No chance for rustlers to get by with the goods any more. Oh, there were a few onery little fellers that butchered stolen cattle and sold the beef to the meat markets in Drumwell and such towns, but they were so low-down and entirely onery they were not worth spending the time on to run down and shoot.
But there were a lot of horsethieves roaming around down in the Strip. They raided over into Kansas, driving away whole herds of horses at a time, which they sold among the cowboys on the Cherokee leases. Horses were not the same as cattle when it came to stealing and selling them down there in the cow-camps of the lessees of the Indian pastures. They kept them down there and used them. A brand made mighty little difference on a horse among the cattlemen and punchers in the Strip.
Well, it was a pretty hard matter to stop that sort of traffic, seeing there were so many brands among horses, the present owners, in more than half the cases, ignorant of their animals' former ownership and caring nothing about it. Take the cowboys of the Bar-Heart-Bar, for example: they'd always risk a bargain horse, passing over the particular of a bill of sale. Coburn said he'd nearly gamble there were no two brands alike among his cowboys' mounts.
On the subject of horses, if Waco Johnson did not come back Simpson would be free to use Waco's until he could buy some of his own. Waco probably was in jail on account of some devilment he'd got into, and he could stay there for all Coburn would turn a hair to get him out. One of his horses was in the livery barn with the others of the outfit. Coburn said he'd leave it there and let it
