The Texas steer, with the long horns and the brand bigger than a gridiron, has passed away. With this half-wild “beef critter” has likewise passed the old-time grizzle-faced herder with his cowhide boots and appalling profanity. Grade shorthorns, Herefords, and other swells in the kingdom of range cattle have taken the longhorn’s place, and the present-day cattleman is a keen, shrewd business man who has reduced cattle raising and feeding to a science. Perhaps the elimination of the longhorn and the picturesque soldier of circumstance who looked after him is not a subject for regret; yet in the early days--the days of this chronicle--the rangy steer of the wide horns was bringing a flood of wealth into Texas. Those were really flush days for the cattle barons. In those boom times, ranchers whose principal asset was cattle, had more money than they had ever possessed before--and more, it is said, than they have ever had since. Just what caused the boom was a mystery; nevertheless, the boom was a very real event, and some of the barons took in more money than they knew how to spend. When such a thing happens to a free and easy-going people, foolish extravagance is the result. This sort of extravagance, therefore, took the cattle country by the throat, and shook a golden stream out of its pockets. Now and then a cigar was lighted with a ten-dollar bill--whenever a baron wished to be particularly spectacular. It may not have proved that the ranchers had money to burn, yet it proved that they did burn it nevertheless. Many of the ranchers burned their money in “sparks,” otherwise diamonds, paying three or four times what the stones were worth per karat. There was much rivalry in the possession of these gems. If a baron’s neighbor flashed a gem as big as a Mexican bean on his little finger, then the other baron made haste to get one as big as a lima bean and display it ostentatiously. A class of peddlers was brought into being, by this desire of the barons for jewels, whose like had never been known before and probably will never be known again. Hebrews with satchels traveled the cow country, each satchel containing a king’s ransom in diamonds. These stones were peddled from ranch to ranch. The idea of a man toting from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds through the range lands, alone and unattended and yet without molestation, formed rather a strange commentary on those wild and troublous times. Yet this was one angle of the situation in the flush days. When the craze for diamonds had died out, the barons developed another hobby. This time their barbaric fancy ran to watches, watch charms, and chains.