t hesitation. "He was very like the rest
of us--only a little more reckless and a little more partisan, that's all.
He was a dashing horseman and a dead-shot, and so, naturally, a leader of
these daredevils. He was popular with both sides of the controversy up to
the very moment when he went South to lead the invaders against the
rustlers."

"What was it all about? I never understood it. What were they fighting
about?"

"In a sense, it was all very simple. You see, Uncle Sam, in his careless,
do-nothing way, has always left his range to whomever got there first, and
that was the cattle-man. At first there was grass enough for us all, but
as we built sheds and corrals about watering-places we came to claim
_rights_ on the range. We usually secured by fraud homesteads in the
sections containing water, and so, gun in hand, 'stood off' the man who
came after. Gradually, after much shooting and lawing, we parcelled out
the range and settled down covering practically the whole State. Our
adjustments were not perfect, but our system was working smoothly for us
who controlled the range. We had convinced ourselves, and pretty nearly
everybody else, that the State was only fit for cattle-grazing, and that
we were the most competent grazers; furthermore, we were in possession,
and no man could come in without our consent.

"However, a very curious law of our own making was our undoing. Of course
the 'nester' or 'punkin roller,' as we contemptuously called the small
farmer, began sifting in here and there in spite of our guns, but he was
only a mosquito bite in comparison with the trouble which our cow-punchers
stirred up. Perhaps you remember enough about the business to know that an
unbranded yearling calf without its mother is called a maverick?"

"Yes, I remember that. It belongs to the man who finds him, and brands
him."

"Precisely. Now that law worked very nicely so long as the poor cowboy was
willing to catch and brand him for his employer, but it proved a 'joker'
when he woke up and said to his fellows: 'Why brand these mavericks at
five dollars per head for this or that outfit when the law says it belongs
to the man who finds him?'"

Lee Virginia looked up brightly. "That seems right to me!"

"Ah yes; but wait. We cattle-men had large herds, and the _probabilities_
were that the calf belonged to some one of us; whereas, the cowboy, having
no herd at all, _knew_ the maverick belonged to some one's herd. True, the
l