Cattlemen

The Cattlemen are the main antagonists of Disney's 1962 live-action film The Legend of Lobo. They are a pair of ranchers who want to kill Lobo and his family for killing their cattle.

They were portrayed by the late Émile Genest and the late Walter Pidgeon.

Role
As Lobo's father fights with a cougar, the cattlemen riding by below the wolves' den spot the cougar, and shoot it as it prepares to pounce on the wolves. When Lobo's father returns to the den soon after the incident, he smells both the cougar and the cattlemen, and decides to pick up and move house to avoid them.

When Lobo is 6 months old, he starts to hunt with the family pack. But rather than buffalo, the wolves' prey are the herds of cattle being driven across the desert. The cattlemen seek revenge on the wolves, and eventually kill Lobo's parents.

Lobo and his pack continue to prey on the cattle that have replaced the buffalo, but is wise enough to avoid all signs of the angry cattlemen who post rewards for his capture - or his death. When the time comes for his pack to split up to mate and raise their pups, Lobo and his mate find a uniquely secure den in an abandoned dwelling that is accessible only by a precarious bridge.

As Lobo continues to feed on their property, the cattlemen's feud with him escalates. To catch the wolves, a professional hunter from Texas brings his pack of tracking hounds: a bloodhound and the coonhounds, and his killer wolfhound. He sets a trap for Lobo and manages to snare Lobo's mate and use her as a lure. But Lobo leads his pack to create a cattle stampede, a diversion that enables him to liberate his mate and strike out for unsettled territory. In spite of the dramatic victory, Lobo realizes the same thing his father did: humankind has encroached too far on the territory that used to be his, and his best course of action is to seek a new home.