Cows is cows

Cows is cows by W. C. Tuttle is a humorous Western short story written in the early 20th century. It follows a comic tangle of cattle rustling, frontier justice, and mistaken identity, with a crafty sleuth working under cover to expose the real thieves. In the cow town of Piperock, Sheriff Magpie Simpkins and his deputy Ike Harper watch four quarrelsome ranchers—Hank Padden, Zeb Abernathy, Johnny Myers, and Scenery Sims—hire a swaggering “detective” named Spade Wilson to stop rustlers. He promptly hauls each of them in on suspicious, neatly planted evidence, while a lanky drifter calling himself Obadiah Ezekiel Moses Brown, the self-styled “Bringer of Light,” wanders the range on a burro named Lodestone. A chaotic courtroom scene ends when Lodestone bursts in carrying two bound men, and the truth surfaces: Obadiah is the real Spade Wilson, the redheaded sleuth is an impostor, and the genuine rustlers—led by notorious Kirk Kelso—have been framing the locals with doctored brands and fresh hides. With the culprits unmasked and the town sheepish, the tale closes on Scenery’s comic refrain, “Cows is cows.”