Texas is the great breeding State from which the cattle are sent north to the better pasture land of Kansas, Montana, and Wyoming Territory, to be fattened up for the markets. The breeding goes on throughout the year, five bulls being pastured with every three hundred cows, in pastures of from one thousand to ten thousand acres in extent. About ninety per cent. of the cows calve, and the branding of these calves is one of the most important duties of the spring work. They are driven into a pen through a wooden chute, and as they leave the chute are caught by the legs and thrown over on the side, and one of a dozen hot irons burning in an open fire is pressed against the flank, and, on the King ranch, on the nose. An animal bearing one of the rough hall-marks of the ranchman is more respected than a dog with a silver collar around his neck, and the number of brands now registered in the State capital runs up to the thousands. On some ranches each of the family has his or her especial brand; and one young girl who came out in New York last winter is known throughout lower Texas only as “the owner of the Triangle brand,” and is much respected in consequence, as it is borne by thousands of wandering cattle. The separating of the cattle at the spring round-up is accomplished on the King ranch by means of a cutting pen, a somewhat ingenious trap at the end of a chute. One end of this chute opens on the prairie, and the other runs into four different pens guarded by a swinging gate, so hung that by a movement of the foot by the man sitting over the gate the chute can be extended into any one of the four pens. With this mules, steers, horses, and ponies can be fed into the chute together, and each arrive in his proper pen until the number for which the different orders call is filled. It is rather difficult to imagine one solitary family occupying a territory larger than some of the Eastern States--an area of territory that would in the East support a State capital, with a Governor and Legislature, and numerous small towns, with competing railroad systems and rival base-ball nines. And all that may be said of this side of the question of ranch life is that when we are within Mrs. King’s house we would imagine it was one of twenty others touching shoulder to shoulder on Madison Avenue, and that the distant cry of the coyotes at night is all that tells us that the hansoms are not rushing up and down before the door. [Illustration: SNAPPING A ROPE ON A HORSE’S FOOT] In the summer this ranch is covered with green, and little yellow and pink flowers carpet the range for miles. It is at its best then, and is as varied and beautiful in its changes as the ocean. The ranches that stretch along and away from the Rio Grande River are very different from this; they are owned by Mexicans, and every one on the ranch is a Mexican; the country is desolate here, and dead and dying cattle are everywhere.