That might makes right, and that they steal by wholesale, any cattle-hunter will admit; and why they brand at all I cannot see, since one boy tried to make it plain to me, as he shifted his body in drunken abandon and grabbed my pencil and a sheet of wrapping paper: “See yer; ye see that?” And he drew a circle O, and then another ring around it, thus: (O). “That brand ain't no good. Well, then--” And again his knotted and dirty fingers essayed the brand I O. He laboriously drew upon it and made E-O which of course destroyed the former brand. “Then here,” he continued, as he drew 13, “all ye've got ter do is this--313.” I gasped in amazement, not at his cleverness as a brand-destroyer, but at his honest abandon. With a horrible operatic laugh, such as is painted in “The Cossack's Answer,” he again laboriously drew (+) (the circle cross), and then added some marks which made it look like this: S(+)S. And again breaking into his devil's “ha, ha!” said, “Make the damned thing whirl.” [Illustration: 39 IN WAIT FOR AN ENEMY] I did not protest. He would have shot me for that. But I did wish he was living in the northwest quarter of New Mexico, where Mr. Cooper and Dan could throw their eyes over the trail of his pony. Of course each man has adjusted himself to this lawless rustling, and only calculates that he can steal as much as his opponent. It is rarely that their affairs are brought to court, but when they are, the men come _en masse_ to the room, armed with knives and rifles, so that any decision is bound to be a compromise, or it will bring on a general engagement.