Thursday, November 07, 2013

Range country communication

How does news travel in the range country? Men have tried to explain it with such terms as the "grapevine" - meaning that one man told another and he still others, and each of them told more, and so on, until the word was passing from mouth to mouth among thousands of people. Perhaps this is the explanation, but whatever it is, the range country knows, as does the veldt of South Africa, the bush of Australia, and the jungles of the Amazon, that once a man knows a thing, all know it. In all the far and secret places the news moves, or perhaps it is not news,b ut only a feeling of portent, a feeling of something imminent.

(from The Rustlers of West Fork, by Louis Lamour)

No comments: