It ranges from the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma to northeastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado, western Kansas, and southern Nebraska. Bam White, for example, was a cowboy traveling south with his wife, three children, all their possessions, and no money, when their last horse died near Dalhart, Texas. He decided to stay and make the best of it, "the last best chance to do something right, to take a little piece of the world and make it work," as Egan puts it. The Whites sensed the optimism that pervaded the city. Egan describes Dalhart's unfounded optimism as "a place where dreams take flight with the last snort of a dying horse." Another example is George Ehrlich, a Russian German who ended up in Kansas and Oklahoma. He was one of many German Russians who left Russia for America after Tsar Alexander II rescinded Catherine the Great's efforts to colonize parts of Russia by allowing farmers to be exempt from taxes and military conscription. They brought with them the seeds of a hard winter wheat that had been useful to them in Russia. They also brought the seeds of the Russian thistle, which is now known as tumbleweed, and features prominently in the mythology of the Western United States.