from the hip at about two yards' range. Anyway, we decided we needed another marshal. Nothin' else was ever done, for the Vigilantes hadn't been formed, and your individual and decent citizen doesn't care to be marked by a gun of that stripe. Leastwise, unless he wants to go in for bad-man methods and do a little ambusheein' on his own account.
The point is, that these yere bad men are a low-down, miserable proposition, and plain, cold-blood murderers, willin' to wait for a sure thing, and without no compunctions whatsoever. The bad man takes you unawares, when you're sleepin', or talkin', or drinkin', or lookin' to see what for a day it's goin' to be, anyway. He don't give you no show, and sooner or later he's goin' to get you in the safest and easiest way for himself. There ain't no romance about that.
And, until you've seen a few men called out of their shacks for a friendly conversation, and shot when they happen to look away; or asked for a drink of water, and killed when they stoop to the spring; or potted from behind as they go into a room, it's pretty hard to believe that any man can he so plumb lackin' in fair play or pity or just natural humanity.
As you boys know, I come in from Texas to Buck Johnson's about ten year back. I had a pretty good mount of ponies that I knew, and I hated to let them go at prices they were offerin' then, so I made up my mind to ride across and bring them in with me. It wasn't so awful far, and I figured that I'd like to take in what New Mexico looked like anyway.
About down by Albuquerque I tracked up with another outfit headed my way. There was five of them, three men, and a woman, and a yearlin' baby. They had a dozen hosses, and that was about all I could see. There was only two packed, and no wagon. I suppose the whole outfit - pots, pans, and kettles - was worth five dollars. It was just supper when I run across them, and it didn't take more'n one look to discover that flour, coffee, sugar, and salt was all they carried. A yearlin' carcass, half-skinned, lay near, and the fry-pan was, full of meat.
'Howdy, strangers,' says I, ridin' up.
They nodded a little, but didn't say nothin'. My hosses fell to grazin', and I eased myself around in my saddle, and made a cigareet. The men was tall, lank fellows, with kind of sullen faces, and sly, shifty eyes; the woman was dirty and generally mussed up. I knowed that sort all right. Texas was gettin' too many fences for them. 'Havin' supper?' says I, cheerful.
One of 'em grunted 'Yes' at me; and, after a while, the biggest asked me very grudgin' if I wouldn't light and eat, I told them 'No,' that I was travellin' in the cool of the evenin'.
'You seem to have more meat than you need, though,' says I. 'I could use a little of that.'
'Help yourself,' says they. 'It's a maverick we come across.'
I took a steak, and noted that the hide had been mighty well cut to ribbons around the flanks and that the head was gone.
'Well,' says I to the carcass, 'No one's going to be able to swear whether you're a maverick or not, but I bet you knew the feel of a brandin' iron all right.'
I gave them a thank-you, and climbed on again. My hosses acted some surprised at bein' gathered up again, but I couldn't help that.
'It looks like a plumb imposition, cavallos,' says I to them, 'after an all-day, but you sure don't want to join that outfit any more than I do the angels, and if we camp here we're likely to do both.'
I didn't see them any more after that until I'd hit the Lazy Y, and had started in runnin' cattle in the Soda Springs Valley. Larry Eagen and I rode together those days, and that's how I got to know him pretty well. One day, over in the Elm Flat, we ran smack on this Texas outfit again, headed north. This time I was on my own range, and I knew where I stood, so I could show a little more curiosity in the case.
'Well, you got this far,' says I.
'Yes,' says they.
'Where you headed?'
'Over towards the hills.'
'What to do?'
'Make a ranch, raise some truck; perhaps buy a few cows.'
They went on.
'Truck' says I to Larry, 'is fine prospects in this country.'
He sat on his horse looking after them.
'I'm sorry for them' says he. 'It must he almighty hard scratchin'.'
Well, we rode the range for upwards of two year. In that time we saw our Texas friends - name of Hahn - two or three times in Willets, and heard of them off and on. They bought an old brand of Steve McWilliams for seventy-five dollars, carryin' six or eight head of cows. After that, from time to time, we heard of them buying more - two or three head from one man, and two or three from another. They branded them all with that McWilliams iron - T 0 - so, pretty soon, we began to see the cattle on the range.
Now, a good cattleman knows cattle just as well as you know people, and he can tell them about as far off. Horned critters look alike to you, but even in a country supportin' a good many thousand head, a man used to the business can recognise most every individual as far as he can see him. Some is better than others at it. I suppose you really have to be brought up to it. So we boys at the Lazy Y noted all the cattle with the new T 0, and could estimate pretty close that the Hahn outfit might own, maybe, thirty-five head all told.
That was all very well, and nobody had any kick comin'. Then one day in the spring, we came across our first 'sleeper.'
What's a sleeper? A sleeper is a calf that has been ear-marked, but not branded. Every owner has a certain brand, as you know, and then he crops and slits the ears in a certain way, too. In that manner he don't have to look at the brand, except to corroborate the ears; and, as the critter generally sticks his ears up inquirin'-like to anyone ridin' up, it's easy to know the brand without lookin' at it, merely from the ear-marks. Once in a great while, when a man comes across an unbranded calf, and it ain't handy to build a fire, he just ear-marks it and let's the brandin' go till later. But it isn't done often, and our outfit had strict orders never to make sleepers.
Well, one day in the spring, as I say, Larry and me was ridin', when we came across a Lazy Y cow and calf. The little fellow was ear-marked all right, so we rode on, and never would have discovered nothin' if a bush rabbit hadn't jumped and scared the calf right across in front of our hosses. Then we couldn't help but see that there wasn't no brand.
Of course we roped him and put the iron on him. I took the chance to look at his ears,, and saw that the marking had been done quite recent, so when we got in that night I reported to Buck Johnson that one of the punchers was gettin' lazy and sleeperin'. Naturally he went after the man who had done it; but every puncher swore up and down, and back and across, that he'd branded every calf he'd had a rope on that spring. We put it down that someone was lyin', and let it go at that.
And then, about a week later, one of the other boys reported a Triangle-H sleeper. The Triangle-H was the Goodrich brand, so we didn't have nothin' to do with that. Some of them might be sleeperin' for all we knew. Three other cases of the same kind we happened across that same spring.
So far, so good. Sleepers runnin' in such numbers was a little astonishin', but nothin' suspicious. Cattle did well that summer, and when we come to round up in the fall, we cut out maybe a dozen of those T 0 cattle that had strayed out of that Hahn country. Of the dozen there was five grown cows, and seven yearlin's.
'My Lord, Jed,' says Buck to me, 'they's a heap of these youngsters comin' over our way.'
But still, as a young critter is more apt to stray than an old one that's got his range established, we didn't lay no great store by that neither. The Hahns took their bunch, and that's all there was to it.
Next spring, though, we found a few more sleepers, and one day we came on a cow that had gone dead lame. That was usual, too, but Buck, who was with me, had somethin' on his mind. Finally he turned back and roped her, and threw her.
'Look here, Jed,' says he, 'what do you make of this?'
I could see where the hind legs below the hocks had been burned.
'Looks like somebody had roped her by the hind feet,' says I.
'Might be,' says he, 'but her heels lame that way makes it look more like hobbles.'
So we didn't say nothin' more about that neither, until just by luck we came on another lame cow. We threw her, too.
'Well, what do you think of this one?' Buck Johnson asks me.
