Horse of a Different Color (5 page)

After I’d explained all the terms of our agreement, and that I could terminate it at any time, he said, “Well that ought to protect you some, but there’s an awful lot of traps layin’ around for greenhorns in the feedin’ game. Besides, Bob’s a’ready earned a bad reputation for cheatin’, and a man doin’ business alongside of him could awful easy get tarred with the same stick. I kind of got the notion you aimed to start a little Hereford herd. Fact is, I picked out a few nice heifers, figurin’ you might want ’em, come spring. There’d be no need to take ’em out of the herd here even then. There’s plenty of pasture and hay land on the place, and Irene and I are gettin’ on in years. What with no boy of our own, I kind of had a notion . . . ”

George broke off suddenly, cleared his throat, and said, “Well, what’s the odds, anyways? I reckon you’ve a’ready got your mind made up, or like as not given your word, but I’d be a mite leery about gettin’ into the feedin’ business in times like these. Hogs are back down to a sensible price, but cattle—specially feeder and fat steers—are awful high, and I’ll be jiggered if I can see what’s goin’ to keep the price up there.”

“While I was in Kansas City I listened to all the discussions between the big cattlemen in the Stockmen’s Hotel lobby,” I told him, “and I talked to more than a dozen agents, feeders, and drovers. There wasn’t one of them that didn’t think the price of prime steers would be up to at least twenty-five dollars by spring, and some believe it will rise to thirty-five or forty. All the newspapers are saying that America will have to feed starving Europe for ten more years, so there’ll be plenty of demand, and the agents tell me that all the export beef is prime grade, so the demand will be for fat steers, don’t you think?”

George listened without interruption till I’d finished, then said, “There’s lots of smart men down to Kansas City, and they know more about what’s goin’ on in the world than I do, so I couldn’t say they’re wrong. But don’t forget that there’s two Americas—North and South. I was readin’ somewheres a few months back that there’s more cattle on the pampas down in Argentina than there used to be buffaloes on these prairies when my father was a boy. Of course, they’re not corn-fat steers, but I never heard of starvin’ folks turning their noses up at good grass-fed beef . . . specially if they happen to be a mite shy on cash the way I understand most of the folks in Europe are since the war. It seems to me like they might go to buyin’ their beef in South America if we keep the price of ours too high for ’em.”

I was a little disturbed by George’s reasoning, and it must have shown on my face, for he went on, “You understand, son, I could be crazier’n a hoot owl about this fat-cattle market bein’ too high, so don’t let my skittishness worry you. Chances are, those fellows down to Kansas City know somethin’ I don’t, and even if Europe did go to buying South American beef instead of ours, it wouldn’t happen all in a day and without warning. Anyways, you didn’t come over here to get a sermon on the livestock market. Are you right sure that Bones and Bob want me to set a value on that stuff?”

I grinned and said, “Well, it’s part of the deal, but it wasn’t exactly Bob’s suggestion.”

“That don’t surprise me none,” George said with just a trace of a smile, “but if you and Bones want me to, I’ll go over with you and appraise the stuff.”

He brought along an ancient
Farmer’s Almanac
containing instructions and tables for determining by measurement the number of tons of hay in a stack, and bushels of ear corn in a pile. After he’d taken careful measurements of each stack and pile and examined samples from them, he spent half an hour figuring, then called Bob and me.

“Well, this is what I make out of it, boys,” he told us. “The corn measures to be something over twenty-one thousand bushels, but so much of it’s nubbins and the like that I calculate there’s no more than sixteen thousand eight hundred bushels of feedable grain. If I owned it I’d be glad to get a dollar and a dime a bushel for it, so that’s the price I’ve put down. The feedable hay measures four hundred and twenty tons—maybe one or two more or less—and a man could buy all he wanted of the same grade, delivered right here on the place, at fifteen dollars a ton. That makes the whole works, hay and corn together, worth twenty-four thousand, seven hundred and . . . ”

Bob’s face turned grayer and grayer as George talked. Suddenly he broke in angrily, “Now wait a minute, George! Something’s all wrong with them figures of yours! There’s leastways thirty-five thousand dollars’ worth of feed here, and I ain’t going to . . . ”

George looked up over the tops of his glasses and, without seeming to interrupt, said mildly, “Well now, Bob, I’m not so good at doin’ sums in arithmetic, but Dave, the teller up to the bank, he’s a crackerjack. Suppose we go on up there and have him do the arithmetic over again. All I know for sure is that I’ve got the measurements right, and how much yield of corn there’ll be to a yard of cobs, and what the stuff’s worth a bushel or ton at today’s prices. I figure the hogs would net about twenty-seven hundred dollars if you was to ship ’em, so that’s what I’ve valued ’em at.”

Bob was so sure Dave would find some big mistake that he was the most cheerful among us on the way to the bank. But his anger flared when Dave came out with the same figure as George’s. Again he shouted that the feed was worth thirty-five thousand, and that he wouldn’t settle for a dime less. Bones let him blow off steam for a couple of minutes, then he told him, not unkindly, “I wouldn’t like to foreclose on you, Bob, but if you keep on you’ll leave me no choice. I believe you boys, working together, can make good profits in the feeding business. If you pitch in and do your best, I’ll wager that by this time next year you’ll have all your debts paid and be on the road to prosperity.”

Holding a grudge, sulking, or staying angry more than a minute or two were not among Bob Wilson’s faults. I never knew another man who could forget his troubles so quickly or enthuse more ardently at the prospects of finding a pot of gold at the foot of the next rainbow. To see and hear him when Bones had finished speaking, no one who didn’t know the facts would have believed that he was dead broke and more than twelve thousand dollars in the hole. In his own mind he was already far along on the road to prosperity, and his only anxiety was to get started on our venture without another minute’s delay. “You don’t need to worry none about me pitchin’ in,” he sang out. “I aim to pay off them men of mine just as quick as the papers get signed up so’s I can write checks.”

“It wouldn’t take Dave more than half an hour to make up the notes and mortgage papers,” Bones told him, “and there’s no reason why you boys can’t sign ’em this afternoon.”

“I don’t believe it would be good business for me to sign them today,” I said.

Bones whirled around toward me and demanded gruffly, “Now what are you backing off about?”

“I’m not backing off from anything,” I told him, “but I thought you might want to. Tomorrow will be my twenty-first birthday.”

His face turned grayer than Bob’s had been. “Why didn’t you tell me you were under age when you first came here?” he asked in a voice that wasn’t too steady.

“Because you didn’t ask me,” I answered with a grin.

“Don’t you know that notes signed by a minor for anything but food, clothing, and shelter are worthless?” he demanded.

“Yes, sir,” I told him. “That’s why I thought you might like to wait till tomorrow for the signing.”

The note I signed the next morning was for twenty-three thousand dollars and the mortgage covered my horses, wagons and harness, together with “all chattels of whatsoever sort or kind” bought with the proceeds of the loan. Across the face of the note Bones wrote

After the signing I moved down to the Wilson place, but all I took with me were the old Maxwell, Kitten and her saddle, what few clothes I had, and the account books from my wheat-hauling business. I’d planned to move enough furniture to fix up a room for myself in the bunkhouse, but Marguerite wouldn’t hear of it. She said I was to sleep in the house and be one of the family—and no one was ever happier to join a family than I was to join hers.

5

Old Man Macey’s Steers

W
ITH
headquarters adjoining town and the railroad siding, I hoped to double my trading and shipping business. But to do it I needed pasture space so I’d be able to buy any type of cattle and hogs I could get at a good price, then keep them until I had enough of some particular grade to ship a carload. On the Wilson place there was a twenty-acre field north of the creek, and forty acres of rich valley floor to the south, but the fences were only two-strand barbed wire. The day I moved there I made a deal with Bob that I’d pay three quarters of the taxes and mortgage interest on the place, and half the cost of fencing it with hog-tight woven wire. In exchange I was to have year-around use of the north field, and use of the south field until May. We would then plant it to corn, sharing the work and dividing the crop equally.

Loose hogs were still rooting in the corn piles, and the hired men still loafing around the place. I suggested to Bob that he set the men to repairing the feed lot fence, and said I’d pay half their wages until the end of the month if they’d fence the two fields and a stackyard around the hay and corn piles. “There’s no sense keeping ’em another day,” he said, “and I aim to pay ’em off tonight. You and me can do the whole daggone job without a lick of help. It won’t take us scarcely no time to string up the fence, and we can do it in odd hours while we’re buying feeder steers.”

“I don’t want to start buying feeders until the fencing is done,” I told him, “so I’ll be able to pick up shipping stock at the same time. Men are cheaper than interest, so hadn’t we better keep them a few days? One could go to Oberlin for hog wire in the morning, while the other repaired the feed-lot fence and dug post holes for the stackyard.”

“Look, Bud,” he said, “you don’t need to worry none about me not pitchin’ right in on the work. You go get the wire in the morning, and I’ll fix the feed-lot fence and dig the stackyard post holes while you’re gone. With posts a’ready set around the rest of the place it won’t take the two of us next to no time to staple up the hog wire. I’m going to Oberlin for groceries tonight anyways, so I’ll pay the boys off and take ’em along. It ain’t right to pay men off without you ride ’em back to town.”

Right after supper Bob drove away with the men, it was way past midnight when he came back, and at four o’clock in the morning I left to get the wire. Bob had the biggest and showiest team of horses in Beaver Township. They were bright bays weighing a ton apiece, but were slow afoot, and it was well after eight o’clock when I pulled into the Oberlin lumberyard. “How come you wasn’t at the celebration last night?” the yardman called.

“What celebration?” I called back.

“The one Bob Wilson throwed over to Scott’s pool hall,” he told me. “Bob, he sure must have made a heap of dough on them cattle he shipped a couple of weeks back. Wouldn’t let nobody else spend a dime, and he bought Scotty plumb out of sody-pop and near-beer and ceegars.”

I didn’t want to hear any more, so asked, “Have you got a dozen rolls of four-foot heavy-duty hog wire on hand?”

“You betcha!” he answered. “Bob, he give me the order last night. Tells me you’re putting in a thousand top-grade whiteface steers and five hundred shoats, and got to fence the whole place hog-tight and bull-strong to hold ’em. Bob, he’s sure a big-time operator, and you’re a lucky kid to get teamed up with him.”

The more I heard the less lucky I felt, especially when I found that the bill had already been made out to Wilson and Moody. I didn’t bother to explain that there was no such firm, but paid for half the wire and had the other half charged to Bob.

When I got back to the Wilson place Bob wasn’t there, only one post hole had been dug, and there was a drove of shoats rooting in the corn piles. For a moment my temper flared hot enough to make my mouth dry. I started turning the team, to drive up to the bank and tell Bones the whole deal was off. Then Betty Mae came running toward me from the house, singing out gaily, “Hi, Balp! Gi’me horsie wide.”

With that happy little face beaming up at me I couldn’t stay angry, and I couldn’t go off and leave her. “You wait right there, so you won’t get stepped on,” I told her, stopped the team, and jumped down to pick her up. With her squealing, clinging to my back like a monkey, and hugging me around the neck with both chubby little arms, I took her for a piggyback ride to the back door, put her inside, and told her, “You stay right there till I come in for dinner. If one of those horses stepped on you he’d mash you flatter than the grasshopper that sat on a railroad track.”

I’d unhitched the horses and was leading them toward the barn when I heard the chattering valves of the Buick behind me. The moment the motor stopped Bob shouted. “I sure got us off to a flyin’ start this morning!”

I didn’t look around, but he followed after me, calling out, “Daggoned if I ain’t just stole us nine of the prettiest white-faced steers you ever seen. Every one of ’em will scale mighty close to seven hundred and thirty-five pounds, and they’re worth leastways a dime a pound, but I bought ’em at sixty bucks around.”

To keep any sound of anger out of my voice I waited until I’d put the horses in their stalls, then turned toward Bob and asked, “Where did you get the steers, and how did you pay for them?”

“Didn’t have to pay for ’em,” he told me jubilantly. “I got ’em off’n old man Macey, and his stuff is mortgaged clean up to the ears. All we got to do is tell Bones and sign up a note for the five hundred and forty bucks.”

“Did you tell Mr. Macey that top grade feeders were worth only eight dollars a hundred?” I asked.

“Shucks, no!” he laughed. “The old geezer reads the drover’s news like it was mail from home, so you can’t catch him up much on the pound price, but he don’t know nothing about cattle weights. He hung out for an average of eight hundred pounds at first, but I kept on telling him they wouldn’t scale an ounce over five hundred, so we finally come together on sixty bucks a head.”

“Bob,” I said, “there are a few things we’d better get settled before we go any further.” Then, after telling him where I drew the lines between haggling and cheating, I said, “You’ve already earned the reputation in this township of trying to cheat on every deal you get into. Unless that reputation is cured right at the start, any man doing business alongside of you will be tarred with the same stick, and I’m not going to get tarred. From now on you’ll make no deal that I’m in any way connected with unless I’m right there and agree to it. We’ll do our buying and selling together until you try some more tricky stuff, but the first time I find you trying to cheat me or anybody else in this business I’ll pull out of it.”

Bob stood with his head down until I’d finished. Then he looked up with the expression of a little boy whose mother has told him he’s been naughty, and said, “Daggone it, Bud, I didn’t aim to cheat the old man—all I done was to tell him his cattle weighed less’n what they did. But I savvy what you mean about them lines, and I’ll stay inside of ’em if that’s what you want.”

“As long as you do we’re in this together,” I told him. “Now let’s go see what Marguerite’s got cooking for dinner.”

During dinner Bob acted as if he hadn’t a care in the world, but after we’d eaten he pitched into the post-hole digging as if he expected to find a gold piece at the bottom of each one. I let him dig alone for a couple of hours while I mended the feedlot fence to make it pig-tight. Then we worked together, setting stout posts to enclose a one-acre stackyard. We’d stretched woven wire drum-tight around them, and were hanging the gate when Mr. Macey climbed out of his ancient top buggy at the roadside and drove nine steers into the dooryard.

I needed no one to tell me that those steers were out of stock originally from the Miner herd. They were as alike as if they’d been cast in the same mold: broad through the shoulders and hips, straight backed, stubby legged, and deep in the brisket and buttocks, giving their bodies the appearance of being square. For a minute I was at a loss for any way of paying the old gentleman what they were worth without admitting that Bob had tried to cheat him. Then an idea struck me, and I called out, “Bob tells me he made a deal for those fellows at a dime a pound. Drive ’em right back here to the scales, and we’ll weigh them.”

The old man looked at me as if he thought I’d gone out of my head, and said in a confused sort of way, “Well now . . . ” Then stopped and began again, “Well now . . . ”

Before he had a chance to say that the deal had been for sixty dollars apiece, Bob broke in loudly, “Daggoned if them critters don’t look a quarter again bigger now I get a close-up look at ’em than what they did out there in the pasture, Mr. Macey. Fetch ’em right on back to the scales so there won’t be no guesswork about the weight.”

What the scales showed was the unerring accuracy of Bob Wilson’s eye. He had told me the steers would average close to 735 pounds apiece, and the nine scaled 6,598 pounds—just seventeen off the mark. As the beam hung teetering I turned to the white-bearded old gentleman and asked, “Are these cattle mortgaged to the bank?”

“Yes,” he said, “so the check goes to Harry.”

On the list Bones had furnished me, showing what I could pay directly to his borrowers for mortgaged stock, the figure opposite Mr. Macey’s name was 25 per cent. As he turned away I pulled out my check book and told him, “Wait a minute. The cattle are yours. The bank only holds a mortgage on them, and we have an agreement with Harry to pay you a quarter of the price in cash.”

He watched with trembling hands while I made him a check for $165, then turned it over and wrote on the back: “I hereby sell to Robert Wilson and Ralph Moody nine Hereford steers for the sum of $659.80, 75 per cent to be paid for my account to the First State Bank of Cedar Bluffs.”

When I passed it to him his hand shook so violently that he could hardly hold it, and his voice was unsteady as he tried to thank me. But he hurried back to his buggy almost at a trot, and drove rapidly away toward town.

Bob was obviously as happy as I to see the old man’s joy. But I was sure that he felt no remorse at having come so close to cheating him out of more than a hundred dollars. Remorse seemed to have no part in his makeup—nor greed, either. I didn’t believe his trickery was actually an attempt to rob anyone, but an effort to convince himself that instead of being a failure at business he was smarter than the man with whom he was dealing.

We’d been back at work no more than half an hour when Marguerite called from the kitchen doorway that Bones wanted to see me at the bank right away. When I got there I found him furious at Bob. “That man has no more sense of honesty or responsibility than a grasshopper,” he stormed. “I had an idea that your teaming up with him in stock feeding would be good business for all hands concerned, but there’s no sense in either of us trying to deal with a man that can’t be trusted as far as you could throw him. Do you know that he was over to Oberlin last night, bragging his head off, and that he spent over fifty dollars treating all the bums in town at the pool hall?”

Without waiting for an answer he stormed on, “Grandpaw Macey was just in here, so broke up he couldn’t hold still. He tells me Bob swore up and down that his steers didn’t weigh over five hundred pounds apiece, and that he’d have stolen them for sixty dollars a head if you hadn’t stepped in. Folks hereabouts know he can guess cattle weights right down to a T, and he uses it to steal from ’em. Given a chance, he’ll cheat you or me or anybody else out of our eye teeth. I hate to foreclose on a man with a wife and family like his, but he leaves me no choice.”

“I wish you’d give him one more chance,” I said. Then I told him about the talk I’d had with Bob that noon, and said, “What he needs now is for you to give him a rough-shod raking over the coals.”

Bones sat listening glumly while I talked, and when I’d finished he said, “If you want to risk it, I’ll go along for the time being, but I’ll foreclose on him the day I hear of his pulling one more of these shenanigans.” Then he cranked the phone and asked Effie to have Bob come to the bank right away.