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Updated: June 11, 2025
One day in the summer of 1891, Dave Drew, our foreman, Tedrow, one of the cowboys, and myself, made a trip into East Canon in the Dos Cabezas mountains, in search of some large unbranded calves which had been seen running there. We rode leisurely along for some time and passed several small bunches of cattle without finding what we were looking for.
If they do spot me, and get foolish enough to think that I got time to listen to any arguments against my rights as a free and unbranded citizen of the big range, why, you drop and roll behind the first sand-hill that is a foot high. After the smoke blows away, I'll be dee-lighted to accept your congratulations." "I guess you mean business," said Winthrop, becoming serious.
We needed the cranks to swing the balance of power. They were all herded, ready to follow the bell. Needed a shepherd. Didn't know which one of the old parties to run to. It's a crime in politics not to grab in a bunch of the unbranded when it's that size. We put prohibition into the platform and carried the election.
There are many large herds of semi-wild bullocks on the mountains, branded cattle, as distinguished from the wild or unbranded, and when they are wanted for food, a number of experienced vaccheros on strong shod horses go up, and drive forty or fifty of them down. We met such a drove bound for Hilo, with one or two men in front and others at the sides and behind, uttering loud shouts.
"You poor little girl! ... Now Lucy, let me tell you something funny. This will stagger you. Because it's gospel truth, I swear.... Rustler you call your dad. What's that? It means a cowman who has appropriated cattle not his own. He has driven off unbranded stock and branded it. There's no difference. Lucy, my dad rustled cattle. So have all the ranchers I ever rode for."
There the herd had been held while the neighboring cattlemen engaged in the tedious task of "cutting out" which meant that each cattle owner took from the herd the steers that bore his "brand," with the addition of a proportionate number of unbranded steers, and calves, designated as "mavericks." Then the neighboring outfit had driven their stock home. "It was a big round-up, Kane," said Mrs.
On asking Pete for an explanation: "Oh," he said, "the mammies were shore in the herd" and he "warn't no cow thief," but on my persisting he finally exclaimed, "Well, take your damned caves and let's get on," or some such words; so I started in and cut out nearly twenty big unbranded calves, which certainly did not have their mothers with them; which, therefore, were clearly not his property; were probably ours, but whether they were or not did not matter to me.
"An' Lord! but won't it be fun! 'Bout as much fun, I reckon, as doin' 'Frisco. Won't them tenderfeet beller when they hears the guns a-crackin' an' the boys a-yellin'! Le' see; wonder who I'd better take along?" Scruples? Kit had none. Bred and raised a merry freebooter on the unbranded spoils of the cattle range, it was no long step from stealing a maverick to holding up a train.
Not content with this source of revenue, he became a farmer of the diezmo or tithes, appropriated to himself the mostrenco or unbranded cattle, by which means he speedily became proprietor of many thousand head, even established a monopoly of beef in his own favor, and woe to the luckless fool who should dare to infringe upon the terrible barbarian's prerogative!
One rancher would vie with his neighbor in generosity in the matter of unbranded calves. Haggling would have been held contemptible. On the lower range in the old times no one cared much about a cow. Why should one do so? There was no market for cows no one who wished to buy them.
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