That was all right; but since he had passed through part of our range it was necessary to inspect the herd.
This he resisted by every means he could think of, asserting that they were a "clean" bunch, with no "strays," and that he was in a great hurry to push on.

I insisted, however, on riding through them, when, not much to my surprise, I found about twenty large unbranded calves, apparently without their "mammies." On asking Pete for an explanation: "Oh," he said, "the mammies were shore in the herd" and he "warn't no cow thief," but on my persisting he finally exclaimed, "Well, take your damned _caves_ and let's get on," or some such words; so I started in and cut out nearly twenty big unbranded calves, which certainly did not have their mothers with them; which, therefore, were clearly not his property; were probably ours, but whether they were or not did not matter to me.

Pete and his men pulled out home, but I caught and branded over half of these calves before turning them loose, and it is probable we got the rest of them at the next round-up.

When a man is single-handed and has to make his fire up as well as catch and tie down the calves he has his hands pretty full.

In this case I used only one fire and so had to drag the calves up close to it; every bit of tie rope in my pocket, thongs cut off the saddle, even my pocket-handkerchief, were all brought into service; as at one time there were as many as four calves tied down at once.