TAILING—BRANDING FIRE—BULLDOGGING—BRANDS AND MARKS—BRANDING-IRONS AND BRANDS—BRANDING CUSTOMS—MAVERICKS, DERIVATION OF TERM—BRAND BLOTCHING—HOGTIES—ESTRAYS—OPEN ROUND-UP—INSPECTORS—ATTACKS BY CATTLE—STAMPEDING THE BEEF ISSUE.
FOR the downing of an animal, “tailing” sometimes took the place of roping. Any member of the horse or cattle families could, when travelling at all rapidly, be sent heels over head by the simple process of overtaking the brute, seizing its tail, and giving the latter a pull to one side. This would throw the animal off its balance, and over it would crash, onto its head and shoulder. Though the slightest of yanks frequently was capable of producing the result, many men assured success through a turn of the tail about the saddle horn, this supplemented sometimes, in the case of cattle, by a downward heave of the rider’s leg upon the straining tail.
Horses, unless patently worthless, were seldom tailed. The process offered too much risk of springing a knee or of spraining a shoulder.
Occasionally, under playful impulse, a puncher would tail a fellow rider’s pony, but this act rarely was intended to accomplish more than to cause the little horse, by a sudden jump, to jolt its rider. With similarly jocose purpose, a lariat would land about a man or around the neck of the horse beneath him; though, under such circumstances, the noose never was jerked to tautness.
While we have been wandering far afield in general observations, the cowboys have been sticking to their business at the rodeo corral. Out of this corral, the undesired animals finally were weeded, to sift in twos and threes over the horizon, sooner or later to reform, so far as possible, into the very bands which had been so rudely disturbed earlier in the day, and to resume the very haunts from which the beasts had unwillingly been driven. As they one by one passed through the corral’s bars, they received farewell slaps from lariats’ ends, mere slaps, save in the case of a horse leaving a cattle corral, or of a steer or cow leaving one of horses. These latter departing and excepted brutes, however inoffensive, invariably were assumed to have invited themselves to the party, and venom was put into each dismissal blow and into the words accompanying it.
While cutting out and roping were progressing within the corral, there rose from it a cloud of dust; and out of this, if cattle were the stock involved, came a constant and pandemoniac chorus from bleating calves and bellowing mothers separated in the mêlée.
In due time all the unbranded animals were discovered. One by one, they were cut out, were herded to the vicinity of the bonfire which held the branding-irons, were there thrown by roping, or, if horned, sometimes by “bulldogging,” and, when prone, not only were branded, but also were subjected to such surgery, if any, as might be necessary. In the case of cattle, if they fell inconveniently far from the fire, they, regardless of intervening sticks and stones, ignominiously were dragged at a lariat’s end to the desired spot. Horses were given more considerate treatment, in that some care was exercised that they be not “dumped” so far from the flames as to require this skin-abrading haulage.
The bonfire, if in Texas, was required by local law to be inside the corral’s enclosure, the purpose of the law being to prevent branding in unfrequented localities, and thereby to lessen stealing. In States other than Texas, the fire often blazed just outside the corral’s gate.
Toward the fire at an important round-up, animals slithered every few seconds, sliding on their sides, their backs, on any part of their anatomies, all of the beasts highly indignant.
Some cattle landed there as victims of “bulldogging,” and not of roping. Bulldogging involved throwing one’s right arm over a steer’s or cow’s neck, the right hand gripping the neck’s loose, bottom skin or the base of the right horn or the brute’s nose, while the left hand seized the tip of the brute’s left horn. The “dogger” then rose clear of the ground; and, by lunging his body downward against his own left elbow, so twisted the neck of the brute that the latter lost its balance and fell. It was a somewhat active performance, because, the instant the dogger took hold, the seized beast began to run, and the man’s legs, when not touching the ground in flying leaps, were waving outward to avoid his maddened vehicle’s knees.
An animal, thus to be thrown, had to be moving at high speed, for the beast had to be deprived not only of balance, but also of ability to regain it. The feat, though favored in public exhibitions, found little usage in every-day life; except occasionally it might be applied to a youngster which was of no great weight, was attempting to dodge, and, for the latter reason, had its neck already somewhat twisted. Roping would achieve the same result and was much less onerous.
In the bonfire were the branding-irons of all the ranches interested in the round-up. Beside the fire stood the “tally man,” a person selected for the position because of his honesty and his clerical accuracy, or possibly because of his physical inability to render more strenuous service. He entered on a “tally-sheet” a tally mark for each animal on which an owner’s brand or mark was placed; and, while he worked his stubby pencil, he monotonously chanted somewhat as follows: “Star K Outfit, one calf, Circle Nine Ranch, one calf,” etc.
As a sprawling beast was dragged up to the fire and its ownership disclosed, there was pressed against the brute the appropriate, red-hot iron, and there were added by the knife such additional “marks,” if any, by way of cuts on ears, dewlaps, or other folds of skin, as the owner had adopted to further prove proprietorship.
These burns and cuts were permanent, and established everywhere the ownership of the brute that wore them, even though he strayed across the continent.
Each raiser of horses or cattle registered with the proper official of his State or county a written instrument wherein was claimed the exclusive right to burn upon a particular part of an animal, such as a specified shoulder or rump, a particular design made of certain numbers, letters, lines, or of combinations of these elements, or to apply specified cuts or chippings to a stated ear, both ears, the dewlap or other feasible fold of skin, or to do both these things. If nobody had made prior claim for the use of the design, the latter was formally allowed, was entered in the official “brand book,” and became in effect the trade-mark of the the person who registered it.
To safeguard whatever cut or chipping was made, various States required that not more than half of each ear be removed, that neither ear be whittled to a point, and that no cut or chipping made by one owner be altered or obliterated by a later proprietor.
Ears, because of their convenient viewableness, were the usual seats of the cuts and chips.
Cattle commonly received both the “brand” and the “mark” of their owner; while horses, to avoid disfigurement, were subjected only to the brand.
A rancher of large affairs might, through absorption of other ranchmen’s businesses, become the owner of numerous brands and marks; though, in many jurisdictions, he was limited to registering in his own name a single set of such emblems.
Likewise a man without capital but with definite plan of selfenrichment would in many instances procure the recording of a series of such signs of ownership, one in his own name, the others in the several names of his various dummies. He would do this because he would anticipate that, when he took to “rustling” and to “pasting his brand” on other people’s animals, he would prefer not to have it seem that each of his four or five mangy cows had given birth to eight calves in a single season.
Although, strictly speaking, a brand was the product of a hot iron while a mark was a knife cut, both in colloquial usage were termed brands.
The branding-iron was in the form of a straight poker called a “running iron,” used like a pencil, and producing a “running brand”; or else it was in the form of a solid block of type recording at one touch the whole design and thus creating a “set brand.”
While the brand might be of any size its owner wished, convenience dictated usually seven inches as the maximum for both height and breadth, and two and four inches as the respective minimums for these two dimensions.
The letters, figures, or designs in a brand commonly bore some relation to the owner’s name or to some event of either business or sentimental interest to him, and always were selected and placed in combination only after careful consideration as to the extent of their immunity from forging alteration. A thief readily could retouch a letter C into a zero or a letter O; while the letter I as readily could be changed to any one of twelve other letters, or, with a numeral placed after it, be transformed into the figure one. Slight effort would change a 3 into an 8 or a B, would shift a 4 into an H. Crowding letters or figures together, surrounding them with framing lines, placing short, horizontal markings across their open ends, all tended to prevent improper alterations. So did the filling out of geometrical diagrams in such way as that there should not remain strokes, capable with slight additions of forming very different-looking markings.
The designs ordinarily used were simple, because complicated ones, when the brands healed and their lines somewhat shifted position, were apt to become confused.
When the brand’s design bore framing lines, it was said to be “boxed.” In the absence of such enclosure, it was called an “open brand.”
Consideration was given also to the location of the knife cuts, and to the advisability of having them in straight or wavy slits, and with or without discard of a narrow wedge of cartilage.
Having designed his brand, the ranchman next decided and announced how he wanted it to sound when orally described, and thus fixed the order in which the component elements should be mentioned. In so doing, he rarely exercised caprice, but almost always was obedient to the reasonable limitations of common usage.
When a ranchman sold an animal imprinted with his, the selling ranchman’s, brand, there was given to the purchaser a written bill of sale; and the already decorated animal might receive one, if not two, additional brands. Thus, the brute might be given one which was known interchangeably as the “vent brand” (from Spanish “venta,” meaning a sale) or “counter brand,” and which was the seller’s admission of the fact of sale; and might be subjected also to the purchaser’s ownership brand. Wherefore a thoroughly etched side upon a cow meant that she had had successive owners. The vent brand ordinarily was a facsimile of the seller’s ownership brand, though it might be reduced in size.
While members of the cattle family obtained, save in rare instances, all the decorations mentioned in the preceding paragraph, horses ordinarily graduated from liability to branding as soon as they received their initial ownership impression, and their subsequent proprietors commonly relied upon possession of bills of sale. Branding somewhat injured the horse’s appearance, so he was spared from an overdose of hot iron.
Upon a cattle drive in which variously branded animals were to participate, and which was to extend beyond the limits of a single county, a special brand, known as a “road brand,” was applied for the purposes of the trip. This brand assisted the herders in identifying their stock, and also tended to prevent these herders from improperly merging in their herd, and spiriting out of the jurisdiction, animals of uninterested owners.
Lastly, there was in Texas for the benefit of its ranchmen a statutory series of so-called “county brands,” a separate, prescribed letter or group of letters for each Texan county. Thus a Texan, if he wished, might place upon his animal not only his individual brand of ownership, but also the county brand of the county in which he ranched; this latter brand, if used, going by legal requirement onto the animal’s neck. Thereafter a thief, seeking to alter brands, would be compelled either to change both the brands, or else to change the ownership brand to one recorded in the particular county to which the county brand related.
The road brand often was applied through openings in the fences of a “shoot,” for, if the animals involved were numerous and mature, their roping would be unduly onerous.
At the round-up, upon each such unbranded animal as was attended by a mother went a duplicate of the most recent ownership brand the mother bore, unless the following condition obtained. If the mother were locally owned, and if also her brand were one of a distant State and did not, upon the local range, appear upon the animals of another rancher, her local owner, through desire to protect her from undue distress or for other reason, may have refrained from imposing his own brand upon her. In such event, her attendant offspring would receive the brand of its mother’s local owner, and not a duplicate of any brand the mother carried.
Furthermore, if a mother should display an assortment of ownership markings so hopelessly confusing as not to disclose the identity of her then owner, her attendant youngster would be dealt with as though it were a “maverick,” which latter, conscience-destroying and trouble-creating object will presently explain itself.
In the absence of such excepting conditions, the infant received, as a matter of course, a duplicate of its mother’s most recent ownership inscription, whether burned or cut or both. She might have strayed with her child from southern Texas but, nevertheless, northern Montana was bound in honor to protect the presumptive Texan owner of many hundred miles away.
Any person having in mind these rules and customs and watching the branding at the corral could confidently read the branded inscriptions. He would know that “4-28,” meant “four bar twenty-eight,” since a hyphen always was called a “bar”; that, because a capital letter of size was commonly termed “big,” “A2” was translatable into “big a two”; that, because a letter or figure lying on its side was termed “lazy,” a prone letter “m” underscored was the “lazy m bar.” This person would know also that, because a ring was dubbed a “circle,” a letter “g” enclosed within a ring was the “circle g”; that, because a circle’s are was, according to its length, designated as a “quarter,” “half,” or “three-quarter” “circle,” a scant bit of a curve followed by a letter “r” was the “quarter-circle r,” and that, because anything looking like a diamond or even its cousin was called “diamond,” a figure “5” within a lozenge should be interpreted as “diamond five.” This person would know also that any parallelogram, regardless of the ratio between its length and height, was a “block,” a “box,” or a “square,” whichever its owner cared to term it, that the faintest resemblance to a pair of wings gave the prefix of “flying,” so that the numeral “9,” between two misshapen bulges was the “flying nine,” and that other designs were attempted pictures, and should be entitled “broken pipe,” “sombrero,” “spur,” “bit,” “elk horn,” “two star,” “wheel,” or whatever. Finally, this person would know that still further designs had arbitrary, slangy designations such as “wallop” (a wide letter “U” atop another letter “U” equally wide but inverted), “whang-doodle” (a group of interlocking wings with no “flying,” central design), and “hog pen” (two parallel lines crossing two other parallel lines at a right angle).
Sometimes a design had foisted upon it by a naïve local public a designation unexpected by the design’s creator. The late ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, when a ranchman, registered in Dakota three brands in the respective forms of an elk horn, a triangle, and a Maltese cross. The last of these promptly became on his neighbors’ lips the “Maltee cross,” these neighbors supposing that “Maltese” was of the plural number.
No Easterner should too patronizingly smile at this innocence, for did not New England, years before, not only share the mariners’ belief that one lone Portuguese was a “Portogee,” but also, having assumed that “chaise” meant at least two carriages, call a single one of them a “shay”?
All of the pictures used in a brand were of sufficiently open drawing as not to hide prior brands; because, early in the industry, it had been found necessary to frown on cross-hatched markings, as also on burnt spots of abnormal size, and thus to forbid the use of the “sash,” or “window-sash,” the “frying-pan,” and other like designs, all capable of effecting a general obliteration.
The marks produced by knife cuts had no technical or picturesque designations. The latter ran in this typical manner: “One straightedged, wedge-shaped slit on left side of right ear,” etc.
The spectator at the corral could find interesting history on the skins of many of the animals. Over there was a beef which bore upon his neck “BZ,” the county brand of Brazos County, Texas, and upon his hip the ownership inscription of a rancher in that county. The brute’s sides, scarred with signs of proprietorship, of sale, and of the road, declared that he now belonged to the Double Triangle Outfit of Montana; that, before passing into this ownership, he had been an asset of successively the Three Flags Ranch of Wyoming and the Diamond Bar K men in Colorado; and that he had come northward “on the hoof,” and not by rail. Beyond him, was a steer which showed from his markings that he had been either a maverick or the child of a too gaudily decorated mother, and also had walked from a Southern State to the spot at which the spectator saw him.
Of course, no ranchman attempted to remember the ownership of all the numerous brands and marks. While those of the larger, established ranches were widely known, those of small or new outfits often forced inquirers from beyond the local range to apply for information to the various registering officials.
If, during the transaction at the fire, a wrong brand mistakenly were applied to an animal, the beast, nevertheless, was turned over to the owner of that brand; but, as soon as an animal of his appeared for marking, it was “traded back” to the owner of the first brute, and, onto this last arriving beast, the “traded” animal, went the marking of the man who had borne the original loss. Thus ultimately nobody suffered privation from the error. True, for a year, mother and offspring would carry inconsistent inscriptions; but the official tally-sheet would explain the cause. At the year’s end, parent and child would separate, and no apparent evidence of “rustling” would then exist.
However, it might be that no animal would appear for trading back, in which event the gainer would settle with the loser by paying cash, by giving an “I.O.U.,” or by delivering an already branded animal, which beast now had to accept both a vent brand and a second ownership brand.
Pursuant both to long-established custom, and in some localities to formal edict, branding other than that performed by “rustlers” was done usually in the presence of men from several ranches; but, whether it were so done or instead were carried on by the men of a single ranch, it generally was intended to be conducted honestly. Even so, upon a range dominated by a single ranch that treated well its employees, the home brand had, through the enthusiastic loyalty of the punchers, a careless habit of wandering, at a round-up, onto an orphan’s prostrate form.
There rarely was from overt stealing as much loss as the novelists have set up, for the thief ran too much risk of detection and faced the severest of penalties. Thievery indirectly accomplished through the altering of brands produced very considerable seepage; but its extent, except in Wyoming, has never been ascertained, even approximately.
In the earlier years, whoever anywhere found a “maverick,” or “sleeper,” an animal unbranded and without maternal escort, might impose on it the finder’s ownership brand. Later, and by successive steps, this broad principle was greatly restricted. First, it was unofficially decreed that a man might place his brand upon only such mavericks as he discovered upon his own range. Next, there was added to this limitation a further one which not only forbade any cowboy to place his own brand upon any maverick, but also required him, in return for a cash bonus awarded him for each maverick which he discovered upon his employer’s range, to turn over his finds either, as in some localities, to his employer or, as in other localities, to the stockmen’s association or stock commissioners of the local State.
But even this amendment left the door open to grave abuses by unscrupulous persons. The latter, whether rancher desiring more live stock or puncher seeking a bonus, easily could convert an attractive colt or calf into an actual orphan. One shot would do it. Because of the activity of these so-called “maverick factories,” as the Range termed all exterminators of parents with their inconvenient brands, still further amendments seemed necessary. Accordingly, the bonus system was abolished, and on some ranges, it was prescribed even that no cowpuncher might own live stock. Furthermore, the law ordained that everywhere, except in such localities as locally agreed to retain the earlier method of permitting a rancher to brand whatever mavericks he or his men found on his own range, the unbranded waifs should be sold at auction by the local stock commissioners or association, the buyer then to have right to add his ownership brand to the vent brand of the selling official body, and the cash proceeds from the sale to go either to the support of the stock inspectors and detectives of the State in which the transaction occurred, or else to some other designated public use.
Maverick, speaking from the dictionary, applied to both horses and cattle; but upon the Range, the term was restricted to members of the cattle family, and brandless colts were termed either “slick ears,” or else, more commonly and in plain English, “unbranded colts,” though they were dealt with as if mavericks.
“Slick ear,” was sometimes applied as well to cattle; and, in such case, used as a synonym for maverick, it denoted a wholly unbranded and unmarked animal. Nevertheless, in strict usage, it meant merely an animal the ear of which was “slick,” i. e., not slit with any ownership mark.
In some localities, maverick was limited to animals which were at least one year of age, although, in other localities, it took in every unbranded calf the moment it ceased to follow its mother and began an independent life.
When Samuel Maverick, a Texan rancher of long years ago, refused to brand his cattle and continually bedevilled his neighbors with questions as to the whereabouts of his straying animals, he little knew that he thereby was forcing his name into the English lexicon.
Such is the kindlier of the two traditions as to how his name crept into the dictionary. His detractors insist that he arrived in Texas with no assets except a branding-iron, a morality which was blind in one eye, a far-sightedness for unbranded animals, and a tireless perseverance.
The honesty of the West was not so complete as to exclude the existence of so-called “brand artists,” “brand blotters,” or “brand blotchers,” these being gentlemen who, with ingenuity and a piece of hot metal, added marks to those already on a beast and made the final result identical with the “artist’s” registered brand.
So flagrantly did these gentlemen miswield the “running iron,” that several States eventually forbade its use by anybody, and everywhere its mere possession gave rise to suspicion.
Not only was this poker-like implement inducive to its transporter’s disrepute; but also it was heavy and was awkward to carry on the saddle. Of course, honest men had but infrequent need to carry irons, but the rustler felt himself constrained never to be without one. He had always to be prepared to “pick up manna,” that is to say, to steal, even though he might thus describe his loot as a gift from heaven. For a while after running irons became unfashionable, he affected broken horseshoes or the sidebars of riding bits, as being both portable and inconspicuous; but they, when heated, proved hard to manipulate.
Baling wire or, with the majority of thieves, telegraph wire took the place of all these appliances, and were much more convenient. The wire could be folded and hidden in the pocket, was light in weight, could be twisted into the shape of many set brands, and, from its small diameter, made lines such as best melted into the already healed scars of whatever legitimate brand was being “doctored.”
Interposing a wet blanket or wet buckskin between the beast’s side and the hot iron or wire tended to make the artist’s work look, from the time he “painted his picture on the cow,” like a fairly old brand.
The artists’ harvest days were those immediately following the round-up when the legally made scars were still fresh upon the animals.
During the progress of branding, the punchers often subjected cattle to two humiliating actions from which horses were spared. Though a horse, when roped and thrown, was accorded the dignity of being held by lariats until all work on him had been finished, a calf was promptly deprived of the reata as soon as the infant struck the ground. Thereupon the little brute, through a most impolite seizure of its ears, had its head so twisted as to lie flat on the earth and to offer a seat to one officiating puncher. To effectually stifle any kicking, a second puncher, with one of his feet, pushed one hind leg of the squealing victim well forward, and, with both hands, pulled the other hind leg far to the rear. The little calf thus lay helpless, its bulging eyes wildly rolling, while still two other cowboys, one with hot iron, the other with knife, made brands and cuts.
Then too, very frequently mature cattle, after being thrown by roping or tailing or bulldogging, had their legs (usually two hind and one front) fastened together by a short piece of line; whereupon the lariats, if any, were cast off. Thus “hog-tied,” the victim was wholly impotent. As he was reached by the cowboys on their rounds of the prone animals, he received such treatment as he was to have, and then was released. Punchers of Mexican blood frequently used for the tying, not a section of rope, but the sashes which these men customarily wore.
A horse was never hog-tied, and rarely, save by accident, was roped on a hind leg. Doing either of these things might cause such a strain as permanently to injure him for riding purposes. With any member of the cattle family, the rear legs were favorite targets for the lariat. A catch above one or both hind feet sprawled the beast out with ungraceful elongation, and deprived him of tractive force. After all, a horse was a horse, but a steer was only meat.
So expert were the punchers that often has a single, unassisted man accomplished, in terms of seconds, not of minutes, the entire task of first “spilling” a fully grown steer by roping or “dogging,” and of forthwith hog-tying it.
Eventually at the corral all the unbranded animals were cut out, and all of them were branded, excepting possibly some “strays,” which belonged on a distant range. As these vagrants were to be started immediately on their homeward journey, it was decided by the people present not to hamper them with burns and cuts, but to leave the making of such decorations to a home-welcoming by the vagrants’ owners.
All brute visitors from other ranges, whether such visitors were cattle or horses, were technically termed “strays,” or “estrays,” though, in colloquial usage, these technical terms were usually reserved for the cattle, leaving errant horses to be called “stray horses.” The beast’s wandering from home might have resulted either from individual likings for travel or else from the dispersion of animals involved previously in a drift.
The term stray was applied to a single beast or to the brutes in a small group. When a large number of animals “bunched up” or “banded up,” and marched away from their home range, they, so long as they clung together, were referred to, not as “strays,” but as “drifting” or “drifted” animals, this last according as they were still migrating or had reached their goal.
As one by one the strays were discovered in the corral, they, whether branded or not, were segregated into separate lots according to their several home ranges, and, at the conclusion of the round-up’s work, were “thrown over” to those ranges. This throwing over was accomplished through the beasts being driven homeward by men from their own ranches or ranges, or, if none such were present, by other punchers assigned to the task.
If cattle were to be shipped to market, such as were cut out for the purpose and thus formed the so-called “beef cut” were herded into isolated groups, there being one such group for each interested ranch, and each such group being termed a “cut,” unless some Texan happened by and chanced to call it a “day herd.” When any such cut had received all its members, it automatically was, in nomenclature, transformed from a “cut” into a “bunch” or “herd,” and was ready to begin its active progress toward the railway and the slaughter-house.
When the last estray had been cut out and segregated, when the beef cut had been completed, and when the last animal to be branded had emitted its odor of burning hair and singed skin, had scrambled stiffly to its feet and gone in search of maternal sympathy, there ceased all dealings with the original herd. It had, in technical language, been “worked.” In other words, the job was done.
Though the round-up described in the foregoing pages made use of corrals, and this was the prevalent method, the final handling of cattle in some localities during the later years of the ranching industry was done, not within fences, but in an “open” round-up. This modification came from realization that corrals were not necessary adjuncts for cattle, and from discovery that the ones already built were being used by thieves, particularly in their nocturnal work.
Horses, if in quantity, still called for a corral. Without it they were too difficult to manage.
For the open round-up there was agreed upon in advance a “holding spot” at which the cattle herd should be stopped and worked. This place would be a valley’s end or lateral extension, or a wide-spreading, shallow depression, or, if nature offered no such aid, then merely certain acres on the flat plain. When the designated spot was reached by the herd, the cowboys headed the cattle and started them to “milling” (i. e., marching in a circle). From the mass thus “held” by these men, were cut out, as they were needed, the desired animals.
If the primary task in hand were branding, the brutes cut out for that purpose were free to wander whither they would as soon as the hot iron had performed its function.
Then, too, strays required to be thrown over to their home ranges would be collected and started on their journey.
Meanwhile, other and long-since branded animals, if showing contagious nervousness, would be cut out one by one and chased away; but, if reasonably placid, they would be kept as decoys to lessen the chance of a general stampede. When the last animal to be branded had received its burn and all the strays had been disposed of, whatever beasts still were “held” were forthwith released to their own devices, for the herd had been worked.
But if cattle were to be shipped, such as were cut out for the purpose were driven to a second holding spot which was a little removed from the first, and there, as the “beef cut,” were held by mounted men employing the same methods as those above described.
When, at this minor rendezvous, had been collected all the animals qualified for it, the bunch assembled there was ready to be started toward its destination.
There would be as many of these separate concentration stations as there were separate destinations for the cut-out cattle, and each thus segregated lot of animals was termed, as in the case of the corral employing round-up, a “cut” or “day herd.” Not only would each interested rancher have at least one such rendezvous, but also there likely would be one for each lot of strays which was to be thrown over to its proper Range.
Very possibly during the progress of any round-up, quite probably while the resultant product was being driven to the railway, and assuredly from the instant it reached the railway until it was slaughtered or otherwise disposed of, all the beasts involved were under the active espionage of Range detectives and of stock inspectors.
Those tireless men glided like shadows about the Range and along the routes of shipment.
At any moment between the time that, on the plains, cattle were started for the railway and the time that, in Chicago, Omaha, or Kansas City, they were confronted by the butcher’s poleaxe, it might be discovered by one of those official detectives or inspectors, by one of the shipper’s men, by an outsider, that in the herd were scattered strays from ranges other than that of the shipper. If suitable for beef, these beasts were not discarded, to resume a life unprofitable to their owners or to pass permanently beyond their owners’ advantage; but were sent through the ordinary channel of shipment, sale, and slaughter. Although in the earlier years the profit was to their shipper, in later years their money proceeds were forwarded through routine channels to their proper owners by the market inspector maintained at the abattoir by the stock commissioners or association of the State whence the brutes were shipped.
Such an inspector might find, amid a consignment, beasts with brands that belonged on the shipper’s Range, but not to the shipper, or else might find beasts with suspicious looking brands suggestive of “artist’s” altering. It was his duty to ascertain if possible the actual owners of the questionable stock, and to remit to them the selling moneys; or, if such owners could not be found, to pay over the funds to the stock commissioners or association of the State from which the animals had been sent.
If, in the case of an “altered brand,” an official could not, by external inspection, ascertain what had been the original design, he might kill and skin the animal in order to read the inner surface of its hide.
Immunity from stealing was so utterly dependent upon strict guarding of the branding system that, in Wyoming, no person might slaughter unbranded cattle and, in every Western State, butchers were required to retain on public view, for a specified number of days, the hides of all cattle killed by them.
When branding a calf, the group of men about it sometimes received a hurried visit from the little fellow’s mother; which, unadvised that his wounds were so superficial as to lose their scabs within two weeks, and responsive only to his vealish cry for mama, eluded her human guards and arrived on the scene, head down and at considerable speed. If no readily climbable fence were at hand, escape was effected by a matadorlike wait till the strategic moment, by a handful of dust thrown into the charging animal’s eyes, and by a coincident jump or roll out of her course. This dust tended not only to prevent the cow from dodging with the dodging man, but also to discourage her from promptly wheeling and returning to the attack.
The cowboy feared the Range cow more than he did any bull or steer. Except when “dusted” she kept her eyes open, her mind on her job. She was exceedingly quick of motion, for all Range cattle were, for short distances, practically as fast as ridden horses. With horns in lieu of a broom, she went about her house-cleaning with considerable enthusiasm and thoroughly feminine persistency.
The bull or steer, on the other hand, lumberingly moved himself into battle position, horns to the enemy, roaringly advertised that he was about to annihilate, lowered his head, shut both eyes, and came on like a runaway coal-truck. The intended victim had merely to bide his own time, and, taking a short step to one side, to watch a blundering, conceited mass of flesh pound harmlessly by.
The cowboy’s intimate knowledge of animals’ natures and his alert observation repeatedly saved him from situations which otherwise would have meant disaster for him.
Some ranchmen’s knowledge of animals’ natures occasionally worked to the disadvantage of the Red Man who was expecting to eat governmentally furnished beef. These ranchmen knew among other things that cattle, removed from the latter’s Range but released within a few days’ journey of their former haunts, would promptly journey homeward. This homing instinct and the legal effect of the brand together laid the foundation for an abuse practised in connection with the Indians’ affairs and known on the Range as “stampeding the beef issue.”
The United States Government, as an incident of its care of its Indian wards, issued to them at stated intervals, beef on the hoof. This beef was in the form of live cattle bought from the lowest bidding ranchmen and herded into a corral at the Indian Agency.
Each so many Indians was entitled to one animal, each such Indian group being given for the purpose a serially numbered claim ticket. As a ticket’s number was announced, the group holding that ticket ranged itself at the entrance of the corral. The bars were lowered, and there was let out one animal, which the Indians of the group might, as they elected, kill on the spot or drive away.
Thus animals were successively released from the corral. Meanwhile, within it cowboys were urging up to the bars two or three renegade steers which studiously had been teased. Another ticket’s number was announced. Up stepped expectantly an Indian group. Down went the bars, and out shot the renegades, with the whole herd, obedient to cattle’s gregarious instinct, galloping behind them.
The stock, thus freed, headed for home; and by reason of its brands, became for all practical purposes, once more the property of the very persons who had sold it to the government.
As regards this abuse, the government would do nothing, the Indians could do nothing, and the dishonest, benefited ranchmen kept quiet.
The “beef issue” was of so unsavory a reputation that many ranchmen would make no tenders for it.