"Well, you got this far," says I.
"Yes," says they.
"Where you headed?"
"Over towards the hills."
"What to do?"
"Make a ranch, raise some truck; perhaps buy a few cows."
They went on.
"Truck" says I to Larry, "is fine prospects in this country."
He sat on his horse looking after them.
"I"m sorry for them" says he. "It must he almighty hard scratchin"."
Well, we rode the range for upwards of two year. In that time we saw our Texas friends--name of Hahn--two or three times in Willets, and heard of them off and on. They bought an old brand of Steve McWilliams for seventy-five dollars, carryin" six or eight head of cows. After that, from time to time, we heard of them buying more--two or three head from one man, and two or three from another. They branded them all with that McWilliams iron--T 0--so, pretty soon, we began to see the cattle on the range.
Now, a good cattleman knows cattle just as well as you know people, and he can tell them about as far off. Horned critters look alike to you, but even in a country supportin" a good many thousand head, a man used to the business can recognise most every individual as far as he can see him. Some is better than others at it. I suppose you really have to be brought up to it. So we boys at the Lazy Y noted all the cattle with the new T 0, and could estimate pretty close that the Hahn outfit might own, maybe, thirty-five head all told.
That was all very well, and n.o.body had any kick comin". Then one day in the spring, we came across our first "sleeper."
What"s a sleeper? A sleeper is a calf that has been ear-marked, but not branded. Every owner has a certain brand, as you know, and then he crops and slits the ears in a certain way, too. In that manner he don"t have to look at the brand, except to corroborate the ears; and, as the critter generally sticks his ears up inquirin"-like to anyone ridin" up, it"s easy to know the brand without lookin" at it, merely from the ear-marks. Once in a great while, when a man comes across an unbranded calf, and it ain"t handy to build a fire, he just ear-marks it and let"s the brandin" go till later. But it isn"t done often, and our outfit had strict orders never to make sleepers.
Well, one day in the spring, as I say, Larry and me was ridin", when we came across a Lazy Y cow and calf. The little fellow was ear-marked all right, so we rode on, and never would have discovered nothin" if a bush rabbit hadn"t jumped and scared the calf right across in front of our hosses. Then we couldn"t help but see that there wasn"t no brand.
Of course we roped him and put the iron on him. I took the chance to look at his ears, and saw that the marking had been done quite recent, so when we got in that night I reported to Buck Johnson that one of the punchers was gettin" lazy and sleeperin". Naturally he went after the man who had done it; but every puncher swore up and down, and back and across, that he"d branded every calf he"d had a rope on that spring.
We put it down that someone was lyin", and let it go at that.
And then, about a week later, one of the other boys reported a Triangle-H sleeper. The Triangle-H was the Goodrich brand, so we didn"t have nothin" to do with that. Some of them might be sleeperin"
for all we knew. Three other cases of the same kind we happened across that same spring.
So far, so good. Sleepers runnin" in such numbers was a little astonishin", but nothin" suspicious. Cattle did well that summer, and when we come to round up in the fall, we cut out maybe a dozen of those T 0 cattle that had strayed out of that Hahn country. Of the dozen there was five grown cows, and seven yearlin"s.
"My Lord, Jed," says Buck to me, "they"s a heap of these youngsters comin" over our way."
But still, as a young critter is more apt to stray than an old one that"s got his range established, we didn"t lay no great store by that neither. The Hahns took their bunch, and that"s all there was to it.
Next spring, though, we found a few more sleepers, and one day we came on a cow that had gone dead lame. That was usual, too, but Buck, who was with me, had somethin" on his mind. Finally he turned back and roped her, and threw her.
"Look here, Jed," says he, "what do you make of this?"
I could see where the hind legs below the hocks had been burned.
"Looks like somebody had roped her by the hind feet," says I.
"Might be," says he, "but her heels lame that way makes it look more like hobbles."
So we didn"t say nothin" more about that neither, until just by luck we came on another lame cow. We threw her, too.
"Well, what do you think of this one?" Buck Johnson asks me.
"The feet is pretty well tore up," says I, "and down to the quick, but I"ve seen them tore up just as bad on the rocks when they come down out of the mountains."
You sabe what that meant, don"t you? You see, a rustler will take a cow and hobble her, or lame her so she can"t follow, and then he"ll take her calf a long ways off and brand it with his iron. Of course, if we was to see a calf of one brand followin" of a cow with another, it would be just too easy to guess what had happened.
We rode on mighty thoughtful. There couldn"t be much doubt that cattle rustlers was at work. The sleepers they had ear-marked, hopin" that no one would discover the lack of a brand. Then, after the calf was weaned, and quit followin" of his mother, the rustler would brand it with his own iron, and change its ear-mark to match. It made a nice, easy way of gettin" together a bunch of cattle cheap.
But it was pretty hard to guess off-hand who the rustlers might be.
There were a lot of renegades down towards the Mexican line who made a raid once in a while, and a few oilers [2] livin" near had water holes in the foothills, and any amount of little cattle holders, like this T 0 outfit, and any of them wouldn"t shy very hard at a little sleeperin"
on the side. Buck Johnson told us all to watch out, and pa.s.sed the word quiet among the big owners to try and see whose cattle seemed to have too many calves for the number of cows.
The Texas outfit I"m tellin" you about had settled up above in this Double R canon where I showed you those natural corrals this morning.
They"d built them a "dobe, and cleared some land, and planted a few trees, and made an irrigated patch for alfalfa. n.o.body never rode over this way very much, "cause the country was most too rough for cattle, and our ranges lay farther to the southward. Now, however, we began to extend our ridin" a little.
I was down towards Dos Cabesas to look over the cattle there, and they used to send Larry up into the Double R country. One evenin" he took me to one side.
"Look here, Jed," says he, "I know you pretty well, and I"m not ashamed to say that I"m all new at this cattle business--in fact, I haven"t been at it more"n a year. What should be the proportion of cows to calves anyhow?"
"There ought to be about twice as many cows as there"re calves," I tells him.
"Then, with only about fifty head of grown cows, there ought not to be an equal number of yearlin"s?"
"I should say not," says I. "What are you drivin" at?"
"Nothin" yet," says he.
A few days later he tackled me again.
"Jed," says he, "I"m not good, like you fellows are, at knowin" one cow from another, but there"s a calf down there branded T 0 that I"d pretty near swear I saw with an X Y cow last month. I wish you could come down with me."
We got that fixed easy enough, and for the next month rammed around through this broken country lookin" for evidence. I saw enough to satisfy me to a moral certainty, but nothin" for a sheriff; and, of course, we couldn"t go shoot up a peaceful rancher on mere suspicion.
Finally, one day, we run on a four-months" calf all by himself, with the T 0 iron onto him--a mighty healthy lookin" calf, too.
"Wonder where HIS mother is!" says I.
"Maybe it"s a "dogie,"" says Larry Eagen--we calls calves whose mothers have died "dogies."
"No," says I, "I don"t hardly think so. A dogie is always under size and poor, and he"s layin" around water holes, and he always has a big, sway belly onto him. No, this is no dogie; and, if it"s an honest calf, there sure ought to be a T 0 cow around somewhere."
So we separated to have a good look. Larry rode up on the edge of a little rimrock. In a minute I saw his hoss jump back, dodgin" a rattlesnake or somethin", and then fall back out of sight. I jumped my hoss up there tur"ble quick, and looked over, expectin" to see nothin"
but mangled remains. It was only about fifteen foot down, but I couldn"t see bottom "count of some brush.
"Are you all right?" I yells.
"Yes, yes!" cries Larry, "but for the love of G.o.d, get down here as quick as you can."