They didn't invent rustling in Texas?

I don’t think it’s possible to eat just one French fry or to tell just one Sisyphus story. So we have a digression, which I take to be mandatory.

Sisyphus kept a herd of cattle at the isthmus and eventually founded the polis of Corinth. He noticed that his herd kept getting smaller while that of his neighbor Autolycus kept getting larger.

The god Hermes had given Autolycus the gift of metamorphosis — at least as it applied to cattle. Autolycus could change the color of a cow’s coat. He could make hornless cattle grow horns.

Sisyphus considered the matter and carved brands into the hooves of his cattle. Robert Graves has a discussion of the “double-S” brand The Greek Myths: 1. But basically the brand meant, “This cow was stolen by Autolycus.”

Sisyphus called out his neighbors as witnesses, and they trailed the distinctive tracks back to Autolycus’s place.

Rustling always inspires a ruckus. While the neighbors and Autolycus were shouting about frontier justice and ways of dying that might be too good for rustlers, Sisyphus took advantage of the distraction to case Autolycus’s house.

He seduced Autolycus’s daughter Anticleia. She had a son named Odysseus, who turned out to be another trickster and who cut quite a figure in literature.