Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/38



HE Elk Mountain Cattle Company's brand was the diamond tail, a device like this:

By the name of its brand, rather than its legal title, according to the custom of the range everywhere, the ranch was known throughout the inter-mountain country of the west. The Diamond Tail, and the hardriding men who made up its muster roll, are only a memory and a tradition now among the alfalfa fields and farms, for this tale is of a time that was, and is no more.

In those days there were many enterprises like the Elk Mountain Cattle Company scattered over the range country of the west and northwest, for cattle-raising was a business with its romantic phases and profitable lures which drew many people into it who had no reasonable foundation for having a hand in any such hazardous game. To make it worse, many of them played it from a distance, frequently with seas intervening. The Elk Mountain Company had its stockholders in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, London, and the farther away from the scene of activities they chanced to be, the higher they were valued by Hal Nearing, organizer and president of the concern.