but not branded. Every owner has a certain brand, as you know,
and then he crops and slits the ears in a certain way, too. In
that manner he don't have to look at the brand, except to
corroborate the ears; and, as the critter generally sticks his
ears up inquirin'-like to anyone ridin' up, it's easy to know the
brand without lookin' at it, merely from the ear-marks. Once in
a great while, when a man comes across an unbranded calf, and it
ain't handy to build a fire, he just ear-marks it and let's the
brandin' go till later. But it isn't done often, and our outfit
had strict orders never to make sleepers.

Well, one day in the spring, as I say, Larry and me was ridin',
when we came across a Lazy Y cow and calf. The little fellow was
ear-marked all right, so we rode on, and never would have
discovered nothin' if a bush rabbit hadn't jumped and scared the
calf right across in front of our hosses. Then we couldn't help
but see that there wasn't no brand.

Of course we roped him and put the iron on him. I took the
chance to look at his ears,, and saw that the marking had been
done quite recent, so when we got in that night I reported to
Buck Johnson that one of the punchers was gettin' lazy and
sleeperin'. Naturally he went after the man who had done it;
but every puncher swore up and down, and back and across, that
he'd branded every calf he'd had a rope on that spring. We put
it down that someone was lyin', and let it go at that.

And then, about a week later, one of the other boys reported a
Triangle-H sleeper. The Triangle-H was the Goodrich brand, so we
didn't have nothin' to do with that. Some of them might be