Show n d in roi i P 64 14 AM X P till vj ln I 1 7 h 1 aa t 9 T af 00 0 0 0 r 0 ap 4 M i i 01 5 I 1 SU 1 is p a X L P ft ho hor r 1 zova 4 A group of brands which illustrate the multi of symbols us used ed on the rattle cattle ranges of the west they are the following 1 bible or book 2 church 3 cross 4 maltese cross 5 swastika 6 square and compass 7 1 I 0 0 F emblem 8 question 9 dollar mark 10 etc 11 house 12 rocking chair 13 jug 14 pitcher pl teher 15 boot 16 dumbbells dumb bells 17 door key 18 frying pan 19 crutch 20 wineglass 21 kite 22 hat 23 necktie 24 bell 25 dagger 26 horseshoe 27 bow and arrow 28 anchor 29 flower pot 30 umbrella 31 tree 32 hog eye 33 pigpen 34 barbecue 36 kite 36 fishhook 37 fish 38 snake 39 turtle 40 rabbit 41 rising sun 42 moon 43 star 44 two hearts 45 liver 46 goose egg 47 pitchfork 48 rake 49 ste plad der SO 0 currycomb 51 bridle bit 52 spur 53 paddle 54 anvil 55 plow 56 tomahawk 57 hanhook hay hook 58 act ace of clubs 59 four sixes 60 ten of diamonds 61 ace of diamonds 62 diamond deuce 63 diamond trey 64 diamond five 65 I 1 owe you 66 seven up QT 67 lazy T 68 tumbling T 69 flying V 70 rocking H 71 swinging H 72 mashed 0 73 bar X L 74 H rake four by ELMO SCOTT WATSON rf NOTHER HER institution of the old west JJ seems to beon its way into oblivion 3 at least that Is the logical interpret v B tation of a recent news dispatch from texas which said eald A few years more and there the will be no plaintive bawling as a sizzling red hot iron Is pressed against a young steers bide InA instead tead there will be a cold iron dipped into a chemical and applied to the yearling A few days after this application the chemical wl without phout patzi pain to the ae anlu animal fal will have eaten away the hair turned the red skin to white and produced permanently the owners mark this new method introduced by a doctor in amarillo amaral texas has been tried successfully if this method proves successful and Is generally adopted I it twill will not only mark the passing of an instrument which along with the rifle the axe and the prairie plow were vere symbols of various phases in american pioneer life but it will also satisfy the main objections to a custom which was very necessary to the development of the cattle industry to the proportions which it attained during the three d decades after the be civil war one of those objections was an economic one the fact that the deep burn inflicted indicted by the branding lion iron damaged the hide bide of the steer and decreased the value of this byproduct by product of the cattle business this objection was largely done away with when it was learned that all eastern buyers glassed classed all western hides as branded stuff even if they were riot not and made a certain reduction tp ip their value so the new branding method may lead to a revaluation of hides from western cattle since the chemical will not damage the hide bide as the red hot iron did the necessity for cattle branding in the united states goes back bach to the days of free grass and op open en range when the brand was an absolute necessity in order that owners might identify their property in the annual roundups round ups with the coming of fenced range this necessity was largely obviated but the brand still served to place guilt upon cattle thieves and made it possible sible to stamp out cattle rustling then followed a period when cattle branding fell somewhat into disuse but recent years have seen a revival of cattle rustling and the motorized cattle thief who uses a truck in which to carry away three to ten prime beef steers began cutting into the western meager profits only a short time ago the board of brand inspectors of one western state declared that a return to the branding of live stock was the omy solution of the new or rather the revived menace to their business indications are that similar action will be taken in other states and if the texas doctors method of marking with chemicals proves feasible the ranges and shipping pens of the west may be filled once more with bran branded dei cattle branded by a modern scientific method and branded because modern mechanical methods of rustling rust ilag have made it necessary in the early days of the cattle industry branding was haphazard there was much duplication of brands and consequently freau frequent ent quarrels over ownership texas the fountainhead of the cattle industry was the first state to regulate branding and other states soon followed suit until most of them have ve very ry definite branding laws knese differ in ID some respects but the underlying principles are tho the same the main one being required registration of brands some allow a certain brand to a rancher and he may put it on any place on the othora permit different men to have the same brand but the different owners must place it on their stock in distinctive positions according to the laws of north dakota each brand was good for ten positions they were the jaw neck shoulder ribs and hip bip five positions on each elde alile of the animal it wua not uncommon for a north dakota stockman to buy all positions so that lie be could brand his stock as he pleased otherwise nine other men could use the same brand in other positions thus causing endless con confusion fuston the number and variety of brands in the cattle cattie country Is almost inconceivable for instance a total of more than brands have been recorded in montana since 1878 and it Is said eald that were in active use within recent years records of the texas cattle raisers Rat sers asso elation showed more than registered brands s in use in that state a few years ago and in colo rado arado there were more than f but despite this multiplicity of markings the old time cattleman and the brand inspectors sta i cloned at the stockyards stock yards tn in the leading cattle v markets could read the various brands and interpret them as easily as a stenographer can read arid and interpret the pothooks pot hooks and other symbols in the shorthand system more than that they spoke a language a phonetic tongue albeit which was all but unintelligible to the uninitiated philip ashton rollins in his classic of western life the cowboy writes of this as follows he would know that 4 28 meant four bar twenty eight since a hyphen always was called a bar that because a capital letter of size was commonly termed big the brand aa was trans trana datable into big A two that because a letter or figure lying on its side was termed lazy I 1 a prone letter im m underscored was the lazy M ar bar this person would know also that because a ring was dubbed a circle a letter ig g enclosed within a ring was the circle G that because a circles arc was according to its length designated as a quarter half or three quarter circle a scant bit of curve followed by a letter irl was the quarter circle R and that because anything looking like a diamond or even its cousin was called wamond diamond a figure 5 within a lozenge should be interpreted as diamond five this person would know also that any parallelogram regardless of the ration between its length and height was a block or box bos or a square whichever its owner owner cared to term it that the faintest resemblance to a pair of wings gave the preux prefix flying so that the numeral 9 19 between two misshapen bulges was the flying nine and that other designs were attempted pictures and should be entitled broken pipe sombrero spur spar bit elk horn two star wheel and whatever finally this person would know that still further designs had bad arbitrary slangy designations such as iva wallop lloP a wide letter U L 7 atop another letter U equally wide but inverted a group of interlocking wings with no hying flying central design deign and hog pen two parallel lines crossing two other parallel lines at a right angle in the record of brands every letter of the alphabet 13 I 1 3 represented and most letters are found in three or four positions an exception Is fa 0 0 which has but one shape in any position and therefore can be used only once true there Is the 0 flattened at the sides but it Is called a mashed 0 a link or goose egg N Is another letter that Is not susceptible of many positions for horizontally it Is Z T ill Is another letter with a limited use it Is seldom seen except in combination with other characters and Is usually called a bar ua 0 and K N are examples of letters that are ara used in four positions for example an ordinary K makes one position turn it to an angle of 45 degrees and you yon have the tumbling K on its back horizontally the lazy K and reversed a fourth position there ab lazy and tumbling brands in all letters except 0 and T L after the letters of the alphabet and the variations thereon were all taken up it became essary to devise individual and unique brands so every conceivable device made its appearance ranging from bible references reference a through ugh poker hands bands to farm implements household utensils and lodge insignia in the colorado brand book may be dounda found a skull and crossbones it rake shovel shoe aboe boot cup coffeepot coffee pot glasses nag flag keys apple star moon ladder tree anchor pitchfork glove muleshoe mule shoe rocking chair hatchet axe sear rol rolling 1 pin gate speet spectacles geles pipe fish gun compass umbrella hands and dozens of other queer characters for which it is difficult to find tin an adequately descriptive name in the illustrations at the head of this article Is included a chart of 74 wit ont of the ordinary brands so important was the branding iron to the cattle industry that a few yeara ago the state whose prosperity was built upon the cattle busl bist aa M A 0 A averial averi cl ness hit bit upon the unique idea of branding a new half million dollar classroom building at ito tal state university with the symbols of its greatest industry accordingly garrison hall at the university of texas now bears on its walls valls 32 cattle brands which helped make texas history As aa a preliminary to this idea E W winkler university librarian examined more than 2000 cattle brands which were used at one time or another in that state and from this number selected the 32 which were to be engraved on the white stone walls of tile the new classroom building as representative of some step in the progress of texas hr story there Is a good story etory connected with i every obe one of them but outstanding among them are an the austin spanish brand of stephen P F austin the father of texas the tour four sixes 0 of f S B burnett burneff which resulted from his hie winning a large ranch in a poker game in which lie he held held four of a kind the D brand of A H shanghai pierce who drove cattle from matagora county on the gulf and whose steers were known from the rio blo grande granda to the canadian line as shanghai pierces Pl erces sea lions the XIT brand generally known as texas of the capitol land syndicate whose io holdings lAings covered ten counties and included three million acres given tn in payment for the state capitol building at austin the lazy S of C 0 slaughter adorned more inore than cattle ft year in the trail driving period after the civil war the JA brand of charles goodnight owner of bf the ahe famous goodnight ranch home athe of the goodnight herd of buffalo and experimenter in crossing cattle and buffalo to produce the catalo and last but not least the MK brand of S A maverick the cattleman who paradoxically became famous not because of a brand but because becaas e of lack of one and an whose name became a common noun in the amerlean american 0 language for maverick Is ta in all dictionaries defined by the eminent die tlona tion alre ire webster ga in an unbranded animal esp a motherless calf formerly customarily claimed by the first one branding it and isa Is a recognized legal term for illegal appropriation of unbranded cattle samuel A maverick a graduate of yale college in the class of 1825 was one of the founders of texas independence and a member of the kon congress gress of the republic of texas in 1845 1945 the exact details of how his name came to bi be perpetuated in a common western word are somewhat disputed one account states that a neighbor who owed maverick a debt of 00 paid it off by giving him 1200 head bead of long horri cattle cattie whereupon maverick turned them over to family of negro slaves with the understanding way they have the natural increase of the herd but these negroes were a shiftless set nn allowed the cattle that thus came to them to at will in the long grass along matagorda Afa bay in EL a few years there were hundreds of these unbranded castlean catt lean d people often asked whose cattle are these to which the usual reply was mavericks As time went on the tern term mavericks came to be applied to all dec cattle they were not samuel A mavericks cat tie they were just mavericks nob odys cattle another account says that during the CM civil war nearly all of colonel Afar mavericks ericks employees employee entered the confederate army so that his ca cat tie ran wild and remained unbranded so were mavericks cattle until some one ona els clapped his brand on them to make them hi own and and gradually all stray cattle became imay may ericks cricks whatever the true story may have been the tha fact remains that among all cattlemen wh abo night might be famous lecause because thousands of bore their brands the roost most enduring fame cami to one whose cattle went unbranded 0 by western newspaper union |