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A big, fat, full-grown, long-horned, four-year-old roll! That's what a feller wants to do 'Frisco right. Nothin' less. But whar's it comin' from, an' when? S'pose I brands a few mavericks an' gits a start on my own? No use, Kit; that's too slow! Time you got a proper roll you'd be so old the skeeters wouldn't even bite you, to say nothin' of a gal a-kissin' of you.
It was jest like you was ridin' the edge of some steep and bad goin' and a maverick takes over and you know you got no business to put your hoss down after him. But your saddle is a-creakin' and a-sayin', 'Go git 'im! and you jest nacherally go. Kin you tell me what makes a fella do the like of that?" "I dunno, Pete. But chasin' mavericks is different." "Mebby. But the idee is jest the same."
I have never had any trouble with them, and they had two purposes in calling. One was to give me a little advice, and the other to secure information." "Their advice, I suppose, was that you cast in your fortunes with them, and take up the business of branding mavericks and altering other brands."
She was given a decent burial in the miners' little cemetery at the Y, and the house which for so many years had been called by their name, knew the Mavericks no more. Kind hands laid little Bull-dog under the murmuring pines on the mountain side, near Morgan's last resting place, but in the hearts, of Houston and his friends, his memory could never grow dim.
They did not act in concert, and since the laws of the State require every brand to be registered, in order to establish ownership, the rustlers had as much right to their own brands as the legitimate cowmen. As long as the mavericks were not openly branded there was no means of stopping them. It happens quite often that the round-up fails to gather in all the cattle.
Yes, the Mavericks had fraternized with the native troops. Who then was the agent among the latter that had blindly wrought with Mulcahy so well? An officer slunk, almost ran, from the mess to a barrack. He was mobbed by the infuriated soldiery, who closed round but did not kill him, for he fought his way to shelter, flying for the life. Mulcahy could have wept with pure joy and thankfulness.
"From what I heard, this Whistling Dan simply cut loose and raised the devil more general than a dozen mavericks corralled with a bunch of yearlings." "Cutting loose is right," said Haines. "It wasn't a pleasant thing to watch. One moment he was about as dangerous as an eighteen-year-old girl. The next second he was like a panther that's tasted blood. That's all there was to it, Terry.
Stray unbranded cattle over a year old are known as "mavericks," and become the property of any person branding them. Having cut out the stock for the drive, a road mark, a supplementary brand for identification burned into the hides. The long march then begins. A start is made usually in the late spring to reach the railroad in the fall. The drive is as orderly as the march of an army.
By this time the attention of the Sergeant of the Guard was attracted, and he brought an energetic gun-barrel to the task of restoring the reign of law and order. "How in thunder'd you come to git into a fracas with that herd o' mavericks, Si?" asked Shorty, in a tone of rebuke, as the Sergeant was rounding up the crowd and trying to get at who was to blame.
If on the round-up an animal was passed by, the following year it would appear as an unbranded yearling, and was then called a maverick. By the custom of the country these mavericks were branded with the brand of the man on whose range they were found. One day I was riding the range with a newly hired cowboy, and we came upon a maverick.
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