Dry Divide
Page 22
It sounded to me like the deals he’d made for me on the broken-down old horses, wagons, and harness, but I said, “That’s fine. I’m listening.”
“Well, Son,” he said, “the owner of that land Hudson had will let you have the whole kit and caboodle of it for next year; you to furnish the seed and take sixty percent of the crop, instead of a half, like Clara got. Of course, I’d lend you the money for seed, on notes running till next harvest time, and you’d make yourself a wealthy man.” He unrolled the sheaf of papers, pushed it toward me, and asked, “Have you any notion what sixty percent of the wheat off those two sections brought?”
“Sure,” I told him. “I brought the final statement from the elevator. It would amount to about thirty thousand dollars, after taking out thrashing and hauling. And as near as I can find out, it was the only crop worth harvesting that has been raised on that land in five years. I’m much obliged to you for the trouble you’ve gone to, but I’m going to let someone else gamble on that high divide wheat land.” There was no reason for telling him that the owner had already offered me two-thirds of the crop if I furnished the seed, or that I’d leased the buildings and pasture.
Bones became a little huffy when I told him I didn’t want the deal he’d been planning to cook up. He straightened in his chair, scowled at me, and asked gruffly, “What you aiming to do when you run out of hauling? Loaf?”
“No,” I told him, “I don’t care much about loafing. It looks as if Mrs. Hudson is going to have a pretty fair corn crop, and I’ve promised to harvest it for her. Until it’s ready for shucking, I thought I might nose around a little and try my hand at the cattle business.”
Bones got over his huffiness in two seconds. He leaned forward again, and told me, “That’s the ticket, Son! We had a trader here, good cattleman too, but he’s gone into the feeding business, so there’s no trader this side of Oberlin, and there’s need for one. You work along close with me, and you could make a scad of money. With me knowing all these farmers hereabouts the way I do, I can tell you where to buy, and I’ll lend you whatever money you need, on eight percent paper instead of ten. I’ll do better than that for you, Son. I’ve got a good section of pasture land right up here on the hills, best place in the world for those horses of yours. I’ll let you have it for what it cost me, and you won’t have to put a nickel down. A man don’t often sell a piece of land that way, but I like to see an ambitious young man get off to a good start. We’ll make up the mortgage to cover what little other stuff you’ve got, along with the land.”
I kept my face straight, and tried to look as eager as I could till he’d made his pitch, then told him, “You’re certainly kind to me—just like you were when you made those first deals for me on horses and wagons—but I can’t afford it. I’ll play along on my own.”
Bones glared at me till I grinned, then he grinned too, and said, “All right, Son, we talk the same language. You know the fix I’m in with some of these cattle farmers. What I need is a trader in this valley who will work close with me, buy some of the cattle I’ve got mortgages on but don’t want to foreclose, ship ’em, and help me get my money out. You play along with me and I’ll give you all the help I can, and the only edge I’ll take on you will be the interest; that’ll be eight per cent.”
I’d never thought about going into the cattle trading business. It had been my plan to buy a couple of dozen good yearling Hereford heifers, winter them along with the horses, and use them as my start in building a herd. But the cattle trading business sounded good to me, and I wasn’t worried about the possibility that Bones might try to take the long end of any deals we made together. Any man is entitled to take the long end of the stick when dickering if the other fellow is careless enough to let him have it. What worried me was that Bones might squeeze the farmers whose mortgages he held, tight enough that they wouldn’t be anxious to sell. After I’d thought about it a couple of minutes, I told him, “I’ll give it a try on just one condition; that I can pay the farmers one-third of the price in cash.”
“A quarter,” he said quickly, like an auctioneer trying to run up a bid.
“No,” I told him, “a third. Otherwise you find yourself another cattle trader.”
Instead of answering, Bones stuck his hand out to shake.
When Judy and I had finished our bookkeeping that evening, I told her I planned to go into the cattle trading business, and of the deal I’d made with Bones. She became as excited as she was when the hauling business went over the top, danced around the kitchen, and wanted to know if it would be all right if she told her folks. “Sure,” I told her. “The more people who know about it the better. If those who want to sell come looking for me, instead of my going to look for them, I’ll have a trading advantage.”
During the next couple of weeks it was easy for me to see that Judy had proved the old saying, “Telaphone, telagraph, or tell a woman.” Whenever I didn’t need the old Maxwell she was out on the roads with it, and she must have told every farmer within fifteen miles of Cedar Bluffs that I’d pay him a third in cash for any cattle mortgaged to Bones. I could seldom take a load of wheat to town without having some farmer stop me on the road, or wait for me at the elevator, and every one of them had cattle to sell.
I was greener than a frog about the cattle trading business, but there were a few things I did know; I’d have to buy my cattle by the head, and sell them by the pound, at auction, when they reached the big city stockyards. Then too, I would have to pay for freight, feeding on the way, and the commission agent’s fee.
I had Judy get me a Kansas City paper at McCook, so I could check on the most recent prices being paid for various grades of cattle at the auctions. Then I talked to the depot agent at The Bluffs, and found out that freight and feeding would cost about a cent and a quarter a pound. Allowing another quarter-cent for commission, I could figure out how much a pound I could afford to pay, but that wasn’t too much help when I had to buy by the head. I’d have to guess at the weights, and if I guessed too high on high-priced cattle I could lose my eye teeth. I decided that I’d start off by shipping skinny old cows for my first carload. They were the cheapest cattle on the list, selling for 3½¢ a pound, so it wouldn’t break me if I guessed wrong by as much as a thousand pounds on a carload.
I made one more check before I did any buying. From having my wagons weighed at the elevator, I knew the exact weight of each one, so we loaded the two skinniest cows I’d bought from Mrs. Hudson—one on each wagon of my rig—and I drove them down to the elevator for weighing. By studying them carefully after I brought them back, I got a pretty good idea of what almost any skinny old cow would weigh.
During the first eight days of October Judy and I kept the old Maxwell on the run every hour between my morning and evening hauling trips, and I must have dickered on more than a hundred skinny old cows. Most of the farmers wanted more than their cows were worth, but by the afternoon of the eighth I’d bought thirty at prices I thought I could afford to pay. I got only one from some farmers, but two or three from others, and told them all to deliver their cows to the shipping pen at Cedar Bluffs late Saturday afternoon. Then I stopped at the depot, and left an order for a cattle car to be set off at the chute when the noon train went west.
Friday fell on October 10th, and the axe fell on my hauling business. Late that afternoon Ted Harmon pulled his thrashing rig out of the last field, and I started Doc off for the elevator with little more than half a load. The first of the next week we’d have a dozen or so loads to haul from a small machine, but Paco and I could take care of that, and Paco was going to stay with me for the winter. He’d help me reshingle the barn to make a place for storing our wagons and harness, and keep an eye on the stock while I was busy with my cattle trading business. The rest of the crew decided they’d go to Denver next day, taking the afternoon express from McCook, so that Friday night I rented the pitcher’s flivver again.
Saturday morning Paco hung the harnesses away, and turned the horse
s we would no longer need out to pasture, while the other fellows packed their gear, and Judy and I figured up the books and wrote checks. Gus, Lars, and Judy had drawn nothing, so her check was for $966; $256 for her share of the harvest money, and $10 for every day since the end of July. Theirs were $4.50 higher, because of splitting my first day’s pay. Paco’s check was for $956, and both Bill and Jaikus had well over $900 coming. Doc had drawn the most, but still had $876 due him. When I wrote his check I made it for $926, and when I handed it to him I told him the extra fifty was for the clothes I’d ruined. At first he didn’t want to take it, and said I’d done him a favor by ruining them, but when I told him I’d still have a good cash profit left he was glad enough to have the extra money.
I did have a good cash profit, too; far beyond anything I’d thought I could possibly make. I’d paid off my second note to Bones, my grocery and team-hiring bills, spent $512 for my skinny old cows, sent $200 to my mother, and when I’d collected for the hauling job we’d just finished, would have $1,156 in the bank.
It was nearly noon before we got started for McCook; Judy driving Gus, Lars, and Old Bill in the Maxwell, and I followed with Doc, Jaikus, and Paco in the flivver. I’d called the hotel in McCook so they’d have a fine dinner ready for us, and we must have been at the table two hours—just remembering and talking about little things that happened during the summer. Then all but Paco and Judy excused themselves and went out, saying they wanted to cash their checks and buy their railroad tickets. They were gone more than half an hour, then Doc came hurrying back into the dining room, fumbling in his pockets. “Did you notice if I left my watch on the kitchen table?” he asked Judy. “I can’t find it any place, and I wanted to set it by the depot clock, so we won’t risk missing the train.”
Judy and I both knew there hadn’t been any watch left on the table, because we’d cleared it off when we put the books away.
“Never mind,” Doc said when we’d told him, “I’ll pick up another one when I get to Denver. Let me borrow yours, Bud, so I can set the right time on it.”
Doc hadn’t had time to go farther than the lobby before the whole crew came trooping back into the dining room. I wasn’t surprised to see that they were all carrying packages for Judy, but I had a hard time to keep from bawling like a baby when they all crowded around my chair, and Doc handed me back my watch. It was a seventeen-jewel Waltham.
I felt almost like a man who has lost his family when the train pulled out, and I’d probably have felt worse if we hadn’t had to hurry right back to The Bluffs, to load out my first shipment as a cattle trader.
All thirty of the old cows were in the shipping pen when we got there, bawling and probably feeling about as I had when I watched the Denver express pull out of McCook. Only one old sister gave us any trouble in loading. She had no intention of leaving her native land, and to get her up the chute and into the car, Paco had to twist her tail while I hauled her along by the horns.
We’d barely closed and bolted the door when the eastbound freight whistled as it pulled away from Trear, so I had to run back to the depot and get my bill of lading made out. It took only a few minutes to uncouple the engine, pull my car from the siding, and couple it into the train. Then the engineer blew a couple of toots on the whistle, to call in the flagman, and my first shipment was on its way to Kansas City.
It was just a carload of skinny old cows, but I was as proud as if it had been prime steers. I think Judy was proud, too. We stood on the depot platform, with her arm tucked under mine, and watched until the train disappeared beyond the wooded curve of Beaver Creek. By my Waltham, it was exactly 6:13.