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And whatever you do, Tom, don't oversell us, for wire fences have cut us off, until it seems like old friends don't want to neighbor any more. In the days of the open range, I used to sell every hoof I had a chance to, but since then things have changed. Why, only last year a jury indicted a young man below here on the river for mavericking a yearling, and sent him to Huntsville for five years.
From the results of my mavericking and my trading operations I had been enabled to send two thousand young steers up the trail the spring before, and the proceeds from their sale had lifted me from the slough of despond and set me on a financial rock. Therefore my regard for the eternal cow was enhancing. Home prices were again ten dollars for two-year-old steers and twelve for threes.
On arriving at the Edwards ranch, we halted a few days in order to gather the fruits of my first mavericking. The fall work was nearly finished, and having previously made arrangements to put my brand under herd, we received two hundred and fifty more, with seventy-five thrifty calves, before proceeding on to the new ranch on the Clear Fork.
In '66 it was nearly as bad, there being more cattle; but it didn't hurt me very much, as mavericking had been good for some time before and for several years following, and I soon recovered my losses. The first one lasted three years, and had there been as many cattle as there are now, half of them would have died.
Forty odd calves had been branded as the increase of my mavericking of the year before, and, still basking in the smile of fortune, I found a letter awaiting me from Major Seth Mabry of Austin, anxious to engage my services as a trail foreman for the coming summer.
He recalled that Elsie had said something about mavericking and brand-blotting by the Apaches. Unless Farley and the girls were conniving with Cochise, the Indian could not be carrying on any work in the Hole unknown to Slade, and he had just intimated that brand-blotting was some kind of harmful or criminal action. At the supper table Slade returned to his jovial praises of Elsie as a cook.
"And would he know that you had committed suicide when you ran this place down and came here?" asked Leroy, with silken cruelty. "Well, he ought to know it. The fact is, Mr. Leroy, that it hadn't penetrated my think-tank that this was your hacienda when I came mavericking in." "Just out riding for your health?" "Not exactly. I was looking for Miss Mackenzie.
I ought to have posted you, Tom, but I don't suppose it would have done any good. Brought your fiddle with you, I see. That's good. I expect the old lady read my title clear to you." My brain must have been under a haze, for I repeated every charge she had made against him, not even sparing the accusation that he had remained out of the army and added to his brand by mavericking cattle.
She heard again the voices of excited men arguing over and over the question of "mavericking," and she saw her father as he rode up to the house that last day before he went South. Redfield went on. "The whole plan as developed was silly, and I wonder still that Ed Wetherford, who knew 'the nester' and the cowboy so well, should have lent his aid to it.
It was some little time before the trail of the fugitives was picked up, but once discovered they were over hauled rapidly. "We're not going to get out without swapping lead," McWilliams admitted anxiously. "I wisht y'u wasn't hampered with that load, but I reckon I'll have to try to stand them off alone." "We bucked into a slice of luck when I opened on his bronc mavericking around alone.
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