HANDLING CATTLE ON THE RANGE 115 



like the Diamond A's ( /\), the V Cross T's ( \J -f "[" ), 

 the Bar W (^/) with from 10,000 to 40,000 head each 

 on the open ranges. The Diamond A's have one fenced 

 pasture near Engle, N. M., containing more than 700,000 

 acres. 



Arizona was once the home of several huge range out- 

 fits, but the years from 1893 to 1899 saw many of them 

 shipping out their stock and abandoning the business, 

 especially in the northern part of the state, where the 

 sheepmen gradually forced them off the ranges. The 

 largest of these was the Aztec Cattle Co., which in 1888 

 was running 60,000 mixed cattle on its Little Colorado 

 range, all in the famous West Texas Hash Knife brand 

 (" / P"). In southern Arizona about Wilcox and near Tuc- 

 son there are still several good-sized ranges like those of 

 the Sierra Bonita Co., the San Simon, the Empire Co. 

 and the holdings of the Greene Cattle Co., each of which 

 probably runs up into herds of more than four figures. 



There are several very large companies operating on 

 the open country in the eastern and southeastern part 

 of Colorado, the Prairie Cattle Co. of La Junta probably 

 being the largest of them all. These Colorado outfits, 

 however, are generally steer ranches, and either own 

 stock cattle in the southern country from which they 

 draw their steers or buy them and ship up from below. 

 In the Northwest there are comparatively few outfits 

 handling stock cattle at the present time to any ex- 

 tent exclusively on the open range. Some of the 

 largest of them are in Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. 

 There are, however, many good-sized outfits all over that 

 region and in South Dakota and Montana, that handle 

 steers in large numbers, but with the rapid encroach- 

 ments on the old ranges they are fast disappearing. 



