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If the fellow had branded her for sin, why, she had suffered overmuch. Prosper admitted, that, unbranded as to skin, he was scarcely fit to put his dirty civilized soul under her clean and savage foot. Was the big, rosy chap her lover? She had spoken of a quarrel between him and Pierre?
Thus there was one composed entirely of cows and unbranded calves; another of strays from neighbouring ranges; and a third of the steers considered worthy of being made into beef cattle. In due time the main herd was turned back on the range; the strays had been cut out and driven home by the cowboys of their several owners; the calves had been duly branded and sent out on the desert to grow up.
Then the unbranded calves would always follow their mothers, and the herdsmen could easily separate the young stock, as well as that already branded, from those belonging on other ranches. Although it was a bit out of her direct course, Frances pulled Molly's head in the direction of the branding fire.
Was she afraid of rousing regret and of awakening painful memories. * Cleanskin Unbranded calf. McKeith's absence was longer than he had expected. Lady Bridget heard from Harry the Blower on his return round with the down-going mails that the little bush township of Tunumburra had become the scene of a convocation of Pastoralists called to concert measures against the threatened strike.
Well, I run on to an unbranded Pot-Hook-S calf that looks good to me, but I don't dare put my iron on him because he's too young to leave his mother. If I let him go until he is older, some of Jim Reid's riders will brand him, and, you see, I never could work over the Pot-Hook-S iron into my Five-Bar. So I earmark the calf with the owner's marks, and don't brand him at all. Then he's a sleeper.
In the wider field of the West he had been successively a claim-jumper, a rustler of unbranded cattle, a telegraph operator in collusion with a gang of train-robbers, and finally a faro "lookout": the armed guard who sits at the head of the gaming-table in the untamed regions to kill and kill quickly if a dispute arises. Angels acknowledged his citizenship without joy.
He had often seen the unshod and unbranded ponies of the high country run along a trail for a mile or so and then dash off across the open. Of course, if the posse took the direct trail to the border, paying no attention to tracks, they would eventually overtake him. Pete was done with the companionship of men who allowed the wanton killing of a man like Annersley to go unpunished.
"I ain't rememberin' that any ranch has cows that run the range unbranded; especially when the cow has got a calf, unless that cow is a maverick, an' that ain't likely, since she's runnin' with the Two Diamond bunch." He leaned forward, for the man had left the fire and was running toward the fallen cow.
But the abundance of mavericks and wild cattle was so tempting that we had three hundred under herd when the first cow-hunting outfits arrived. At one lake on what is now known as South Prairie, in a single moonlight night, we roped and tied down forty head, the next morning finding thirty of them unbranded and therefore unowned.
"Aw, hell! Thet's different. Every new rancher drives in a few unbranded calves an' keeps them. But stealin' stock thet's different. An' I'd as soon suspect my own son of rustlin' as Wils Moore." Belllounds spoke with a sincere and frank ardor of defense for a young man once employed by him and known to be honest. The significance of the comparison he used had not struck him.
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