By Rachel Wright | The Gazette, via the Denver Gazette
The grass crunches underfoot and dust billows in dense clouds as a truck and trailer speed out of public lands in Montrose County. The trailer is full of calves lowing plaintively. The driver gives the Western salute, one or two fingers raised as a four-by-four rumbles past. The truck turns on to the highway, nose pointed east.
And without anyone the wiser, more calves have disappeared.
Cattle rustling is a tale at least as old as Colorado itself, when poverty and drought turned desperate people into thieves. And now, thanks to the high price of cattle and uneven enforcement of branding laws across the surrounding states, ranchers say rustling is back in a big way on the Western Slope.