Horse of a Different Color: Reminiscences of a Kansas Drover

by Ralph Moody

  George drew his pony a little closer to Kitten, nodded his head, and told me, “Can’t think of a better way for a young fella to set hisself up in business, but was I you I’d wait till spring. Yearlin’s wouldn’t cost you over ten dollars a head more then than what weanlin’s would cost now, and that would be cheap comparin’ with the risk you’d run of losin’ four or five head in winter blizzards. Besides that, when a bull calf gets to be a yearlin’ you can tell a heap more about the way he’ll turn out as a herd sire than what you can when he’s still a weanlin’. If it was me, I’d just keep both hands in my pockets till the new grass commenced to greenin’ up next April.” Then he touched spurs to his pony and we made the rest of the homeward trip at a brisk canter.

  At sunrise Saturday morning the stock began arriving at the Wilson place, and George “happened over” soon afterward. He stayed right through to help me until the last of the twelve carloads had been put aboard at dusk. There was, of course, no reason for Bob to help, as I was paying him only for the use of his sorting pens, but sometimes he was a hindrance. By an hour after sunrise he’d gathered most of the hog haulers at the scales, offering to bet dollars against dimes that he could guess the weight of any animal in the sorting pens to within 2 per cent, and that no other man in the crowd could come closer than 5 per cent. Right through the day he kept a crowd large enough to be a nuisance to us, and he lost only a few bets on lucky guesses. When the men had gone home he bragged that he’d won every dollar I paid them for hauling hogs.

  It was after dark when the train pulled out of Cedar Bluffs and I swung aboard the caboose. The weather on Sunday was cool, so the stock traveled well, and when we reached the Kansas City stockyards early Monday morning I found a strong demand for top grade cattle and hogs, but there was very little demand for culls. George had given the farmers credit for a shade more than sixteen thousand dollars on their mortgages, but the proceeds of the sale—after deducting freight, commission, and my fee—were barely over thirteen thousand. I telegraphed the figure to Bones, spent the rest of the day trying to learn what I could around the stockyards, and caught the night train home, far from proud of the job I’d done.

  3

  A Different Lesson for Bob

  EXCEPT ON Sundays, a freight train—its caboose serving as passenger, mail, and express car—left the main line at Orleans, Nebraska, whenever the night mail train pulled in from St. Joseph, made a run to St. Francis, Kansas, and returned to Orleans about midnight. Arrival time at way stations depended upon the number of cars left or picked up on the run, but the westbound train usually reached Cedar Bluffs in late forenoon and came back at supper time. Saturday was livestock shipping day, and the branch train never failed to make connections at the main line with the “weekender” stock trains for Omaha and Kansas City.

  On my return from Kansas City there were few cars to be shunted onto sidings, so we pulled into Cedar Bluffs before ten o’clock. I went directly to the bank, gave Bones the sales tickets, and told him I was sorry to have done no better but that there had been little demand for poor grade cattle and hogs.

  “There’s never a demand for ’em,” he told me, “so there’s nothing to be sorry about. Getting that kind of stock out of the herds in this township was worth every dollar it cost me.”

  Then he looked at me sharply and said, “I didn’t expect you back so early, but I’m glad you’re here. I’ve just phoned for Bob Wilson to come up right away. According to what I’ve been hearing these last few days, he’s no more fit to run a business than a five-year-old; stock running loose and scattering feed all over the place while he’s sharpening up his eye at the scales so he can skin these farmers by outguessing ’em on cattle weights. Is that right?”

  I tried to duck the question, but he looked me squarely in the eyes and demanded, “Is that right?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” I said. “He’s spent considerable time at the scales when I’ve been around there, and the feed is badly scattered, but he knows livestock fattening thoroughly. It’s my guess that he’s always worked under an owner who ran the business, and that he hasn’t yet learned to be his own boss.”

  “Hmmff!” Bones snorted. “I’ve got no time to watch over him, and it sounds like the longer I let him keep that stock the more money he’ll lose for me. I was doubtful of him from the start, so never let him have anything but call loans. He ought to be here any minute now, and I want you to stay.”

  Bob had evidently scented trouble, for he was barely inside the bank when he began bragging about the weight he was putting on his stock. Bones let him go for a couple of minutes, then broke in, “I’ll take your word for that, but I can’t afford any more of the slipshod way you’re letting things go around there—loose stock running all over the place and scattering feed from Dan to Beersheba while you waste your help’s time and your own at the scales. I want you to order cars and ship every head of that stock to market next Saturday.”

  “Now wait a minute!” Bob shouted. “It’s no fault of mine that some of that stock’s so puny I have to leave it run loose. Don’t forget that you shoved half of it onto me without no chance to say if I wanted it or not, or even to dicker over the price. Some of them cattle ain’t been on corn thirty days yet, and it takes that long just to get their insides fat. If I was to ship now they wouldn’t bring no more than pasture cattle, and I’d lose all the feed and labor I’ve put into ’em.”

  Bones was often hot tempered, but he waited quietly for Bob to finish, then told him, “Part of what you say is true, and I want to be fair with you. If you’ll ship that stock Saturday and sign over what’s left of the feed, I’ll cancel the balance of your notes. That way you can’t lose anything. You’ve had a year’s living for your family, and you’ll be left with three good horses, harness, a wagon or two, and a couple of milch cows.”

  Considering the amount of feed Bob had let go to ruin and that hog prices had dropped 40 per cent since he’d bought, the offer was more than fair, but he refused it. “Right at the beginning I told you them steers wouldn’t be ready to ship till January,” he blustered, “and you said that would be okay. The way I’m putting weight onto ’em now, and the way the fat cattle market’s going up, by January I’d have leastways a ten-thousand-dollar profit, and I don’t aim to settle for a dime less.”

  That was too much for Bones. “There’s no sense in wasting time with a man who won’t talk reason,” he shouted. “I’ll get a court foreclosure and let the sheriff do the talking.” Then he turned to me and said, “Order cars enough to ship that stock Saturday, and I’ll pay you at the same rate as before.”

  Whether or not it was a bluff, it got results. “I didn’t aim to be unreasonable,” Bob said meekly, “and there’s no need of you getting a court order. If you’ll leave it up to George Miner, whatever he says will be all right with me.”

  We found George mending a corral fence, and after listening to the arguments on both sides he said, “The way I see it, neither one of you comes with clean hands. Bob, your claim that you had stock and feed shoved onto you that you didn’t want don’t hold water. It wouldn’t have been shoved onto you if you hadn’t been willin’ to sign notes for it. A lender has the right to call in his loan, irregardless of due date, if the borrower is heedless or wasteful or mismanages his business, and I’d say you’ve been guilty of all three.”

  Then he told Bones, “Harry, I’d say you’ve been negligent if you’ve just found out what’s been goin’ on over to Bob’s place. If you’d called his loans two weeks ago, nobody could of blamed you for it. But now that you’ve had a tip-off about the bank examiners comin’ this way it’s unreasonable to foreclose or make him ship half-fat stock. Like he says, the last steers put into that lot won’t bring better’n range cattle price if they’re shipped now, and the feed put into ’em will be a dead loss. But he knows better’n to believe he’d make anywheres near ten thousand if he was left to feed ’em till January.

  “This is what I’d sugges
t to the both of you: Unless I miss my guess, the hog market’s due for an upturn, and the only way to get any good out of that trampled corn is to feed it to hogs. I’d say it would be best for all hands if that feed lot fence was tightened up and the hogs held long enough to turn that beat-up corn into pork. Them steers was too poor a grade to put into a feed lot in the first place, and the sooner they’re shipped the better. It seems to me, Harry, like Bob ought to get the same break you had me give folks on the rest of the culls. He’d make a good fair profit sellin’ ’em at twelve dollars a hundred—that is, if he’d took reasonable care of his feed and done his own work instead of hirin’ a couple of men he didn’t need. It’ll cost around ten dollars a head to ship them steers, and I doubt me they’ll bring twelve dollars a hundred at Kansas City, but I’d say you’d ought to take ’em off his hands at that price, weighed out of his lot on shipping day.”

  For all Bob’s bluster about a ten thousand dollar profit, he agreed readily. Bones seemed less eager, but said he’d take the cattle on Saturday if George would act as weighmaster and I’d handle the shipping. I was glad to agree, but George said, “I’d be willin’ to do the weighin’, Harry, but I promised Irene to take her to Oberlin Saturday forenoon for her shoppin’.” Then he turned to me and asked, “Do you reckon you’d have time enough to sort and load if we didn’t start weighin’ before one o’clock?”

  “One o’clock will be just fine,” Bob cut in. “Me and my men’ll give him all the help he needs, so there won’t be no worry about getting ’em loaded by train time.”

  I’d left Kitten at the Wilson place when I went to Kansas City, so stopped to get her on my way back from George Miner’s. As I saddled I told Bob it seemed to me he’d have done better to take Bones’s original offer, but he laughed at the idea. “Shucks,” he told me, “that woulda put me out of business, but this way I’ll make leastways three or four thousand bucks. Them steers in the lot cost me less’n sixty bucks a head, and I’ll get close onto a hundred apiece out of ’em. Sure, there’s some feed scattered around, but that don’t amount to nothing. I’ve got plenty left to fatten a thousand cattle, and if a man’s got the feed there ain’t a banker no place that won’t lend him the price of feeder steers and pigs. Soon as ever I get shut of these culls I aim to put in a thousand highgrade Herefords, and by spring I’ll clean up a fortune on ’em.”

  I couldn’t tell whether Bob believed what he was saying or it was just more of his big talk, but there was no use in arguing with him. I stopped at the house to thank Marguerite for her kindness, then swung onto Kitten and headed for home. On the way I stopped at the depot and had the agent, “Dad” Haynes, order ten cattle cars for Saturday morning.

  There had been a dilapidated three-room house, a fairly large barn, and good pole corrals on the half-section I’d leased. My wheat-hauling crew had repaired and painted the house in spare time, and made me a snug little home with secondhand furniture. At the end of the hauling season we’d stored the wagons and harness in the barn, and turned all the horses except Kitten out to pasture for the winter.

  I didn’t mind housekeeping, but my diet was a nuisance. The kind of gluten bread that I baked was hard to get down, and the nearest I could come to finding fish and leafy green vegetables was canned salmon and sauerkraut. It was past noon when I got home, so I lighted a fire, put a can of sauerkraut on to heat, and opened a can of salmon. After eating I rode out to see that the horses were all right, then baked two loaves of gluten bread. It was either the worst I ever made, or comparison with Marguerite’s made it taste more like sawdust and glue than usual. I opened more sauerkraut and salmon for supper, but when I sat down to the table I had no appetite. I wasn’t actually lonesome but had never liked to eat alone, and hadn’t realized how much I’d enjoyed mealtime while staying with the Wilsons. I was too restless to read in the evening, so saddled Kitten and rode until I was tired enough to sleep.

  I spent all day Friday patching the barn roof—and nibbled at meals of warmed-over sauerkraut, salmon, and soggy gluten bread. Saturday morning I drove down to repair some sagging gates at the Cedar Bluffs shipping pens, and the first thing I noticed was the bawling of cattle in Bob’s feed lot. It grew steadily louder, and by ten o’clock I became worried. It was barely a quarter-mile to the buildings on the Wilson place, but I’d seen no one stirring there all morning, so drove over to investigate. No one was at home, and the pump lay dismantled at the foot of the windmill tower. At the feed lot I found all the watering tanks bone-dry, and there was fresh salt in the cracks and corners of all the feed bunks.

  I didn’t need to be very bright to see through Bob’s scheme: He’d get the pump repaired just in time to have those steers so loaded with water at one o’clock that they could hardly waddle onto the scales. As Bones’s shipping agent, I felt that I should let him know what was going on, but I didn’t like being a tattletale, so decided to ask George Miner for advice. I found him loading baskets of eggs into the back of his Oakland, and as I pulled to a stop he called, “Bob’s pump went out of kilter, didn’t it?”

  “It seems to have,” I told him. “There’s no one at home, but it’s pulled out of the well and dismantled.”

  George didn’t look up, but said, “Them steers have been hollerin’ the news since sunup. Bob ought to have thought about that. He could have kept ’em quiet till noontime if he’d waited till after breakfast to salt ’em, and they’d have took on just as big a load of water by one o’clock as they will this way.”

  “That’s what I came over to talk to you about,” I said. “I don’t like being a squealer, but with Bones paying me to be his shipping agent don’t you think I should . . . ”

  “Don’t reckon I’d do it,” George said slowly. “This is the kind of a mess where the more you stir it the more it stinks. If I was in your boots I believe I’d keep my trap shut; wouldn’t let on to Bob nor nobody else that I had any notion what he was up to. Why don’t you ride along to Oberlin with us if you ain’t got nothin’ better to do this forenoon?”

  Then he turned toward the house and called, “Oh, Irene! You about ready? We’d best to get started pretty soon.”

  Bob must have returned very soon after I left his place. When we passed it on our way to Oberlin he and his hired men were working on the pump and too busy to notice us.

  George drove an automobile with as much consideration as he drove a horse, and not much faster. It was noon before we reached Oberlin, and Mrs. Miner spent fully an hour shopping. Then George took us to the best restaurant for dinner, and the service was terribly slow. It was two o’clock before we’d finished eating, and almost three when we got back to Cedar Bluffs. On our way through town George left his wife at Grandma Rebman’s, and when we drove into the Wilson yard Bob came hurrying to meet us, calling out irritably, “What’s been keepin’ you? The weighing-out was to begin at one o’clock, and it’s danged near three a’ready.”

  “Now I’m right sorry about that,” George said in an apologetic tone, “but anymore I don’t get around as spry as I used to, and sometimes I’m a mite forgetful. Seems like I do recollect askin’ Bud if commencin’ at one o’clock would allow him enough loading time, and I recall you sayin’ that one o’clock would be just fine, but if we agreed on that as a fixed time I sure forgot about it. Oh well, I guess it won’t make much odds one way or another. I see you’ve got the steers all sorted and penned accordin’ to sizes, so we’ll have plenty of time anyways. It was the sortin’ that I was mostly concerned about.”

  Bob was on a spot where he couldn’t holler without practically admitting his guilt. I knew he was fuming inside, but he tried to act jovial. “That’s all right,” he said. “I and the boys have got everything lined out so’s’t you won’t have to lose a minute nowheres. I’ve got the scales all balanced up for you, and the boys’ll put the cattle acrost the platform as fast as you can set weights on the beam.”

  The condition of the pens left little doubt as to the amount of water Bob had managed t
o get into those steers—or that it was draining away rapidly. Waterlogged cattle won’t eat or drink again for several hours, so Bob’s only hope for any success in his trick was to get his steers weighed as quickly as possible, but George wouldn’t hurry. After he’d spent five or six minutes sliding the counterpoise back and forth along the scale beam, Bob called out, “Anything wrong, George?”

  “Wouldn’t say so,” George answered. “Just a mite sluggish and bound up. Nothin’ more than a man might expect if they’re rusted. Stompin’ on the corners ought to loosen ’em up.”

  For fully half an hour George paid no attention to a few pieces of lumber, half buried in hay chaff, that lay in the ten-inch space between the beam housing and the fence at the front of the scale platform. Then he sang out, “By gosh, I’ll bet that’s where the boar got into the cabbage patch. Like as not there’s a rotten plank busted down onto the beam rod.” He bent over and tossed out a ten-foot 2 by 6, along with a half a dozen shorter pieces of old lumber. “That’s it, sure enough,” he said, wrenched away a sagging plank, and slid the 2 by 6 back to bridge the hole. His face was expressionless, though I was sure he noticed what I did—the 2 by 6 had been so placed that, by stepping on it, the gate tender could add his own weight to that of each batch of cattle put over the scales.

  In a last desperate effort to get a few hundred pounds of water weighed with his cattle, Bob kept his men at a trot as they drove steers on and off the scales. It was half past three when the first ten were driven on, and four twenty when the last ten were driven off. As George weighed each batch he had Bob and me check the scales, the figure he entered on the tally sheet, and the addition to the previous total. He wrote his name below the last figure brought down, passed the pencil to Bob, and said, “I want both of you to go over my arithmetic and put your name down if you find I’m right, then there’ll be no room for arguments later on.” As Bob leaned over the tally sheet George looked around at me, and one eyelid drooped for an instant. I had no way of estimating how much water Bob had tried to sell Bones at twelve cents a pound, but his steers would have had to weigh an additional thirteen tons to bring the hundred dollars apiece that he’d bragged they would.