g one of glorious freedom and plenty,
the baronial day of the great and once unexhausted West.

Now the _venta_, or brand indicating the sale of an animal to another
owner, began to complicate matters to a certain extent. A purchaser
could put his own _fierro_ brand on a cow, and that meant that he now
owned it. But then some suspicious soul asked, "How shall we know whence
such and such cows came, and how tell whether or not this man did not
steal them outright from his neighbor's herd and put his own brand on
them?" Here was the origin of the bill of sale, and also of the counter
brand or "vent brand," as it is known upon the upper ranges. The owner
duplicated his recorded brand upon another recorded part of the animal,
and this meant his deed of conveyance, when taken together with the bill
of sale over his commercial signature. Of course, several conveyances
would leave the hide much scarred and hard to read; and, as there were
"road brands" also used to protect the property while in transit from
the South to the North or from the range to the market, the reading of
the brands and the determination of ownership of the animal might be,
and very often was, a nice matter, and one not always settled without
argument; and argument in the West often meant bloodshed in those days.
Some hard men started up in trade near the old cattle trails, and made a
business of disputing brands with the trail drivers. Sometimes they
made good their claims, and sometimes they did not. There were graves
almost in line from Texas to Montana.

It is now perfectly easy to see what a wide and fertile field was here
offered to men who did not want to observe the law. Here was property to
be had without work, and property whose title could easily be called
into question; whose ownership was a matter of testimony and record, to
be sure, but testimony which could be erased or altered by the same
means which once constituted it a record and sign. The brand was made
with an iron, and it could be changed with an iron. A large and
profitable industry arose in changing these brands. The rustler,
brand-burner or brand-blotcher now became one of the new Western
characters, and a new sort of bad-manism had its birth.

"It is very easy to see how temptation was offered to the cow thief and
'brand blotter.' Here were all these wild cattle running loose over the
country. The imprint of a hot iron on a hide made the creature the
property of the brander, pr