ne and trim
her good? But I told him I'm cinched for hell, anyway, and don't have to
make it tighter by torturing poor dumb brutes.

"That's what it amounted to. Having got Angora chaps and cowboy hats for
herself and offsprings, what do they do but get on ponies and chase
this herd all over creation, whirling their ropes, yelling, shooting in
the air--just like you see on any well-conducted ranch. Once in a while
the old lady herself, being a demon rider, would rope an animal and
fetch it down; but brother and sister was very careful not to tangle
their own ropes on anything. They didn't shoot their guns with any
proper spirit, either; and when they tried to yip like cowboys they
sounded like rabbits. And brother having to smoke brown-paper
cigarettes, which he hated like poison and had trouble in rolling!

"Mother could roll 'em, all right--do it with one hand. And she urged
sister to; but sister rebelled for once. The old lady admitted this was
due to a fault in her early training. It seems her grandmother had been
one of the old-fashioned sort; and, having studied the modern young
woman of society in Boston and New York, she'd promised sister a string
of pearls if she didn't either smoke or drink till her twenty-first
birthday. Sister had not only won the pearls but had come on to
twenty-eight without being like other young girls of the day, and wasn't
going to begin now. So ma and brother had to do all the smoking.

"After a fine morning's run following the steers they'd like as not have
a little branding in the afternoon, the old-fashioned kind that ain't
done in the higher ranch circles any more, where a couple of silly
punchers rope an animal fore and aft and throw it, thereby setting it
back at least four months in its growth. The old lady was puzzled again
by me having my branding done in a chute, where the poor things ain't
worried more than is necessary. I bet she thought I was a short sport,
not doing a thing on my place that would look well in a moving picture.
She got a lot of ripping sport out of this branding. Made no difference
if they was already branded, they got it again; she'd brand 'em over and
over. Two or three of that herd got it so often that they looked like
these leather suitcases parties bring back from Europe stuck all over
with hotel labels.

"Well, this branch of sport lasted quite a while, with them steers
developing speed every day till they got too fast for any one but the
old lad