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Updated: June 11, 2025
A maverick is an unbranded calf that has been weaned and shifts for itself. The maverick then belongs to the man who finds it and brands it. These little calves that lose their mothers sure have a cruel time of it. Many of them die. Then the coyotes and wolves and lions prey on them. Every year we have two big round-ups, but the boys do some branding all the year.
When the northern ranges opened, this question of unbranded cattle still remained, and the "maverick" industry was still held matter of sanction, there seeming to be enough for all, and the day being one of glorious freedom and plenty, the baronial day of the great and once unexhausted West.
Half a dozen hats, apparently unbranded, had initials or names in full written in indelible pencil inside their sweat-bands. Donna, considered an authority on male headgear, was for the first time learning something of the habits of men the too frequent necessity for quickly identifying one's hat from a row of similar hats from the hat-hooks in crowded restaurants.
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.
Then he looked over the broken casting from all sides. "See here," Graves ground out, between his teeth, "all the axles on my cars are branded with the trade-mark of the maker, and the number of the inspector who passes the axles. Yet this axle is unbranded! Now, I happen to know that the left forward axle on this car last night was branded as usual, for I had the wheel off and looked it over.
In process of time, thanks to his intimate knowledge of drill and musketry exercise, the excellent Mulcahy, wearing the corporal's stripe, went out in a troopship and joined Her Majesty's Royal Loyal Musketeers, commonly known as the "Mavericks," because they were masterless and unbranded cattle sons of small farmers in County Clare, shoeless vagabonds of Kerry, herders of Ballyvegan, much wanted "moonlighters" from the bare rainy headlands of the south coast, officered by O'Mores, Bradys, Hills, Kilreas, and the like.
Under the customs of the country, any unbranded animal, one year old or over, was a maverick, and the property of any one who cared to brand the unclaimed stray. Thousands of cattle thus lived to old age, multiplied and increased, died and became food for worms, unowned. The branding over, I soon grew impatient to be doing something.
"Are any cattle left, and how many?" Davy countered promptly. "I don't know," replied Finch sheepishly. "We didn't get to count 'em this morning. There's probably thirty or forty old cows with unweaned calves and a bull or two. Then there's a bunch of wild, unbranded yearlings, probably twenty or thirty, over on that pasture by the cliffs.
And I never knew they was till I got time to set back and think over what we unbranded yearlin's used to do." "For instance?" queried Bartley. Senator Steve waved his pudgy hand as though shooing a flock of chickens off a front lawn. "If I was to tell you some of the things that happened, you would think I was a heap sight bigger liar than I am.
His cowboys would ride about, cutting out the unmarked animals, with the cool statement: "That's a maverick," meaning that it belonged to their "boss." And so the name has commonly become associated with any half- grown, unbranded calf. Mr.
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