to the killing house it was a case of “a dead man telling no tales." I gave my neighbor a friendly hint, but instead of joining the association, he came up and seized two steers belonging to the above party which had been shipped by his (the Weare) outfit. Brainard had cut them for the owner. All I had to do was as Chairman of the Protective Association to replevin them and put up a small bond. The case was to be heard in a Justice of Peace court a week later, but "P. B." did not appear. A day or two after we shook hands and buried the unpleasant incident.

This morning as I write among pleasant palm trees and look out on a sun-kissed sea of marvelous blue, my thoughts often go back to those days described above. In that passing panorama you formed friendships that stood the test of time. Incidentally. I met Major Jay S. Smith. While the Weares and I were driving down the trail we met Messrs. Smith and Elliott coming northwards. They were riding in an old wagon pulled by two small mules. It was the 15th of July and they had been on the trail since the 1st of April. They looked it in person and equipment. Their clothes were a sight, both of them were unshaven and unshorn, the harness was wired and roped together, but they looked happy under their old weather-beaten hats and they passed on after a short roadside gossip.

CHAPTER XVI

N A FORMER chapter I have referred to the Wyoming
Stock Growers' Association. It was a mighty engine

I'

in its day and with the Cattle Growers' Association of Texas, it blazed the path for many important changes in our western cattle business. The first meeting I attended was in April, 1884. The range cattle business was then in full bloom and there was a big attendance. Judge Carey was in the Chair, and Mr. Thomas Sturgis was secretary, assisted by Mr. Harry Bush. The meeting was held in the Opera House of those days. It was a sort of free for all. We did not in those days have prepared papers over which the author had labored for days. The favorite theme of the railroads, the packers, public stockyards, the leasing of the public domain and many other ills real and imaginary were not thought of. Every cowman rode on a pass quite on an equality with the politicians, and the railroad manager or his assistants were very popular. The packers had not developed into the devils they are now painted and in the eyes the average cowman a stockyards was looked on as a blessing, and in fact at this very meeting the South Omaha scheme was bursting into bloom and receiving enthusiastic support from the range owners.

of

The discussions at this meeting arose principally from the reports of various committees and these were mainly directed towards the preservation of property on the range. The maverick was one of the subjects of wordy warfare and many suggestions. He was a pariah in a way, and yet he was property. He had no mark or brand and yet he came from somewhere. He was a will o' the wisp, homeless, innocent, a wanderer, revolving round his birthplace and claimed by the owner who had a shadowy right over a certain amount of range. Cap Haskell told me that when he first worked the country north of the Sweetwater over on Poison

and Muskrat Creeks, westward towards the Wind River and as far north as Bad Water, he branded on one round-up a hundred and fifty mavericks, some of them four-year-old steers and cows with calves at foot that had not a mark or an ear slit on them. This was the hour when an adventurous man could start a herd of cattle if he was able to register a brand as his mark and property. Many of them did and not a few respectable citizens of today made a beginning, adding on to it by other devious methods not necessary to explain. The maverick was clearly the property of the cattle owners, but the legal right was not definable. By courtesy, when the animal was found on what by common consent was admitted to be a certain owner's range, he was allowed by his neighbors to put his brand on the foundling, and there the matter remained, but the covetous owner or the enterprising cowboy began work on his own account before the round-up and means had to be devised to stop this semiillegal proceeding. So a law was passed making the maverick practically the property of the state. of the state. At the round-ups in the different districts the captain sold them at the close of the day's work to the highest bidder, who put his brand on them, and the proceeds went to the state for the benefit of the cattlemen.

The real object of the meeting, namely the arrangement of the round-ups in the different districts, was all done by committees and the final results communicated to the meeting on big sheets of paper, which fixed the date and place of meeting and laid the plan of working the country out in a methodical way. It was very interesting to look over the diagram and see how completely the country was covered. The arrangements made here and published broadcast let every owner know just what he had to do, when and where the work would commence on his particular range, and in this way he could mobilize his force and perfect his plans. The fall or beef round-up generally followed the lines of the spring one, although they were not always identically the same. Carey, as chairman of those meetings, was fluent,

fair, patient and in every way an ideal presiding officer. You could not stampede him and he held his audience well in hand. Sturgis was cool, concise and when he spoke he was logical, with a fine grasp of his subject. Hec Reel, the treasurer, was a good deal of a kicker, but generally speaking this meeting and others that followed were harmonious. Dr. Hopkins, the state veterinarian, was a windy chap, but he had a lot of knowledge and knew his business exceedingly well. His judgment was only fair and his methods out in the field were not very tactful, but he was earnest and indefatigable in his work. We had had several disease scares in the East and consequently the Doctor had a fertile field to work in. Not only at the meetings of the association did the Doctor keep driving his ideas home, but all round the state he hammered away at the stockmen, showing up the grave possibilities of disease working havoc on the plains. The seed bore fruit, as we shall see hereafter.

The social side of the meeting was a revelation to the outsider. The company was made up of all kinds of men. The owner and the cowpuncher were most in evidence, but there was an endless procession of railroad men, mostly from the traffic departments, a strong contingent of Chicago commission men, managers of feed stations and a great miscellaneous crowd, some of them hunting for locations or jobs, others looking on from curiosity or the simple love of adventure. During the day Luke Murrin's saloon had great patronage. This was the gentleman who sized up the book count business in epigram. One stormy day when a blizzard was sweeping across Wyoming and howling through the streets of Cheyenne, the boys who liked their noon dram leaned up against Luke's bar. Their faces very long and disconsolate, backed up by low mutterings of loss on the range and visions of unpaid notes in the fall, the witty but rather disreputable saloon keeper said: "Cheer up boys, whatever happens the books won't freeze." At night the Club had the call. In a way it was a brilliant scene, for there were men from all points of the compass. The wanderers

from foreign shores were back to work. They had their story to tell, and in return the stay-at-home imparted his view of the winter, the state of the range and the different trades that had gone through. Wine flowed freely, tongues got limber, the different cliques broke away from one another. It was a sort of love feast; no apple of discord appeared and no cloud hung on the horizon.

The work of Hopkins, his enthusiasm backed by facts, and the generally unprotected condition of the open range from disease had their effect on the minds of men like Carey, Sturgis and others of that stripe all over the West. Governor Routt of Colorado voiced the sentiments of that state. Conrad Kohrs and Granville Stuart spoke for Montana, while Texas was waking up. In the East men like DeWitt Smith of Bates, Ill., and Alvin H. Sanders of the Breeder's Gazette, were beginning to see that something must be done to prepare for coming troubles, while Professor Law, our best veterinarian of those days, was also on the alert. Many times during the summer those matters were discussed in Cheyenne and Chicago. The result was the calling of a meeting in Chicago in early November to discuss this subject. This led on to the organization of the National Cattle Growers' Association of America, which held a meeting early in November at the Sherman House in Chicago. There was a large attendance of Northwestern cattlemen and a sprinkling from the central and eastern states. As a matter of fact, the southern, western and northwestern cattle growers had sized up the situation so far as live stock conditions were concerned much quicker than their eastern neighbors. The leaders at that meeting were Judge Carey, Thomas Sturgis, both of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and DeWitt Smith of Bates, Ill. It was a harmonious meeting and lasted, as I recollect, a couple of days. Many subjects were discussed. Railroads, markets, leasing public lands, disease of live stock and kindred subjects. The only speech I remember was delivered impromptu by Mr. Sturgis on the leasing of the public lands. It was an eloquent, logical appeal in favor of