by Ralph Moody
“Hold it, Doc! Save it till we get to town,” I called back. “We’re both treacherous oafs; you did the sullying when you got into the tanglefoot, and I did the ensconcing when I shucked the raiment off you.”
As my eyes became accustomed to the dimness, I could see Doc standing at the end of the farthest stall, dressed in his wrinkled and dirty medicine-man clothes, and trying to wipe some of the grime off his frock coat with his work shirt. “Better get out of those fancy duds, and back into your overalls,” I told him. “We’ve got a lot of work to do in town, and you can have that gorgeous raiment cleaned and pressed while we’re doing it.”
By the time I’d caught and harnessed the second team, Doc was not only back in his overalls, but back to being a harvest hand. He’d stowed his raiment, carefully wrapped in newspaper, in the wagon, and he’d stowed his oratory right along with it.
I knew that a lot of men found a tremendous thrill in getting behind the wheel of an automobile and tramping the gas pedal clear to the floor, but it didn’t do very much for me. Maybe it was because horses were too much in my blood, but I found a lot more fun in sitting on the high seat of a jouncing wagon, and shaking the lines above the backs of a fast-stepping four-horse hitch—particularly if the horses were my own. In choosing the horses for cultivating, I’d tried to pick out the steadiest teams in the new bunch, but for the trip to town I’d picked the four toughest and liveliest—and they didn’t disappoint me.
Doc held the bridles of the snap team until I was on the seat with the lines gathered between my fingers, and Gus and Lars were standing with a good hold on the back of the seat. Then Doc turned the little broncs loose, scrambled up onto the seat beside me, and we were on our way in a cloud of dust. As we swung out of the yard with the wheels skidding, anyone might have thought I was an old-time stage driver, trying to escape the Comanches. I could almost have believed it myself. The teams had come from different places, and each seemed to be trying to outrun the other. The wagon we’d hitched to was in pretty good shape and we had a straight, level half mile to the first corner, so I let the horses work off a little of their fire. I cocked one foot up on the brake pedal, shook the lines enough to keep the bit rings jingling, and shouted, “Hya! Haa! Haa!”
We covered that half mile like Man o’ War coming down the home stretch. As we neared the corner, I braced myself against the brake pedal till the hind wheels squealed like fighting hogs, leaned back on the seat, and gathered the reins to make a stab at keeping in the roadway as we made the turn. We made it, with the wagon slewing around as though it had been on slick ice, but it wasn’t because of my skill with the reins. That little snap team knew its business so much better than I knew mine that it made me feel silly. They didn’t turn the instant they reached the corner, but kept straight on for another length, giving the wagon room to clear the turn, then swung over so fast they were leaning at a 45° angle, and neither horse ever missed a beat in his stride. I was too busy watching the snap team to pay any attention to the wheelers, but they must have had to lean fully as far, and I don’t believe they ever left the wheel tracks.
I let them have another Hya! Haa! Haa! as soon as we’d rounded the corner, and while Doc, Gus, and Lars clung to the seat with both hands, the old wagon went leaping along the roadway like a frightened jack rabbit. After a quarter mile I soft-talked the broncs down to a spanking trot, then let them hold it till we reached the county road, a mile and a quarter farther on.
We followed the county road ten miles into Oberlin, and by the time we got there I wouldn’t have sold that four-horse hitch for twice what I’d paid for it—and on the way I learned a few things that were going to help us in our hauling business. Where the road was fairly level I held the team to a moderate trot, then when we came to a gulch I let them take off at a dead run, giving the wagon just enough brake that it wouldn’t run up onto the wheelers’ heels. Just before we swooped through the bottom of each gulch, I kicked the brake loose, giving the wagon its full momentum to race up the hill beyond. A man would be out of his mind to run most horses downhill the way I ran those little cayuses, but they had so much mustang in them that they were sure-footed as mountain goats, and I knew there wasn’t the slightest danger that any one of them would stumble and fall. Of course, if one had, the next passer-by might have had to pick us up in pieces.
That trip to town took us no more than an hour, and when we reached the main street my snap team was still fresh enough to rear and spook at noisy jalopies. They kept me plenty busy until we’d pulled off the main street and into the yard of a blacksmith’s shop. Gus and Lars thought it would be best to stop there first, so they could find out from the blacksmith whether or not there was a supplier in Oberlin who carried steel, and the blacksmithing tools and equipment they would need. As soon as they’d gone inside, Doc fished his bundle out from under the seat, and told me, “I’d better take this stuff over to the tailor’s shop right away, so they’ll have time to get it cleaned and pressed while we’re picking up our load. Write me a check for twenty, will you?”
I was in a bit of a spot. Doc had a couple of hundred dollars coming to him, so I couldn’t refuse to write him a check for any part of it he asked for, but I didn’t feel too safe about him. As I pulled out my checkbook, I said, “Sure, Doc, you can draw whatever you want, but don’t you get into the tanglefoot again. If Gus and Lars do the blacksmithing, I’ll need your help with the woodwork, and you won’t be any help if you’re plastered.”
“Aw, Bud,” he said in an injured tone, “you know me better’n that. You know I wouldn’t let you down at a time like this! Just because I stubbed my toe once, you don’t have to rub it in with a rough cob. If you can’t spare twenty, five’ll do. Only thing is, I’d like to pick up a couple of pairs of overalls and some shirts before we go back.”
“Sorry, Doc,” I told him as I wrote the check for twenty dollars, “I wasn’t rubbing it in, and I know you’re the last man in the crew that would let me down. Maybe I’m too jumpy about this hauling business and getting the wagons fixed up. I didn’t sleep worth a dime last night.”
“Don’t lose any sleep over me and the corn squeezings,” he told me as he climbed down over the wheel. “Only time I have any trouble with the stuff is when I get one of my seizures, and I don’t get more than two or three of ’em in a year’s time. You wait right here for me; I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
Doc wasn’t back in ten minutes, or twenty, and neither were Gus and Lars. I could see them inside the shop, talking with the blacksmith, walking all around the place, and looking it over as though they might be planning to buy it. And the longer they looked the more jumpy my nerves got. If I lost those two men, and Doc went on a bender, my hauling business would be blown sky high.
By the time another ten minutes had passed I was so keyed up that I could have flown—and with no more than two feathers on each shoulder blade. When I was almost ready to explode, Gus and Lars came out to the wagon, bringing the blacksmith with them. He was fully as big as they, and as slow spoken. He spit a stream of tobacco juice at the near wheeler’s heels, cocked a foot in the hub, and said, “Your men tell me you aim to set up a shop, but there ain’t a supplier no nearer than Denver, and it would take leastways a fortnight to get a shipment out. We been lookin’ around my shop, and I reckon I could spare enough tools to get you by, along with an anvil and an old bellows that could be patched up, but I’d have to charge you twenty-five dollars for the use of ’em. I got plenty of strap steel and angle iron on hand, but I’d have to have cash on the barrel head—you being a stranger hereabouts.”
I had my checkbook out before he’d mentioned the barrel head. “Will a check do it?” I asked him. “You can call the banker over at Cedar Bluffs to find out whether or not it’s any good.”
“No need of that,” he told me, “and no sense writing a check till we figure up what your steel will come to. From what your men tell me, it’ll prob’ly run up to fifty, sixty dollars.”
; There was no doubt in my mind that Doc had been taken with another seizure, but by that time I didn’t care how much of a bender he went on; I was too happy about not having lost Gus and Lars, and that we were going to be able to set up a shop for almost nothing. “Come on,” I told them. “Let’s leave the team here and go get some dinner. There’s no sense in waiting any longer for Doc; he’s probably holed up in some speakeasy. We can talk about what we’ll do next while we’re eating.” We decided that it would be best for Lars to stay at the blacksmith’s shop, to pick out the tools, equipment, and steel, while Gus and I bought the rest of the stuff we would need.
If I’d been alone, I’d have gone into the office at the lumberyard, said I wanted top-grade hickory or white oak, given my order for the number of pieces and sizes, then let the yardman get me out the nearest he had to it. Gus didn’t go at it that way. He insisted on going into the yard himself, examining the entire stock of hardwood, picking out heavy timbers with straight, flawless grain, then having the millwright saw and plane them into the exact sizes we needed. At the hardware store he was as slow and careful in choosing every tool, bolt, or other item. Most of my time was taken in finding Manila line for catch ropes, extender reins, collars for the new horses, and harness-mending supplies. It was late afternoon before we’d loaded the bricks, sand, cement, and coal for the forge.
During the afternoon I’d thought of Doc a dozen times, but had pushed him out of my mind, thinking we’d find him asleep in the pool hall when we were ready to go home. That wasn’t where we found him. On our way back to the blacksmith’s shop we were driving past the stockyards when, from among the cattle pens, I heard Doc’s voice, “Gen’lmen, I have a purpose.” There was enough slur to the words that it left no doubt as to what his purpose had been, or that he’d accomplished it. I pulled the team up, passed Gus the reins, and said, “I guess I’d better go and collect Doc while we know where he is.”
There were a dozen or so men, hooting and laughing, at the far end of the yards, and Doc, rigged out in his medicine-man raiment, towered above their heads. Twice, as I hurried toward the group, Doc tried to make his pitch again, but both times he stalled on the “purpose,” and had to start over. I’d reached the edge of the crowd before I discovered what all the hooting was about. Doc was perched like a crowing rooster on the end of a long plank watering trough, and each time he filled his lungs to orate he lost his balance long enough that he had to regain it by flapping his arms as though they’d been wings.
“Doc!” I shouted to him. “Come on, we’re heading out!”
I have an idea that Doc’s sight was blurred enough to see a multitude, and that he couldn’t recognize me in the throng. Although everyone else looked my way, Doc didn’t but launched into his oration again. Sometimes a fellow gets ideas faster than he has time to reason them out, and a few flashed through my head when I couldn’t catch Doc’s attention. One was that he’d get polluted every time he dressed up and came to town. Another was that he might keep sober if he didn’t have his fancy clothes, or if they could be so completely ruined that he couldn’t wear them. And the third was that a good dousing in cold water might sober him enough that I could get him back to the wagon.
It all went through my head so fast that the crowd was still looking my way when I got the dousing idea. I winked at a young farm hand who was standing by the trough, and made a motion as though I were pulling a handkerchief out of my hip pocket. The boy winked back, then gave Doc’s coat tail a quick jerk. He went over backwards faster than Kitten had gone over with me.
Water splashed ten feet high, and Doc came up blowing like a whale. I got there just in time to help him out over the edge of the trough, and the shock had sobered him enough to recognize me. “My dear companion,” he burbled, “some foul fiend has . . .” Then he had a spasm of coughing and blowing water.
I gave him a couple of slaps on the back, locked an arm under mine, and told him, “Let’s get out of here before another fiend gets you. For a bone-dry town, this one seems to be full of them.” Reeling, hiccupping, and shedding water like a sprinkler wagon, Doc let me lead him to the wagon, where Gus helped me lift him aboard and lay him out on a bed of bricks.
Lars had everything we needed laid out and ready for loading when we got back to the blacksmith’s shop, but Doc had given up the battle. He was snoring like a contented sow, and slept right through our hoisting him to the top of the lumber pile, so as to make room for the steel and blacksmithing equipment. The wagon was heaped high when we pulled out of town—and I was $223 deeper in debt.
As near as we could figure, our load weighed about three and a half tons, or as much as a hundred and twenty bushels of wheat, and there was a rise of several hundred feet from Oberlin to the Hudson place. It gave me a good chance to find out what lightweight horses could do with a heavy load on hilly roads, and I was more than pleased with what I learned. Where an upgrade was long and gradual, my horses had to pull with all their might, and I had to rest them often. On level ground they handled the pull easily, trotted right along on the downgrades, and swooped through the gulches like swallows. The thrust of the heavy load on the downhill run into a gulch was enough to carry the wagon well up the far side. Then my little mustangs drove into their collars with everything they had, scrambling to the top before the momentum was entirely lost. With a two-minute breather there, they were ready to do it all over again. Even with the heavy load and the rise, we covered the twelve miles home in a little over two and a half hours.
Gus and Lars unloaded Doc while I unharnessed, then we peeled off his soaking raiment, rolled him in a blanket, and left him to sleep off his seizure. Coal and cement dust had settled like soot when we’d loaded the wagon, and Doc’s wet raiment had absorbed it as a blotter will absorb ink. Before we went in to supper I piled the soggy heap against the east side of the barn, where the morning sun would dry it into a fair imitation of granite.
After supper Judy and I sat at the kitchen table, trying to fit together a jigsaw puzzle, while the rest of the crew unloaded the wagon. Our puzzle wasn’t really made up of pieces cut with a jigsaw, but was even more complicated, because we had a lot more pieces than we knew what to do with, and they wouldn’t fit together worth a cent.
Judy had called at all the places from which I’d received hauling orders by Saturday, but the mailman had brought seven more since then, and there were still five days till August 10th—the date I’d set as a dead line in my letters. Worse still, the orders were scattered over an area of a hundred square miles, and some of the tenants hadn’t yet set their thrashing dates, while others had arranged for the same weeks, extending into early October. If we’d started working on our puzzle the evening before, I’d have separated out for refusal all orders where thrashing would begin before August 29th, for Mrs. Hudson’s hauling was expected to take eighteen days, beginning on the 11th, and I’d planned to buy barely enough horses and wagons to keep up with the thrasher.
All my figuring had been done on the hope that each four-horse rig could haul a hundred bushels of wheat twenty miles in a day. I’d reasoned that since the distance from the Hudson place to the elevator was eight miles, each rig could make two and a half trips, and that my six rigs could haul a maximum of 1500 bushels a day. I’d changed my mind while we’d been bringing the load home from Oberlin.
That trip with a heavy load had taught me that it was the lay of the land which would determine how many bushels of wheat I could haul in a day. If all my horses could swoop through gulches as the little team I’d been driving did, I’d only have to change my plans slightly in order to haul 120 bushels on each trip instead of 100. All that would be necessary was to put my tote teams at the long upgrades rather than at the deep gulches. If that would work, I’d be able to haul 1800 bushels eight miles in a day, and Mrs. Hudson’s job would require only 1400. At the same time I was doing her work I’d be able to haul 400 bushels the same distance for some other customer, or 800 bushels half that distance. The prob
lem was to pick out jobs where the output of the thrashing machine and the distance to the elevator would match the hauling I could handle.
Beyond that, if I could find enough hauling over roads that were ideally suited to my kind of horses, there was no doubt in my mind that I could stretch the distance of my hauls by a mile or two. But I’d be in trouble if I took any jobs that wouldn’t work out to full round-trips, for I’d have to keep part of my horses and men at the wrong end of the line. With the number of widely scattered orders I already had, and from what I’d learned about the surrounding country while hunting for horses and equipment, I believed the problem could be solved.
Beaver Creek snaked its way from southwest to northeast where it crossed the line from Kansas into Nebraska. The valley floor was flat, and little more than a half mile wide, with the railroad skirting the foot of the hills that fringed the high, gulch-torn divide to the south, while the land to the north rose more gently. Cedar Bluffs was the last Kansas town on the railroad, with Marion, Nebraska seven miles below. Most of the hauling orders I’d received were for delivery to the elevator in one of those towns; some from up or down the valley, some from the gently sloping country to the north, and others from the rugged, high divide to the south.
The first thing Judy and I did was to weed out all the orders which required long hauls along the level valley floor. The roads there would become gummy if we had any rain, and it seemed better to let that business go to haulers with heavier, slower horses. Then we began matching orders where the big 1400-bushel-a-day thrashing rigs were going to be used. Unless the distances to the elevator averaged no more than five miles, there would be no sense in trying to keep up with two of such machines at the same time. Of course, I could do it by hiring enough extra horses, wagons, and drivers, but it seemed best to let someone else have one of the jobs. All we needed to decide was which one to keep.