and, perhaps, the knowledge of the men who knew the stock."

"What I am getting at," smiled Patches, "is this: it would come down at
last to a question of men, wouldn't it?"

"That's where most things come to in, the end in this country, Patches.
But you're right. With owners like Uncle Will, and Jim Reid, and
Stillwell, and dozens of others; and with cowboys like Curly and Bob and
Bert and 'Shorty,' there would be no trouble at all about the matter."

"But with others," suggested Patches.

"Well," said Phil slowly, "there are men in this country, who, if they
refused to vent a brand under such circumstances, would be seeing
trouble, and mighty quick, too."

"There's another thing that we've got to watch out for, just now," Phil
continued, a few minutes later, "and that is, 'sleepers'. We'll
suppose," he explained, "that I want to build up my, bunch of Five-Bars,
and that I am not too particular about how I do it. Well, I run on to an
unbranded Pot-Hook-S calf that looks good to me, but I don't dare put my
iron on him because he's too young to leave his mother. If I let him go
until he is older, some of Jim Reid's riders will brand him, and, you
see, I never could work over the Pot-Hook-S iron into my Five-Bar. So I
earmark the calf with the owner's marks, and don't brand him at all.
Then he's a sleeper. If the Pot-Hook-S boys see him, they'll notice that
he's earmarked all right, and very likely they'll take it for granted
that he's branded, or, perhaps let him go anyway. Before the next rodeo
I run on to my sleeper again, and he's big enough now to take away from
the cow, so all I have to do is to change the earmarks and brand him