s own
range, some thirty miles away; and he must have driven them at a great
pace, as when we followed next morning it was quite that distance before
we saw any sign of them. The story is told of M---- himself who one dark
night saw what he supposed was one of these depredators, shot it with
his rifle, and found he had killed the only highly-bred stud he
possessed.

At last we started homewards, meaning to separate the properties of the
two claimants; but M---- owned the only proper horse-separating corral
in the whole country, and from obstinacy and cussedness would not let us
use it. Here was a pretty go! To drive to any other corral would mean
taking M----'s horses off their proper range and the law forbade us
doing so, and he knew it. So we were compelled to do what I reckon had
never been done or attempted before--separate the horses on the open
prairie! First we cut out and pushed some half a mile away all mares and
young unbranded colts to which the Company's title could not be
disputed; also the stallions and geldings of like nature; then came the
critical and difficult part of the operation--to cut out and separate
mothers from their unbranded colts, and branded colts, some even one or
two years old, from their mothers. And not only cut them out, but hold
them separate for a full couple of hours! No one can know what this
means but one who has tried it. I had done a fair amount of yearling
steer-cutting; but hard as that work is, it is nothing compared with the
separating of colts from their dams. The only way was to suddenly scare
the colt out and race him as hard as you could go to the other bunch.
But if by bad luck its mother gave a whinny, back the colt would come
like a shot bullet, and nothing on earth could stop him. Fortunately I
had kept a fresh horse in reserve, a very fine fast and active cutting
pony. I rode him myself, and but for him we would never have
accomplished what we did. When we got through our best horses were all
played out. But it was absolutely necessary to move our own mare band to
the nearest corral at Fort Sumner, a distance of thirty miles, which we
did that evening. To night-herd them would have been impossible. The
title to many of these colts, branded and unbranded, was very much mixed
up, and indeed still in the Courts. Nevertheless I prepared next morning
to brand them for the Company. The fire was ready, the irons nearly hot,
when up drove M----in a furious rage. I do not th