These men--like the large-handed cow barons of the Indian Nations, who had things much as they willed in a little unnoted realm all their own--had money and political influence.
And there seemed still range enough for all.

If a man wished to throw a drift fence here or there, what mattered it?
Up to this time not much attention had been paid to the Little Fellow, the man of small capital who registered a brand of his own, and who with a Maverick * here and there and the natural increase, and perhaps a trifle of unnatural increase here and there--had proved able to accumulate with more or less rapidity a herd of his own.

Now the cattle associations passed rules that no foreman should be allowed to have or register a brand of his own.

Not that any foreman could be suspected--not at all!--but the foreman who insisted on his old right to own a running iron and a registered brand was politely asked to find his employment somewhere else.
* In the early days a rancher by the name of Maverick, a Texas man, had made himself rich simply by riding out on the open range and branding loose and unmarked occupants of the free lands.

Hence the term "Maverick" was applied to any unbranded animal running loose on the range.