minute."

With a sharp stroke of his whip, Scot started the team into a smart trot down into the cañon. Then he turned to the doctor and quietly answered: "Doc, you seem to forget that Joe Loving is dying, and that I promised to fetch you. Reckon you'll have to go!" And down they went into what seemed the very jaws of death.

But Scot was right. It was a triumph of logic. The Navajos were indeed lying for bigger game.

And so it happened that, come safely through the cañon, out two miles on the plain they met a train off eight freight teams travelling toward Vegas. They stopped and gave the freighters warning, told what they had seen, begged them to halt and corral their wagons. But it was no use. The freighters thought themselves strong enough to repel any attack, and drove on into the cañon.

None of them came out.

And to this day the traveller through Enteros may see pathetic evidence of their foolhardiness in a scattered lot of weather-worn and rusted wheel tires and hub bands.

Before midnight Scot and the doctor reached Sumner, having changed teams twice at Mexican placitas. Covering two hundred and sixty miles in less than thirty hours, Scot Moore had kept his word! Unhappily, however, Joe Loving had become so weak that he died under the shock of the operation.

Now Scot Moore himself is dead and gone, but the memory of his heroic ride should live as long as noble deeds are sung.

CHAPTER II

A COW-HUNTERS' COURT

The recent death of Shanghai Rhett, at Llano, Texas, makes another hole in the rapidly thinning ranks of the pioneer Texas cow-hunters. Cow-hunting in early days was the industry upon which many of the greatest fortunes of the State were founded, and from it sprang the great cattle-ranch industry that between the years 1866 and 1885 converted into gold the rich wild grasses of the tenantless plains and mountains of Texas, New Mexico, the Indian Territory, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Dakota, and Montana.

The economic value of this great industrial movement in promoting the settlement and development of that vast region of the West lying between the ninety-eighth and one hundred and twentieth meridians, and embracing half the total area of the United States, is comprehended by few who were not personally familiar with the conditions of its rise and progress. There can be no question that the ranch industry hastened the occupation and settlement of the Plains by at least thirty years. Farming in those wilds was then an impossibility. Remote from railways, unmapped, and untrod by white men, it was under the sway of hostile Indians, before whose attacks isolated farming settlements, with houses widely scattered, would have been defenceless,—alike in their position and in their inexperience in Indian warfare. Then, moreover, there was neither a market nor means of transportation or the farmer's product. All these conditions the Texas cow-hunters changed, and they did it in little more than a decade.

In Texas were bred the leaders and the rank and file of that great army of cow-hunters whose destiny it was to become the pioneers of this vast region. Pistol and knife were the treasured toys of their childhood; they were inured to danger and to hardship; they were expert horsemen, trained Indian-fighters, reckless of life but cool in its defence; and thus they were an ideal class for the pacification of the Plains.

Shanghai Rhett's death removed one of the comparatively few survivors of this most interesting and eventful past.

In Texas after the war, when Shang was young, a pony, a lariat, a six-shooter, and a branding iron were sufficient instruments for the acquisition of wealth. A trained eye and a practised hand were necessary for the effective use of pistol and lariat; the running iron anybody could wield; therefore, while a necessary feature of equipment, the iron was a secondary affair. The pistol was useful in settling annoying questions of title; the horse and the lariat, in taking possession after title was settled; the iron, in marking the property with a symbol of ownership. The property in question was always cattle.

Before the war, cattle were abundant in Texas. Fences were few. Therefore, the cattle roamed at will over hill and plain. To determine ownership each owner adopted a distinctive "mark and brand." The owner's mark and brand were put upon the young before they left their mothers, and upon grown cattle when purchases were made. Thus the broad sides and quarters of those that changed hands many times were covered over with this barbarous record of their various transfers.

The system of marking and branding had its origin among the Mexicans. Marking consists in cutting the ears or some part of the animal's hide in such a way as to leave a permanent distinguishing mark. One owner would adopt the "swallow fork," a V-shaped piece cut out of the tip of the ear; another, the "crop," the tip of the ear cut squarely off; another, the "under-half crop," the under half of the tip of the ear cut away; another, the "over-half crop," the reverse of the last; another, the "under-bit," a round nick cut in the lower edge of the ear; another, the "over-bit," the reverse of the last; another, the "under-slope," the under half of the ear removed by cutting diagonally upward; another, the "over-slope," the reverse of the last; another, the "grub," the ear cut off close to the head; another, the "wattle," a strip of the hide an inch wide and two or three inches long, either on forehead, shoulder, or quarters, skinned and left hanging by one end, where before healing it leaves a conspicuous lump; another, the "dewlap," three or four inches of the loose skin under the throat skinned down and left hanging.

Branding consists in applying a red-hot iron to any part of the animal for six or eight seconds, until the hide is seared. Properly done, hair never again grows on the seared surface and the animal is "branded for life." A small five-inch brand on a young calf becomes a great twelve-to-eighteen-inch mark by the time the beast is fully grown.

In Mexico the art of branding dates back to the time when few men were lettered and most men used a rubrica mark or flourish instead of a written signature. Thus, in Mexico the brand is always a device, whatever complex combination of lines and circles the whim of the owner may conceive. In this country the brand was usually a combination of letters or numerals, though sometimes shapes and forms are represented. Branding and marking cattle and horses is certainly a most cruel practice, but under the old conditions of the open range, where individual ownerships numbered thousands of head, no other means existed of contradistinguishing title.

During the war these vast herds grew and increased unattended, neglected by owners, who were in the field with the armies of the Confederacy. So it happened that hundreds of thousands of cattle ranged the plains of Texas after the war, unmarked and unbranded, wild as the native game, to which no man could establish title. This situation afforded an opportunity which the hard-riding and desperate men who found themselves stranded on this far frontier after the wreck of the Confederacy were quick to seize. Shang Rhett was one of them. From chasing Federal soldiers they turned to chasing unbranded steers, and found the latter occupation no less exciting and much more profitable than the former.

First, bands of free companions rode together and pooled their gains. Then the thrift of some and the improvidence of others set in motion the immutable laws of distribution. Soon a class of rich and powerful individual owners was created, who employed great outfits of ten