0, and could estimate pretty close that the Hahn outfit
might own, maybe, thirty-five head all told.

That was all very well, and nobody 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."