Horse of a Different Color Page 7
But when the mortgage transfer amounted to only six hundred dollars on a thousand dollars’ worth of stock bought from a prosperous valley farmer, he’d say, “Now that’s the kind of business I like to see: a man getting everything but his brood stock sold and off his place as soon as it’s ready for market. Don’t forget that every head of livestock shipped out of a township brings in fresh money that makes prosperity for you and me and everybody else.”
When we’d finished the paper work I signed a new note for twenty-three thousand dollars, making my total indebtedness to the bank forty-six thousand dollars. As I swung onto Kitten and started back to the Wilson place I was a bit proud of being a big enough businessman within two weeks after my twenty-first birthday that a banker would lend me any such an amount.
Saturday morning Bob and I were out at the crack of dawn, getting everything ready for receiving the stock we’d bought. We were none too early, for soon after sunrise a farmer drove into the dooryard with a load of hogs. Before I could check them off the list and show the man where to unload, two more had arrived. Within half an hour the yard was filled with wagons, and along the roadway as far as Cedar Bluffs men and boys herded little bunches of cattle, waiting to get in and deliver them.
In some ways Bob Wilson was the most amazing man I ever knew. No matter how large the amount, he never bothered to fill out check stubs, and invariably forgot the amount within two minutes. But he could ride for no more than ten minutes through a herd of fifty cattle, never see them again, and tell each one’s markings and weight a month later. He fidgeted impatiently while I checked in the first few loads of hogs, then told me, “There’s no sense wasting time with all that messin’ around. I know every feeder steer by sight, and if you can’t remember what-all you bought these fellas can tell you.” Fortunately, he soon gathered a crowd around the scales, and forgot everything else in the excitement of betting dollars against dimes that he could guess the weight of any “cow critter” to within less than 2 per cent.
I’d planned to ship all my trading stock that evening, but the westbound train left me only three cars, so I had to hold most of it over. There were still half a dozen men at the scales with Bob when, in late afternoon, I drove what stock I could ship to the railroad siding. It was dusk before I finished loading, and full dark before the cars were shunted into the eastbound train. With the lot full of new steers, there was no possibility of my accompanying the shipment, so I telegraphed my agent what was in transit, then swung wearily into the saddle. When I rode into the dooryard the corn wagon stood right where I’d left it that morning, and Bob was coming from the scales, whistling merrily and swinging a lantern. “You sure ought to been around the scales this afternoon,” he sang out gaily. “I skun them gazabos out of close onto ten bucks. How’d the loading go?”
I had trouble to keep from shouting when I called back, “Haven’t you fed those cattle yet?”
Bob didn’t seem to notice my peevishness, but told me, “Well, daggone it, I aimed to, but anymore the days are so short it gets dark on a man before he can say Jack Robinson.”
He stood for a minute or two, watching me strip the saddle off Kitten. Then, probably because I didn’t say anything, he went on, “Well, shucks, it won’t make no difference no ways. The moon ought to be up by the time we’ve eat supper, and we can feed ’em just as good by moonlight as daylight.”
By the time we’d eaten, the sky was completely clouded over and the night so black that a man couldn’t see his hand six inches from his eyes. The temperature had dropped at least 10 degrees, the wind had veered into the north, and it was salted with particles of snow that cut like glass slivers. There was no need of corn-feeding the steers, but with a storm coming on they must have at least a ton and a half of hay, and my hogs in the pasture a ton or more of corn.
Wearing double suits of overalls and jumpers, earlapper caps, and heavy gloves, Bob and I set out for the stackyard, carrying a lantern and a couple of pitchforks. As I hung the lantern where it wouldn’t be blown out Bob started up a ladder, shouting that he’d pitch down from the top of the stack. By chance, I’d hung the lantern in such a position that I was left in deep shadow, but the light shown upward onto Bob as though he were an actor on a stage. He’d tossed down no more than a hundred pounds when I saw him plunge his fork tines deep into the matted hay, slip a knee under the center of the handle, and throw his full weight onto the extreme end. There was a sound like a rifle shot as the handle broke, and Bob imitated a howl of pain so well that anyone might have thought he’d been hit by the bullet. He clamped both hands over his spine and wailed, “Daggoned if it don’t feel like I busted my back with that lifting. Don’t know if I can make it down from here by myself or not.”
I didn’t try to control my anger, but shouted, “If you don’t get another fork in a hurry, I’ll bust the handle of this one the same way you did yours, and come up there after you.”
With any other man I ever knew that would have started a fight or brought him to terms, but not Bob Wilson. He hobbled down the ladder as if he were in agony, leaned against the stack, and groaned, “Just leave me have a couple of minutes to rub some of the ache out, and maybe I can try it again.”
“I saw you break that handle intentionally,” I told him, “and I don’t believe you’ve got any more backache than I have. If I could prove it I’d take my half of the stock out of this feed lot before daylight.”
Even that didn’t bring him around. “You don’t reckon I’d try to fool you at a time like this, do you?” he asked between groans. “Just leave me hold the lantern for you a spell, and I’ll be all right soon as ever this pain eases up.”
With all Bob’s ingenuity he couldn’t find a way to pitch hay without as well as admitting that his back injury was a fake, and I made him pay for it. When the temperature is only a few degrees above zero and there is icy sleet in the wind, pitching hay and shoveling corn are a lot more comfortable jobs than standing and holding a lantern, and I kept Bob holding that lantern for more than two hours. When at last we headed for the house he was so nearly frozen that his face had turned blue, but he was still sticking to his story.
When I woke at dawn Sunday morning a full-fledged blizzard was raging out of the northwest. I had no concern for the steers, as the feed lot was well protected by the buildings and the thick growth of trees along the creek. But I was badly worried about my shipping stock, for the creek flowed through a deep, narrow gorge along the eastern side of the pasture, so the trees afforded no protection from a northwest storm. I dressed in my warmest clothes, built a fire in the kitchen stove, then shouldered the door open and went out.
The wind was so thick with powder-fine snow that I could see only three or four feet, but I groped my way to the barn and saddled Kitten. Trusting to her mustang instinct, infinitely more reliable in a blizzard than a man’s reasoning power, I led her to the pasture gate, opened it, mounted, and let her have her head. As if the little mare knew my intention by telepathy, she struck off downwind at a jogging trot. After a few minutes she veered sharply to the left, my right leg brushed against fence wire, and a cow’s head loomed out of the whiteness at my left. I didn’t need sight to know that the cows and calves had drifted with the storm and were wedged tightly into the southeast fence corner.
Stepping from the saddle I pushed my way among them, expecting to find several dead and trampled calves. There was only one down, and it was still alive, simply given out from cold and weakness. Kitten stood quietly while I lifted the limp, gangling calf across her withers. The moment I swung back into the saddle she began crowding the dazed and bewildered cattle out of the fence corner, nipping their rumps and driving them into the battering force of the storm. Probably by scent, she kept track of every cow and calf in the little band, headed off those that continually tried to turn back, and drove them to the gate as unerringly as if she could see through the blinding storm.
After putting the exhausted calf into the barn and the rest of the catt
le in the sheltered horse corral, I turned Kitten back to the pasture. But that time I had to depend upon my own reasoning, for mustangs have little instinct concerning hogs. I rode downwind to the corner where she’d found the cattle, back along the fence to the creek gorge, and let her pick her way down the steep bank. The ravine was about thirty feet deep, and below the rake of the wind the visibility lengthened to ten yards or more. The creek was frozen solidly, three feet of snow had sifted down onto the ice, and the bottom of the gorge looked like the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. The hogs had burrowed into the snow, and the smoke was steam from their breathing, rising through blowholes. They were as warm as if wrapped in blankets, and with plenty of fat over their ribs they wouldn’t need feeding for several days.
When I went to the house for breakfast I found Bob lying on the parlor sofa, groaning pitiably as Marguerite put a bottle of hot water against his back. It was evident that he had her as fully convinced of his injury as I was unconvinced, but I couldn’t tell her it was all a fake, and he was smart enough to know it. “Daggone it, I hate to leave you do the whole job of feeding on a morning the likes of this,” he told me. “Them steers will need a load of corn along with their hay, but the way my back feels I don’t reckon I could handle a fork or a shovel to save my neck.”
After breakfast the visibility improved a little, but the wind was still bitter cold, and icy snow crystals scoured my face like sandpaper. Alone, the feeding took me until after ten o’clock, then I saddled Kitten and rode through the gorge to be sure the hogs were still all right. When I came back I heard Bob’s voice from the feed lot, calling to the steers. From just outside his range of vision I watched him for several minutes; calling to the steers, looking them over, and breaking ears of corn on the edge of a feed bunk. He seemed as happy as a boy with a new toy, and showed no signs of backache.
I started toward him angrily, intending to tell him that he’d either do his half of the work without any more faking or I’d quit him the minute the blizzard was over. But as I neared the feed bunk one of the steers picked up a three-inch piece of corn ear and began wallowing it around in his mouth. Instead of groaning about his backache as I expected, Bob looked up and told me, “You got to learn ’em to shell the corn off’n short pieces of cob first. Elseways they’ll lose fifteen or twenty pounds before ever they get onto the trick of takin’ a whole cob into their mouths and shelling it.”
I realized instantly that his knowledge of livestock feeding was more than enough to offset whatever work he might shirk onto me, so I held my tongue. Together we broke corn until Marguerite yoo-hooed to let us know dinner was ready, and I enjoyed it in spite of the cold and cutting snow.
The blizzard continued through Tuesday, but when the sun rose bright and clear Wednesday morning my hogs came out of hibernation, looking as fat after three days without feed as they’d been when I bought them. I shipped every head of my trading stock the following Saturday, and the profit on it was more than I had dared to hope for.
With the big shipment out of the way, Bob and I fell into a routine that we seldom varied. He always had a backache if there was anything to be done that he considered work, but he’d spend five or six hours a day opening and closing heavy gates, rounding up steers in the feed lot, and weighing them one by one. Within ten days from the time we’d put the three hundred steers into the lot he could tell exactly how much each one had gained or lost. If a steer wasn’t gaining he took it out of the lot, put it with other non-gainers in a separate corral, and brought them all up to full feed with a minimum loss of weight.
The only actual labor required for the feeding operation was two hours of hay-pitching and corn-shoveling morning and evening. I was willing enough to do it as my share to match Bob’s know-how, but it presented a couple of difficulties. One, that cattle won’t eat well in darkness, and the trick in fattening is to get them to eat all they can digest, so I had to start the afternoon feeding at least two hours before dark. The other, that Beaver Township was stripped of cattle and hogs that farmers wanted to sell, so I had to widen my buying territory or give up the shipping business until spring.
Monday through Friday for the rest of the winter I was on the road by seven o’clock, worked in the adjoining townships until two, then hurried home to do the evening feeding. I seldom called on more than four or five farmers in a day, and usually had to dicker half an hour before buying an animal at a price that would allow me a reasonable profit. Haggling with livestock dealers was the only entertainment some farmers had during the winter, and they liked to make it last as long as possible.
On Saturdays I started feeding at four o’clock and was out with Kitten by daybreak, rounding up the stock I’d bought during the week and getting it on the road for home. Hogs were the only stock I required sellers to deliver, but most of them helped with the cattle driving, usually bringing along an animal or two for trading. I always planned to get home before noon, and our place soon became the cattle and hog trading center for the whole surrounding countryside. Some trades were made directly between the farmers, but more often with me, and I always tried to make a dollar on each deal. Bob never failed to gather a crowd at the scales on trading days, or to make a pocketful of change by betting dollars to dimes on guessing cattle weight.
February 1920 was bitter cold, cattle prices dropped sharply, and though I never missed a day from my territory there was little profit to be made. The first half of March the weather behaved as if it had been designed especially to punish stockmen. At dawn on the eighth the thermometer stood at twenty-two below zero. Six inches of snow covered the pasture, with a crust hard enough to support my heaviest trading cattle, and the wind was strong enough to blow the lighter ones off their feet. By noon on the ninth, summer seemed to be just around the corner. When I came home at three o’clock a balmy Chinook wind was blowing out of the southwest, and Bob had taken the family to Oberlin—partly to get fresh meat, but more to give Marguerite and the children a little outing. The cattle sunning themselves contentedly in the pasture stood in ankle-deep slush, and the feed-lot steers waded equally deep in sloppy muck and manure.
I pulled off my jumper before starting to load the corn wagon, and didn’t notice that the wind had shifted into the north until my sweat-soaked shirt slapped against my back, as cold as if it had been dipped in the creek. Before I’d finished loading, the wind had veered into the northeast, there was a raw edge to it, and though it wasn’t actually raining, there was enough moisture in the air to wet my face. As I filled the feed bunks in the lot the steers stood motionless, tails to the driving wind and heads hung low—a sure sign of a coming storm. The pasture cattle behaved the same way when I fed them, and few came to eat. By the time I’d finished feeding and had unharnessed the horses, the temperature had dropped to fifteen above zero and the moisture in the wind had turned to fine sleet.
So the house would be warm when the family got home, I lighted fires in the kitchen and parlor stoves, then went out to do the milking. I’d just finished stripping the brindle when the Buick clattered into the dooryard, so I went to lend a hand with the children. After I’d carried Betty Mae and Arvis to the house Bob told me, “You’d best to saddle up while I unload the groceries and Marguerite gets us a bite of supper. If we don’t keep them cattle on the move till this slush crusts over hard enough to keep ’em from busting through, there’ll be so danged many frozen feet around here that you couldn’t count ’em.”
I’ve spent some rough nights in my life, but I think that one was the roughest. The temperature never dropped below fifteen or rose above twenty, but all night long the wind veered from north to northeast and back again, striking in almost horizontal blasts of cutting sleet. If left alone ten minutes, the cattle turned tail to it, humped their backs, and stood waiting to freeze, so we couldn’t work in relays. Bob had to be constantly with the steers in the feed lot, and I with the cattle in the pasture, keeping them on the move to stir the circulation in their legs and prevent their feet from
freezing in the slush and mud that extended above their hoofs.
I’d saddled Bob’s sorrel, but rode Kitten bareback so that the warmth of her body would keep my legs from stiffening too badly. Even then they ached with a dull grinding pain, and although the feed lot was somewhat protected by the trees along the creek, Bob, riding on a saddle, must have suffered much more than I. All through the night no hour passed that Marguerite didn’t come to the pasture fence with scalding-hot coffee, swinging a lantern to signal me in. Then as I rode back I’d see its glow moving on toward the feed lot.
As often happens in a storm of that kind, the wind let up at dawn. The sky cleared soon after daybreak, the temperature dropped to zero, and a crust strong enough to support an elephant formed over the feed lot mud and pasture slush. Bob and I reeled like drunkards as we put our tired horses in the barn and headed for the house, too weary and numb to speak. When we stumbled into the kitchen we found two tubs of steaming water sitting in the middle of the floor, with rough towels and dry clothes hung over a chair in front of the oven door.
During the next few days the temperature moderated to the mid-forties, while Bob and I worked constantly with the cattle. Each day we put every one of them across the scales, checking its weight, the gloss of its coat, and for any sign of leg swelling or tenderfootedness.
By the end of the week we were satisfied that we’d come through without a single frozen foot. But as the weather warmed I had from fifteen to twenty phone calls a day, all from farmers anxious to sell me crippled cattle. I had to explain that I couldn’t buy them because they’d be unable to stay on their feet for so long a haul to market, and advise the man to butcher any cripples immediately, so as to save the meat before gangrene set in. Bob and I estimated that more than a hundred cattle in my trading area went into corned beef barrels that week, and that an even larger number were shot, skinned, and their carcasses left for the coyotes.