The sleepers they had ear-marked, hopin' that no one would discover the lack of a brand.

Then, after the calf was weaned, and quit followin' of his mother, the rustler would brand it with his own iron, and change its ear-mark to match.

It made a nice, easy way of gettin' together a bunch of cattle cheap.
But it was pretty hard to guess off-hand who the rustlers might be.
There were a lot of renegades down towards the Mexican line who made a raid once in a while, and a few oilers [2] livin' near had water holes in the foothills, and any amount of little cattle holders, like this T 0 outfit, and any of them wouldn't shy very hard at a little sleeperin' on the side.

Buck Johnson told us all to watch out, and passed the word quiet among the big owners to try and see whose cattle seemed to have too many calves for the number of cows.
The Texas outfit I'm tellin' you about had settled up above in this Double R canon where I showed you those natural corrals this morning.
They'd built them a 'dobe, and cleared some land, and planted a few trees, and made an irrigated patch for alfalfa.

Nobody never rode over this way very much, 'cause the country was most too rough for cattle, and our ranges lay farther to the southward.