Some parts of the west were seared as by a prairie fire, and finally came President Taft and Secretary Ballinger. Pinchot sunk into the oblivion that his ill-advised activities deserved. When a man attempts to climb over the wrecks of others he has ruined, natural laws of compensation will prevail.

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

The Standard Cattle Company, with headquarters at Cheyenne, ranged fifteen to twenty thousand cattle over the headwaters of Horse Creek and the Chugwater, in the later days of the cow business.

Earlier the cowmen had organized associations for their mutual protection, and for cooperation. They developed the round-up to a system. They hired fearless men for detectives, and trailed fugitives from justice into far countries. The ramifications of this ann of the cow business was necessary, albeit sometimes unjust.

Vigilantes hung thieves without stint or conscience and occasionally a transgressing ranchman very nearly met that melancholy fate. Horse thieves and cattle thieves were trailed into the Britich Provinces, and southward to and through Mexico into the South American Republics, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

John Bratt was one of the live members of the old executive committee of the Cheyenne Stock Growers' Association, which he helped to organize, and was on the Executive Board for several years.

One of the rules adopted by this organization was that all unbranded cattle found by the roundups were to be taken to the final rendezvous, and there sold to the highest bidder, the proceeds to go into the treasury of the association. This was obviously about the only thing they could do, but should the roundup catch the lone cow of an early settler, if she chanced to be unbranded, it was appropriating property that did not belong to the association. I think there was one or two decisions that gave the cow back even after being branded, where the ownership was proven.