cattlemen. The ranches within twenty or thirty miles of the border,
perhaps, suffered more from the stampeders than from the small ranchers,
but those on the northern ranges had constantly to cope with the
activities of dishonest cattlemen who owned considerably more calves
than they had cows, as a rule. The difficulty was to prove that these
calves had been stolen.

It was no difficult thing to steal cattle successfully, providing the
rustler exercised ordinary caution. The method most in favor among the
rustlers was as follows: For some weeks the rustler would ride the
range, noting where cows with unbranded calves were grazing. Then, when
he had ascertained that no cowboys from neighboring ranches were riding
that way, he would drive these cows and their calves into one of the
secluded and natural corrals with which the range abounds, rope the
calves, brand them with his own brand, hobble and sometimes kill the
mother cows to prevent them following their offspring, and drive the
latter to his home corral, where in the course of a few weeks they would
forget their mothers and be successfully weaned. They would then be
turned out to graze on the Range. Sometimes when the rustler did not
kill the mother cow the calf proved not to have been successfully
weaned, and went back to its mother--the worst possible advertisement of
the rustler's dirty work. Generally, therefore, the mother cow was
killed, and little trace left of the crime, for the coyotes speedily
cleaned flesh, brand and all from the bones of the slain animal. The
motto of most of these rustlers was: "A dead cow tells no tales!"

[Illustration: CADY AND HIS THIRD FAMILY, 1915]

Another method of the rustlers was to adopt a brand much like that of a
big ranch near by, and to over-brand the cattle. For instance, a big
ranch with thousands of cattle owns the brand Cross-Bar (X--). The
rustler adopts the brand Cross L (XL) and by the addition of a vertical
mark to the bar in the first brand completely changes the brand. It was
always a puzzle for the ranchers to find brands that would not be easily
changed. Rustlers engaged in this work invariably took grave chances,
for a good puncher could tell a changed brand in an instant, and often
knew every cow belonging to his ranch by sight, without looking at the
brand. When one of these expert cowboys found a suspicious brand he lost
no time hunting up proof, and if he found that there had actually been
dirty work, t