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That's what you call it when the former owner puts his brand in a different place to show that his ownership has ceased, isn't it? Seabeck puts his brand upside down " "I know Seabeck's vent," Billy Louise cut in. There was no need of letting such a fine fellow display more ignorance on the subject. "And I should have noticed it if I had seen four calves vented fresh and not rebranded.
A big man froze me off my land, and some one rebranded my few head of stock. Law! we don't count much on that; it's often the biggest rascals corral the offices, and we just laid for them with the rifle. They were too many for us and this is the end of it."
"Don't mistake me: I take my glass of lager when I feel like it there's some right here in the house but, if it's needful, I can do without. I'm not going into this thing to help you in preaching to whisky-tanks and toughs it's the law I'm standing for. If what you suspect is going on, we'll soon have our colts rebranded and our calves missing. We have got to clean out Beamish's crowd."
"You throw that gun on the bed." Here's a pencil." He drew one from under his pillow and tossed it toward her. "Now you write the truth about all this rustling. It's a bigger thing than shows right in this neighborhood. I know that. And I know too that Foxy has been pulling down some on the side. He never paid for all the stock that's running around vented and rebranded MK. I've got that sized up.
Morrow gave me a bill of sale from you calling for a hundred head of Three Bar she-stock, rebranded Triangle on the hip." Slade nodded shortly. "I gave Morrow that for two years' back pay when he quit. He could sell out to you if he liked." "And now I want to sell out," Carp said. "And be gone from here." "How many head have you got?" Slade asked. "Three hundred head," Carp stated.
"Wait a minute!" drawled Charleton.. "It sure-gawd is your bull, Nelson. Scott ran it up to Mountain City, rebranded it there, and brought it back here in the spring." "Why, you traitor!" roared Scott. "You staged the whole play, and I'll bet you staged this with your traps." "I never let a debt go unpaid," chuckled Charleton. "Aw, come off, Scott!" cried John Spencer.
And I was awfully snippy about those calves he lost." She began to wonder, then, about those calves. Vented and not rebranded, they would be easy game for any man who first got his own brand on them. She meant to get a description of them when she saw Charlie again it was like his innocence to forget the most essential details! and she meant to keep her eyes open.
I find also," he went on in his somewhat precise voice that had earned him the nickname of "Deacon" among his punchers, "that there are more young stock vented and rebranded than I er sold your nephew. Fourteen head, to be exact. With the cattle you tell me which were mm-m disposed of last night, that would make twenty-one head of stock for which mm-mm I take it you are willing to pay."
Sometimes the affair came to an issue at this point. Chisum, who was an old-timer in the country and had fought Comanches all along the river before others had dared to drive up the trail, produced a bill of sale for sixty rebranded cattle which the Texan's vaqueros had cut out. John Slaughter allowed his tight lips to relax in a grim smile.
But with the evidence of those rebranded cattle, and the testimony of two men, together with the damning testimony of his past! Ward lifted his head and stared heavily at the pine slope before him. He could not go to Seabeck and tell him anything. In the black hour of that ride, he could not think of anything that he could do that would save him.