season. Trail-cutters and herd-combers, licensed or unlicensed
hangers-on to the northbound throngs of cattle, appeared along
the lower trails--with some reason, occasionally; for in a great
northbound herd there might be many cows included under brands
other than those of the road brands registered for the drovers of
that particular herd. Cattle thieving became an industry of
certain value, rivaling in some localities the operations of the
bandits of the placer camps. There was great wealth suddenly to
be seen. The weak and the lawless, as well as the strong and the
unscrupulous, set out to reap after their own fashion where they
had not sown. If a grave here or there appeared along the trail
or at the edge of the straggling town, it mattered little. If the
gamblers and the desperadoes of the cow towns such as Newton,
Ellsworth, Abilene, Dodge, furnished a man for breakfast day
after day, it mattered little, for plenty of men, remained, as
good or better. The life was large and careless, and bloodshed
was but an incident.

During the early and unregulated days of the cattle industry, the
frontier insisted on its own creed, its own standards. But all
the time, coming out from the East, were scores and hundreds of
men of exacter notions of trade and business. The enormous waste
of the cattle range could not long endure. The toll taken by the
thievery of the men who came to be called range-rustlers made an
element of loss which could not long be sustained by thinking
men. As the Vigilantes regulated things in the mining camps, so
now in slightly different fashion the new property owners on the
upper range established their own ideas, their own sense of
proportion as to law and order. The cattle associations, the
banding together of many owners of vast herds, for mutual