Partly on account of long-drawnout lawsuits we held on for seven or eight years, when on a recovery of prices our Company also closed out its live-stock interests.
During the turning-over of these, the Company's cattle, to the purchasers, of course they had to be all branded, not with a recorded brand, but simply with a tally brand, thus /**, on the hip.

Had there been a convenient separate pasture to put the tallied cattle into as they were tallied, much work would have been saved and no opportunity offered for fraud, such as will now be suggested and explained.

The method adopted was to begin gathering at one end of the range, tally the herd collected, and then necessarily turn them loose.

But we had bad stormy weather and these tallied cattle drifted and scattered all over the country and mixed up with those still not rounded up.

This at once gave the opportunity for an evilly-inclined man to do just as was soon rumoured and reported to me.