.”