RC: To Brand or not to brand (long)

[CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/16/00 6:56:22 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
dotwgns@ruralnetwork.net writes:

<< An old expression is a nice brand will bring him home. >>

Dot, this reminds me of an incident that happened when I was a small child.  
My parents bought their brand with their ranch in central Idaho.  When I was 
6 or 7, my dad got a letter from a sale yard in western Montana with pictures 
of a horse that a man had tried to sell through that yard.  The horse had our 
brand, and the man did not have a bill of sale.  We had never seen the horse 
before, so dad did some checking.  It turned out that the horse had been 
owned by the man from whom we had bought the ranch, and that he had put the 
horse up as a bet in a poker game and had lost him!  The fellow who was 
trying to sell him in Montana had won him fair and square.  Since we had 
bought the ranch with all livestock and since we owned the brand, dad wrote 
the man a bill of sale for the horse, and the man was able to go ahead and 
sell him.  Yes, auction yards WILL notice a nice brand!

Heidi