"And what should they be marked?" asked the teacher.
"Under-bit right and a split left, if he belongs to the Cross-Triangle," returned the pupil proudly, and in the same breath he exclaimed, "He is not branded either."
Phil smiled approval. "That's right, and we'll just fix him now, before somebody else beats us to him." He moved his horse slowly toward the cattle as he spoke.
"But," exclaimed Patches, "how do you know that he belongs to the Cross-Triangle?"
"He doesn't," returned Phil, laughing. "He belongs to me."
"But I don't see how you can tell."
"I know because I know the stock," Phil explained, "and because I happen to remember that particular calf, in the rodeo last spring. He got away from us, with his mother, in the cedars and brush over near the head of Mint Wash. That's one of the things that you have to learn in this business, you see. But, to be sure we're right, you watch him a minute, and you'll see him go to a Five-Bar cow. The Five-Bar is my iron, you know—I have a few head running with Uncle Will's."
Even as he spoke, the calf, frightened at their closer approach, ran to a cow that was branded as Phil had said, and the cow, with unmistakable maternal interest in her offspring, proved the ownership of the calf.
"You see?" said Phil. "We'll get that fellow now, because before the next rodeo he'll be big enough to leave his mother, and then; if he isn't branded, he'll be a maverick, and will belong to anybody that puts an iron on him."
"But couldn't someone brand him now, with their brand, and drive him away from his mother?" asked Patches.