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This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one, Ride the High Country.

He wrote into our valley in the summer of 89.

That's the first line in the classic Western novel, Shane.

The 89 is 1889. The valley is in Wyoming territory, and trouble is brewing.

The local big cattleman is finding the handful of recently arrived homesteaders a nuisance.

He wants the whole range for his own uses and is bent on driving them out, whatever it takes.

The land is theirs by right of settlement and guaranteed by the government,

but the government is far away from the valley way up there in the territory.

The nearest marshal is 100 miles away.

They don't even have a sheriff in their town, which is not much more than a roadside settlement.

Then a lone rider, Shane, rides into the valley.

There is something mysterious about him.

He is not like other men.

...