Since the ranchers trusted their foremen, most ranchers did not stay on their ranch except during shipping season. Foremen would find new born cattle and brand them with their own brand on their rancher’s property. The Northern Wyoming Farmers and Stock Growers Association (NWFSGA) was created out of anger from the rustlers, and tried to kill the seventy rustlers that they identified in Johnson County. The small compilation of rustling ended up in bloodshed. On April 9, 1892, NWFSGA members surrounded a cabin at the KC Ranch looking for Nate Champion.
One night Jonathan and his family are robbed. Showing them that doe the war is officially over it still goes on between the people. In the story “The Open Window”, “going hunting” is taken literally because some of the characters do in fact go hunting. In this story the fifteen year old niece tricks the guest into believing that the father son and dog died on a hunting trip and that the wife/mother leaves the window open as if they were to return. But as the story goes they cannot because they’re dead.
Shane works with Joe to remove an old tree stump he had been fighting to remove for the past two years. The homesteaders are held together by Joe Starrett, who wants to build a life on the land for his wife Marian and young son Joey. Luke Fletcher is a greedy land owner who wants to own the whole town. The ranchers, led by the Ryker brothers, try to intimidate the homesteaders in an effort to force them out of the valley. As tensions increase Luke Fletcher hires a gunfighter named Stark Wilson.
So, this makes Sam decide that he wants to fight for the Rebels. This action causes another problem, that is Sam needs a gun to fight with. After he comes home from Yale where he has been going to college, he steals his father’s Brown Bess. He runs away with the gun. Finally, Tim and his father go to Verplanks Point to sell cattle and get supplies for their tavern.
Is Evans doing his duty as a man to provide for his family through this endeavor he volunteers for or is there a deeper meaning of trying to be the hero he wants his sons to believe that he is? The movie goes back and forth making the viewer see both sides as the dangerous, yet inevitable voyage to the town of Contention is unfolding. The drought has hit the Evans family hard, leaving them with little feed for their cattle, no water in the creek, and a burned down barn. Two-hundred dollars is on the table so-to-speak if Dan can help get a ruthless outlaw Ben Wade, played by Russell Crowe, on the 3:10 train to Yuma Prison. When they reach the town of Contention Evans is presented with a choice.
A flashback in the story reveals that a Union soldier disguised as a Confederate soldier lures Farquhar to demolish the bridge, but Farquhar is caught in the act. When Farquhar is hanged, the rope breaks, he escaped, and runs home to his beautiful wife and children. At the end, it is revealed that Farquhar never escaped and imagined everything between falling off the bridge and his last breath. Farquhar imagined a several hour event in a matter of seconds. How can someone visualize a non-realistic event in such a short period of time?
On his third visit, Jack escapes with a singing harp, but as he climbs down the stalk, the harp calls out for her master who begins climbing down after Jack. Jack reaches his house just in time to chop down the beanstalk with an axe, causing the death of the ogre. The growth of Jack from a naïve boy into a young man is illustrated through his journey and his desire for money. In the beginning of the story Jack is portrayed as a very young boy who lives with his widowed mother. The widow’s cow, Milky-white, stopped giving milk one morning and so the family had to find a new source of income.
Bull and his wife Conflict also occurs in Bull’s home life. He hasn’t spoken to his wife in eighteen years over an incident highlighting his love of land. His wife gave permission to a tinker’s widow to let the pony graze in Bull’s field. Bull got so angry he beat his wife. ‘I walloped her more than I meant’ Even though he regrets it afterwards, his wife doesn’t forgive him.
Are they people, sons of mothers waiting back home anxiously for their return, or just another statistic in the folder on the desk of their cushy offices well away from the hell on earth that was the first world war in the quote: “What passing bells for those who die as cattle?” Owen asks: who cares when these valiant young men who march forward unto their deaths, what passing bells? What tribute is offered to mark their deaths? There is no ceremony or care, the men are not valued, they are expendable, and Owen portrays the people sending them to their deaths as butchers, sending their men to trench warfare. Like “cattle” to the meat grinder. By asking a question Owen forces the reader to also question the morality of the butchers responsible for the war and all the death that the war creates.
One of the most accounted legends was that of a Hessian trooper who was decapitated during the Revolutionary war. People from the town believed that during nights, headless Hessian trooper rides on horseback in search of his head that he lost in battle. In the fiction, protagonist Ichabod Crane, village school teacher fell in love with Katrina Van Tassel, one of his music students, and is also a daughter of relatively wealthy farmer. However, she already had a suitor, Brom Bones. He is handsome and strong, who always brags about the number of fights he had been in while on the other hand, Ichabod is lean, and lanky who looks like a scarecrow.