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Show ts jf f V " Hot Iron!" id . i .j brands which Illustrate the multl-:iT;i multl-:iT;i ,'j.jiois used on the cattle ranges of th - They are tho following: 1, Bible or Hi jrch; 3, cross; 4, Maltese cross; 5, 3! i square and compass; 7, I. O. O. F. ;fstion; 9, dollar mark; 10, etc.; 11, . -iking chair; 13, Jug; 14, pitcher; 15, Ira i.-ffib-bells; 17, door key; 18, frying Hi 20, wineglass; 21, kite; 22, hat; i , , bell; 25, dagger; 26, horseshoe; ?fi -J arrow; 28, anchor; 29, flower pot; frf 31, tree; 32, hog eye; 33, pigpen; ate -.s; 35, kite; 36, fishhook; 37, fish; or .3, turtle; 40, rabbit; 41, rising sun; is i star; 44, two hearts; 45, liver; 46, i, pitchfork; 48, rake; 49, steplad-.rjcomb; steplad-.rjcomb; 51, bridle bit; 52, spur; 53, IS -anvil; 55, plow; 56, tomahawk; 57, Ej :'j ace of clubs; 59, four sixes; 60, ten :j j; 61, ace of diamonds; 62, diamond 0! : o'amond trey; 64, diamond five; 65, bj : 66, seven up; 67, lazy T; 63, turn- I I.SyingV; 70, rocking H; 71, swinging ;i -MO; 73, bar X L; 74, H rake four. $ " ijELMO SCOTT WATSON ' ' OTHER institution of the old West Seas to be on its way into oblivion. n At least that is the logical interpre-, interpre-, 'lrion of a recent news dispatch from Texas which said : "A few years more and there will be - so plaintive bawling as a sizzling red-. red-. hot Iron is pressed against a young Seer's hide. Instead, there will be a -Ipped into a chemical and applied to u A few days after this application j without pain to the animal, will i :away the hair, turned the red skin jj Ji produced permanently the owner's j new method, introduced by a doctor Texas, has been tried successfully." ; -tthod proves successful and is gen- M, it will not only mark the passing C -meat which, along with the rifle, the ie prairie plow were symbols of vari- - Id American pioneer life, but It will ri I the main objections to a custom -; J rery necessary to the development of ;, Wastry to the proportions which it :, angthe three decades after the Civil iose objections was an economic one the deep burn inflicted by the ; damaged the hide of the steer and ' value of this by-product of the s. This objection was largely done "hen it was learned that all Eastern ed all Western hides as branded Ml they were not, and made a certain "" their value. So the new branding 1, d to a revaluation of hides from Me, since the chemical will not dam- the red-hot Iron did. 3ty for cattle branding In the United . wck to the days of free grass and ;! Roen the brand was an absolute rtTr that owners m,Bht identify :J In the annual round-ups. With 4tJenCei range thls necessity was , but the brand still served to ; pon cae thieves and made it pos- "hen nt Cattle rust,inS- en followed Bsl cattle branding fell somewhat into recent years have seen a revival of the "motorized cattle thief," ;( h . In whlch t0 carrv awa? tnree "totkm ,8ters' began cutting Into the ''the h8"'8 meaSer Profits. Only a short ttat Td of brand Inspectors of one ,0( Glared that a return to the Strati8'0 was tne only solution of 1 '"Hie m T the revlTed menace to their ! oth 8re that 8lmi,ar action will 'M of statea aud If the Texas doc' the ranmarklng wlth chemicals proves be 81, ?8 and shipping pens of the 'M bv nCe more ltn branded cat-'W cat-'W modern scientific method and ? kave m?dern mechanlcal methods of 't necessary. :life.ardST,,the Cattle lndustry, brand's brand-'s ana ere Wfls much duplication ship, onseiaently frequent quarrels i!thee8frnta!nnead of the cattle Indus-'iks Indus-'iks Kmnt t0 refe'u'ate branding and . e Ve D rollowed suit until most of fjtne rJ nlte branding laws. These ?tbesame tS bUt the underly'nB Prln' '' of y' the ""ain one being required : V "anls. Some allow a certain '! 016 nlm T'1 he may put U on any ,TtheR 0tllers permit different ame 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 five positions posi-tions on each side of the animal. It was not uncommon for a North Pakota stockman to buy nil positions so that he could brand his stock as he pleased. Otherwise, nine other men could use the same brand In other positions, thus causing endless confusion. The number and variety of brands In the cattle cat-tle country is almost Inconceivable. For instance, in-stance, n total of more than 8,500 brands have been recorded In Montana since 1S78 and It -Is said that 6,000 were in active use within recent years. Records of the Texas Cattle Raisers' association asso-ciation showed more than 8,000 registered brands In use In that state a few years ago and in Colorado Colo-rado there were more than 4,200. But despite this multiplicity of markings the old-time cattleman and the brand inspectors stationed sta-tioned at the stockyards In the leading cattle markets could read the various brands and interpret in-terpret them as easily as a stenographer can read and Interpret the pothooks and other symbols sym-bols in the shorthand system. More than that, they spoke a language, a phonetic tongue, albeit, which was all but unintelligible to the uninitiated. uniniti-ated. Thilip 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 'A2' wasv translatable trans-latable into Big A Two; that because a letter or figure lying on its side was termed 'lazy,' a prone letter 'm' underscored was the Lazy M Bar. This person would know also that, because a ring was dubbed a 'circle,' a letter 'g' enclosed within a ring was the Circle G; that because a circle's arc was, according to Its length, designated as a 'quarter,' 'half or 'three-quarter' circle, a scant bit of curve followed by a letter 'r' was the Quarter Circle R, and that, because anything looking like a diamond or even its cousin was called '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' or a 'square,' whichever which-ever Its owner cared to term It; that the faintest resemblance to a pair of wings gave the prefix flying' so that the numeral W between two misshapen mis-shapen bulges was the Flying Nine, and that other designs were attempted p.ctures and sh on d be entitled Broken Pipe, Sombrero, Spur Bit, Plk Horn Two Star, Wheel and whatever. Finally this person would know that still fur-fher fur-fher des gns had arbitrary, slangy designations such as 'wallop- (a wide letter U atop another "f.'ttfr'ecord ot br.nl. er, MM ! the , mashed O, a link or goose egg. a masneu a susceptible "N" Is another letter thai is 1 T is another le"er.W1mabination with other seldom ee" iny'aiied a bar. characters, and , usuaieg are "O" and K are exa i ordinary used in four positions. J0T m to' an angle of -K- makes one position. Turn 1 45 degrees and you have tne a back horizontally m La y K fourth position, inere ui , Sands in all letters exceg : C "d After the letters of ,t became nec-ations nec-ations thereon were al Uke J Drands. essary to devise de lta appearance, So every concelvaW. alceim rngdrtoTmBSpeierffleents, household utensHs and lodge Insignia. fmjnd a In the Colorado brand shoe, D00t, skull and crossbones a ra cup, coffee-pot, glasses, n B. itchforl, glove, moon, ladder tree .aZU axe, spear, roll-muleshoe, roll-muleshoe, rocking chair, hate u ss ,g pin, gate, ff ot other queer char- S-oMhe-ordlnary brands ron t the So important was the b r the state cattle industry that a uew , busl. whose prosperity was S- A.MavericK ness hit upon the unique Idea of "branding" a new half-million-dollar classroom building at Its state university with the symbols of its greatest industry. Accordingly Garrison hall at the University Uni-versity of Texas now bears on its walls 32 cattle cat-tle brands which helped make Texas history. As a preliminary to this idea, E. W. Winkler, university uni-versity librarian, examined more than 20,000 cattle cat-tle brands which were used at one time or another an-other in that state and from this number selected the 32 which were to be engraved on the white stone walls of the new classroom building as representative of some step In the progress of Texas history There Is a good story connected with every one of them but outstanding among them are: the "Austin Spanish" brand of Stephen F. Austin, Aus-tin, "the Father of Texas"; the Four Sixes of S. B. Burnett which resulted from his winning a large ranch in a poker game in which he held "four of a kind"; the D brand of A. H. (Shang-' hai) Pierce, who drove cattle from Matagora county on the gulf and whose steers were known from the Rio Grande to the Canadian line as "Shanghai Pierce's sea lions"; the XIT brand, generally known as "Ten in Texas," of the "Capitol "Capi-tol Land Syndicate whose holdings covered ten counties and included three million acres, given In payment for the state capitol building at Austin, Aus-tin, the Lazy S of C. C. Slaughter which adorned more than 12,000 cattle a year in the trail-driving period after the Civil war; the JA brand of Charles Goodnight, owner of the famous Goodnight Good-night ranch, home of the Goodnight herd of buffalo buf-falo 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 cattle-man who paradoxically became famous not because be-cause of a brand but because of lack of one and whose name became a common noun in the American Amer-ican language. For "maverick" Is a word found In all dictionaries, defined by the eminent Dic-tionaire Dic-tionaire Webster as "an unbranded animal, esp. a motherless calf, formerly customarily claimed bv the first one branding It," and "mavericking" Is a recognized legal term. for Illegal appropriation appropria-tion of unbranded cattle. Samuel A. Maverick, a graduate of Tale college col-lege In the class of 1S25, was one of the founders foun-ders of Texas Independence and a member of the congress of the Republic of Texas In 1S45. The exact details of how his name came to be neroetuated In a common Western word are somewhat disputed. One account states that a neighbor who owed Maverick a debt of $400 paid it off bv giving him 1,200 head of longhorn cat-He- whereupon Maverick turned them over to a family of negro slaves with the understanding bey have the natural increase of the herd But these negroes were a shift ess set and .unwed the cattle that thus came to them to roam at wiU m the long grass along Matagorda bay. tI Z few years there were hundreds of these unbrandld cattle and people often asked "Whose 3" ceamCekto beapplied to all unhrande, rYZlthev were not Samuel A. Maverick's cat- f tif werl st mavericks, nobody's cattle. "Another account says that during the Civil i nil of Colonel Maverick's employees W'T Df the Confederate army, so that his cat- ufran Sid remained unbranded. So they I "Maverick's cattle" unM some one else were Maver'c to mnke thpm Wg daPPend eracn ally all stray cattle became "mav-own "mav-own and gradual y ericks. naie anipng all cattlemen who ll?lrZ sbecase thousands of cattle might De i.i enduring fame came rwhose1catiieh:.eIntnnbranded. t0 ((Sljy western Newspaper Union., |