Page:Patches (1928).pdf/181



F there was one subject which fascinated Larry above all else, it was the cattle industry. He was never tired of hearing about it, and on warm summer evenings, when it was too hot to play polo, his uncle and the rest of the cow-punchers would stretch out on the grass under a big cottonwood near the ranch house and spin yarns of the cattle business. Such old timers as Big Bill, Long Tom, and Pony could by the hour recite tales of the old days; days of the Gilson and Santa Fe trails; of desperate fights between rival ranchmen in New Mexico and on the Panhandle. In addition to that there was the endless strife between the cattle men and the sheep men. If there was one individual in the whole world that a cattle man despised above all others it was a shepherd, and he in turn despised a goat man. Large herds of goats, however, were rarely seen in Wyoming.

Then in addition to these natural foes the cattle men had always had to fight the homesteaders, especially that drifting portion of homesteaders known as floaters or nesters. And worst of all there was the rustler, an