The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-11-13

have been cut away and blood begins 10
squirt the tar is doubled over the wound.
The beast staggers to it's feet and runs
madly away. Once in a while a frac-
tious, nervous COW will die from the
loss of blood and the shock. The time
spent in dehorning is not over ten min
utes.
A gang of five men will dehorn $50
cattle in a day. Carload lots of cattle
horns are shipped from New Mexico
and Arizona frequently. Button, glue,
comb and phosphate factories are the
main buyers of cattle horns. The ship
pers pay the cattlemen from 2 to 215
cents 2 pound for them, Gree on
board
Nowadays, also, the branding on
well-regulated cattle ranch is done SyS-
tematically, and with improved inven-
tions. The picturesque scenes that for
merly characterized a rodeo and brand
ing have been supplanted by practical
contrivances for saving time and doing
a neat job. The old-fashioned vaqueros
and cowboys used to spend days and
weeks every year in ranging over hill
and vale through canyons in search
of cattle. The cows, steers and calves
were leisurely punched on a certain day
and finally driven in a herd into the
open, as the master lariat-throwers
roped the cattle one after another and
dexterouSly held them while the brand
ers would apply the hot irons. 1t took
weeks to brand an ordinary-siZed herd.
The apprentice cowboys looked on with
admiration. The cowboys on a mod
ern ranch must keep close track of their
cattle. The COWS are not given so wide
q range as in former years, when land
was free and cattlemen were fewer.
None are allowed to go wandering miles
away, where the mavericks may be
branded and claimed by competing
cattleman.
Nowadays outfits of a dozen or two
men on the larger ranges keep moving
over the range half of the year. They
go with extra horses, covered wagons,
cook tents and a branding pen and
movable corral. There is a boss or
captain. His word is law. Every day
punches of cattle are driven in from
corral There is seldom any roping
or lariat- throwing, as of old. That
may injure a calf or a cow and reduce
it's value. Men are hired nowadays to
do nothing but operate the branding
pen.
The writer saw recently one of these
business-like outfits at work on the
Aztec Cattle company's range in Ma
vajo county. There was none Of the
wild cowboy yelling and whooping of
a decade ago as the cattle were driven.
Indeed not one of the cowboys wore
the regulation buckskin suit, with a
brace of pistols at his waist, as of yore.
Hardly a person spoke. The boss rode
slowly about like a captain, seeing that
no time was lost and no animals were
separated and driven into different
corrals. From each corral q narrow
boarded passageway led to a still mar
rover arrangement, constituting the
branding box. Several men in the cor
raj, armed with long, blunt poles, drove
the cows and calves in single file
through the passageway. At the
farther end the animals, one by one,
were forced into the branding box. A.
man stood without and at one side with
a long, wooden lever in his hands. He
watched the cattle as they emerged
into the box. When each animal was
well in he suddenly pushed the lever
down, the mavoble side of the box
closed in upon the beast and it was
held fast and tight without injury. In
a trice the brander snatched one of the
several branding irons from the fire
and pressed the heated end against
the side of the animal. There was a
little smoke and q smell of burning
hair. The beast gave a convulsive out
cry, but the brand-a huge "a. CO.
was charred in the hair and flesh. The
lever was raised, the box widened and
the poor brute darted out into an
other corral
So the branding went on for hours
necessarily. The boss said that by
working two branding boxes 500 cattle
could be branded a day. There had
been over 400 branded in day by the
use Of only one box. Twice year-in
spring and falI-the animals are cor