Tom, Tom the Piper's Son

Angel Gomez thought he had given an old crime a new twist. He never dreamed how many others in the U.S. had the same idea.

One night the 40-year-old restaurant man and his wife, tiptoed out of the house. While the neighbors slept, the Gomez jalopy chugged out of San Antonio. On a country road they stopped, crawled under a back-pasture fence.

In the grey light Gomez walked up to a fat steer, shot it between the eyes. He and his wife were butchering it with practiced strokes when a vaquero rode up, challenged them, fired over their heads. Scampering away through the mesquite, Mr. & Mrs. Gomez left their tools behind. When they dared go home, they found a policeman waiting on the porch. Last week, cowboy customers of Gomez' Grapevine Inn were sad: no more thick, juicy beefsteaks would they get. Angel was serving two years in prison.

Rustling, once a matter of cutting animals out of a herd and skillfully altering brands, was long ago motorized. But this year it has spread like a rash all over the meal-hungry face of the nation: P: Near Milford, Mich., thieves killed two prize steers, cut off the hindquarters, stuck a $50 bill on one carcass for the farmer.

P: Nevada cops caught Resort Operator

Jack Lafranz red-handed under his porch,

cutting up a stolen calf he had carried across the California line in violation of

the McCarran Act.

P:J At Haverhill, Mass., a thief slaughtered

an Ayrshire heifer named Tiny, left only

the hide and bones. Tiny's outraged owner

posted a $500 reward.

P:J In New Hudson, Mich., a soup thirsty

prowler lopped off three cows' tails.

P: In Geauga County, Ohio, Sheriff S. M.

Harland predicted darkly: "There is going

to be work for the coroner. ... I am

recommending that our farmers get out

their shotguns and use them."

In upstate New York, in Detroit, in many a city that never saw a cow hand, the reports came in from owners who missed their calves, sheep, pigs, chickens. Rustling, 1945 style, had its professionals who ran their stolen animals into big trucks, butchered them while rolling to the black market.

It had its perverse and wanton amateurs, too. They stole, killed, crudely hacked off what they wanted and got away, leaving most of the meat to spoil. Some were caught. But for rustlers so far, there were no necktie parties.

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