e stockyards in Chicago and Kansas City,
charged with the finding of cattle stolen on the range and shipped with
or without clean brands. In short, there had now grown up an armed and
legal warfare between the cow men themselves--in the first place very
large-handed thieves--and the rustlers and "little fellows" who were
accused of being too liberal with their brand blotching. The prosecution
of these men was undertaken with something of the old vigor that
characterized the pursuit of horse thieves, with this difference, that,
whereas all the world had hated a horse thief as a common enemy, very
much of the world found excuse for the so-called rustler, who was known
to be doing only what his accusers had done before him.

There may be a certain interest attaching to the methods of the range
riders of this day, and those who care to go into the history of the
cattle trade in its early days are referred to the work earlier quoted,
where the matter is more fully covered.[F] Brief reference will suffice
here.

[Footnote F: "The Story of the Cowboy." By E. Hough. D. Appleton & Co.]

The rustler might brand with his own straight running-iron, as it were,
writing over again the brand he wished to change; but this was clumsy
and apt to be detected, for the new wound would slough and look
suspicious. A piece of red-hot hay wire or telegraph wire was a better
tool, for this could be twisted into the shape of almost any registered
brand, and it would so cunningly connect the edges of both that the
whole mark would seem to be one scar of the same date. The fresh burn
fitted in with the older one so that it was impossible to swear that it
was not a part of the first brand mark. Yet another way of softening a
fresh and fraudulent brand was to brand through a wet blanket with a
heavy iron, which thus left a wound deep enough, but not apt to slough,
and so betray a brand done long after the round-up, and hence subject to
scrutiny.

As to the ways in which brands were altered in their lines, these were
many and most ingenious. A sample page will be sufficient to show the
possibilities of the art by which the rustler set over to his own herds
on the free range the cows of his far-away neighbor, whom, perhaps, he
did not love as himself. The list on the opposite page is taken from
"The Story of the Cowboy."

Such, then, was the burglar of the range, the rustler, to whom most of
the mysterious and untraceable crimes were ascribed. Suc