all-pox, I had been a frequent visitor at the ranch,
business of one nature and another calling me there. But in this last
visit, the wonderful changes which two decades had wrought in the
country visibly impressed me, and I detected a note of decay in the
old ranch. A railroad had been built, passing within ten miles of the
western boundary line of the Ganso grant. The Las Palomas range had
been fenced, several large tracts of land being added after my severing
active connections with the ranch. Even the cattle, in spite of all the
efforts made for their improvement, were not so good as in the old days
of the open range, or before there was a strand of wire between the
Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. But the alterations in the country were
nothing compared to the changes in my old master and mistress. Uncle
Lance was nearing his eighty-second birthday, physically feeble, but
mentally as active as the first morning of our long acquaintance. Miss
Jean, over twenty years the junior of the ranchero, had mellowed into a
ripeness consistent with her days, and in all my aimless wanderings
I never saw a brother and sister of their ages more devoted to, or
dependent on each other.

On the occasion of this past visit, I was in the employ of a live-stock
commission firm. A member of our house expected to attend the cattle
convention at Forth Worth in the near future, and I had been sent into
the range sections to note the conditions of stock and solicit for my
employers. The spring before, our firm had placed sixty thousand cattle
for customers. Demand continued, and the house had inquiry sufficient to
justify them in sending me out to secure, of all ages, not less than a
hundred thousand steer cattle. And thus once more I found myself a guest
of Las Palomos.

"Don't talk cattle to me," said Uncle Lance, when I mentioned my
business; "go to June--he'll give you the ages and numbers. And whatever
you do, Tom, don't oversell us, for wire fences have cut us off, until
it seems like old friends don't want to neighbor any more. In the days
of the open range, I used to sell every hoof I had a chance to, but
since then things have changed. Why, only last year a jury indicted a
young man below here on the river for mavericking a yearling, and sent
him to Huntsville for five years. That's a fair sample of these modern
days. There isn't a cowman in Texas to-day who amounts to a pinch of
snuff, but got his start the same way, but if a poor f