lous of his position (as foreman), resenting interference. It is a
good characteristic, this desire for independence, if also accompanied
by no fear of responsibility; and on these lines my ranch was run. I
allowed him great independence, never interfered so long as he carried
out general orders and "ran straight"; but I also put on him full
responsibility. More than that, I allowed him to run his own small bunch
of cattle, some hundred head, in my pasture, and gave him the use of my
bulls; his grass, salt and water cost him nothing. This was a very
unusual policy to adopt. But the idea was that it would thus be as much
his interest as mine to see the fences kept up and in good repair, to
see that the windmills and wells were kept in order, that the cattle
had salt, were not stolen, etc., and prairie fires guarded against.
Well, it all turned out right. My presence at the ranch during a year
would not perhaps amount to a month of days; I could live in Denver, San
Francisco or Mexico, and only come to the place at round-ups and
branding-times. I do not think that a calf was ever stolen from me. The
fact was I knew cattle in general and my own cattle in particular so
well (and he knew it) that he had no opportunity, and perhaps was afraid
to take advantage of me.

It must be here mentioned that on selling out, and in tallying my cattle
over to the buyer, the count was disappointingly short; not nearly so
short as the Scotch Company's cattle, it is true, but still, considering
that my cattle were inside a good fence, were well looked after, the
huge calf crop and apparently small death loss, there was a shortage.
Then there is no wonder at the greater shortage of the Company's cattle,
where almost no care could be taken of them, where the calf tallies were
in the hands of, and returned by, the foremen of other outfits, where
the range was overstocked, the boggy rivers a death-trap, where wolves
and thieves had free range, and where blackleg, mismothering of calves
and loco made a big hole in the number of yearlings. In my pasture were
also wolves and blackleg; and the loss in calves by these, difficult to
detect, is invariably greater than suspected.

Only one case of cattle-thieving occurred at my own ranch and I lost
nothing by it. Two men stopped in for supper one day; they were
strangers, but of course received every attention. They rode on
afterwards, coolly picked up some thirty head of my cattle, drove them
all nig