rand after it has been applied; and, as is well known, the
cow's remedy for an injury, like that of a dog, is always to lick it. As
to the ear-slitting, used by most ranches as a check on their brands, it
may be said that if the human ear is somewhat callous to pain--as it
is--the cow's ear is even more so. One may slice a cow's ear in half in
a certain way and she will feel only slight pain, not sufficient to make
her give voice. The slitting of a cow's ear draws very little blood.

While I am on the subject,--it was amusing to note the unbounded
astonishment of the cattlemen of Arizona a few years ago when some
altruistic society of Boston came forward with a brilliant idea that was
to abolish the cruelty of branding cows entirely. What was the idea? Oh,
they were going to hang a collar around the cow's neck, with a brass tag
on it to tell the name of the owner. Or, if that wasn't feasible, they
thought that a simple ring and tag put through the cow's ear-lobe would
prove eminently satisfactory! The feelings of the cowboys, when told
that they would be required to dismount from their horses, walk up to
each cow in turn and politely examine her tag, perhaps with the aid of
spectacles, may be better imagined than described. It is sufficient to
say that the New England society's idea never got further than
Massachusetts, if it was, indeed, used there, which is doubtful.

The brand is absolutely necessary as long as there is an open range, and
the abolishment of the open range will mean the abandonment of the
cow-ranch. At the time I am speaking of the whole of the Territory of
Arizona was one vast open range, over the grassy portions of which
cattle belonging to hundreds of different ranches roamed at will. Most
of the big ranches employed a few cowboys the year around to keep the
fences in repair and to prevent cows from straying too far from the home
range. The home range was generally anywhere within a twenty-mile radius
of the ranch house.

The ear-slit was first found necessary because of the activities of the
rustlers. There were two kinds of these gentry--the kind that owned
ranches and passed themselves off as honest ranchers, and the open
outlaws, who drove off cattle by first stampeding them in the Indian
manner, rushed them across the international line and then sold them to
none too scrupulous Mexican ranchers. Of the two it is difficult to say
which was the most dangerous or the most reviled by the honest