Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/177

Rh of dogs raised languid heads or rapped languid tails, then sank back with sighs to toasting their brains in almost immediate contact with the fire. Shortly a lean, carven-faced brown man came in and lighted lamps; and so they moved over to the table and to a hearty supper. After that meal they moved back to the fireplace where they smoked and talked until ten o'clock. After the first twenty minutes—in which the prospects of birds and the sixteen gauge gun were the topics—Kenneth sat back and listened. It was tremendously interesting to him. These harum-scarum members of the Sociedad became serious men engaged in a serious business. They discussed cattle, mostly, and feed and ranges; the breed of stock; the provision that could be taken against a dry year; the relative advantages of markets. Frank Moore lost all his facetiousness as he declaimed against the tentative project of importing some Durham bulls to improve the native stock.

"I'm with you on improving the stock," said he. "There's more head than beef on these Mexican longhorns. But Durhams won't do it."

"They are a fine, beefy critter," observed Bill Hunter, "and they are hardy."

"That's it. They're hardy; but only as long as things go right. When feed gets scarce they don't rustle the way they should. They'll hang around their ranges until they just naturally starve to death. Now a Hereford is a rustler. On a dry year you'll find them 'way up on top of the mountains. They'll climb like goats for it when they have to. That's the sort of stock you want to breed to on a wild range."

"And that's the sort of stock that wanders so far they get off your range completely and you never do see them again, unless with a blanketed brand," grumbled Bill, stretching his mighty limbs.

"What is a blanketed brand?" asked Kenneth.

They explained how cattle thieves, or "rustlers," would change a brand by skillful addition of lines. But for a long time thereafter it would, of course, be easy to detect the difference between the new and the old burning. However, it had been discovered that branding through a wet blanket gave to fresh brands an