Tombstone weekly epitaph., 1882-11-25
He Quit the Cattle Business,


 "I shall never handle cattle any more," said Patrick Healy the other day while talking with Wyoming stock man. "l got discouraged many years ago. heard that cattle would yield all the way from 75 to 90 per cent profit, so l got 800 head and let nature take her course. The follow ing spring started to brand my calves and count my profits. My style of branding was laborous and unsatisfactory. l would catch calf, throw him down, build a sage brush fire, heat my branding iron, brand him, and start for another. This con. sumed half an hour to the animal, the best l could do, and it looked as though it would take till about Christmas to brand the calves. How ever, the number didn't hold out by one. half, and as l was just closing the branding, meanwhile cussing my luck in the stock business, one day noticed with my field glass, several miles away on the plains, a cowboy, who acted so strangely that I re. solved to get behind little knoll and watch him. AS he got nearer l discovered that he had little char. coal steve attached to his saddle, and also that he had a branding iron se- cured to a 200-foot lariat, which he threw with wonderful accuracy. The cowboy was an emplyee of Mr. Tin min, neighbor of mine who had a very large herd of cattle and made the raising of cattle a very prosper ous business.
 "Instead of building 8 sage brush fire and going through the tedious process of throwing down au animal to bland him, he just heated the branding iron in the little tlnner's stove as he rode along and when within one hundred feet or so of a calf just threw it with that deadly aim of his, and MT. Tinnin was ahead $l5 animal.
 "I decided right there that I would not raise any more cattle. Science had the bulge on nature. Natural increase is all right where it does not have to compete with science.
 "I just went to MT. Tinnin and said: Look here, MT. Tinnin, I want to sell you my little bunch of cattle at a fair figure. 1 want to see you have them because you deserve them. A man who can bring science to his aid as you can ought to have this herd, and l believe you will ul. timately have the outfit anyhow Things seem to point that way now and l wanted 10 facilitate matters by selling you the bunch before it is ev erlastingly too late.
 "My cows feel just the same as de about it. They are willing to dc everything they can that is honorable in order to forward the cattle inter ests of the country, but they can compete with your sta:esmanship They feel hurt and very much de pressed by it, and so do l. l jus want to hasten the result by letting you have the cattle before they ge too much reduced"
 "He saw tkat l was feeling yer, unhappy over my cattle deal, and h' kindly took them off my hands. have never owned any cattle since that. 1 have seen many of my neigh bors accumulate large herds and biz fortunes, but it had no temptation
 for me. 1 knew that with nothing t' start with but the wreck of bul team and one of those self-registerins branding-irons, men who don't knov the difference between a Mavericl and the Venus of Milo have becom,
 millionaires, but that don't affect m any. l just squeeze along the best can and raise sheep at profit o , thirty-Gve or forty per cent. It i not so rapid, of course, as the cattl . business under careful management but man feels better when he meet the vigilance committee"