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He threw his rope, and threw again, with the skill which long practice in roping mavericks had given him; and gently, gently, with a success which seemed miraculous even to "Snow-shoe" Brown, he had drawn the bobbing cradle gradually to shore. Inside, a baby smiled up at him with the bluest eyes he ever had seen.
When the road herd had been selected and the mavericks in the round-up branded with the Slash Lazy D or whatever other brand seemed fair considering the physical characteristics of the animal and the group with which it was ranging, Harshaw had the cattle moved up the river a couple of miles to a valley of good grass.
Then the colonel of the Mavericks, reading his newspaper diligently, and scenting Frontier trouble from afar, posted to the army headquarters and pled with the Commander-in-chief for certain privileges, to be granted under certain contingencies; which contingencies came about only a week later, when the annual little war on the border developed itself and the colonel returned to carry the good news to the Mavericks.
As I withdraws, he hangs his rifle on his saddle ag'in, picks up his runnin' iron all' goes back content an' all serene to his maverick." "What is a maverick?" I asked, interrupting my friend in the flow of his narration. "Why, I s'posed," he remarked, a bit testily at being halted, "as how even shorthorns an' tenderfeet knows what mavericks is.
Counting both bunches, the strays numbered nearly a thousand head, and cattle bearing no tally-mark fully as many more, while the remainder were mavericks and would have paid the expenses of the outfit for the past four months. I now had over thirty thousand cattle on the Clear Fork, holding them in eleven brands, but decided thereafter to run all the increase in the original "44."
It was expedient to hold a large reserve and wait for the psychological moment that was being prepared by the shrieking shrapnel. Therefore the Mavericks lay down in open order on the brow of a hill to watch the play till their call should come.
But the lure of the great outdoors was so strongly rooted in their natures that it may be readily understood they could not remain inactive long; but would soon be galloping over the wide reaches, following the cowboys as they rounded up the herds, branded mavericks and young cattle, and picked out those intended for shipment to the great marts at Kansas City.
The leader grinned malignantly and spoke to his companion, without for an instant turning his gaze. "Now, Bill," he growled, "I've got these mavericks covered. Pass round the hat. These gents and ladies," he leered "will hand over their coin and jewelry, and God help the one who tries to renig. He won't never need money no more."
At even the Mavericks might have been mistaken for mutineers by one so unversed in their natures as Mulcahy. At dawn a girls' school might have learned deportment from them.
He's a rustler an' a hoss-thief, an' a murderer who, as he says, has planted forty-two, not countin' Injuns, Mexicans an' mavericks. He oughter be massacred; an' as it's come your way, why prance in an' spill his blood. This camp'll justify an' applaud the play. "'But I can't fight none, says the Signal party. 'It's ag'in the rooles an' reg'lations of the army.
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