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done the cattle sale began, and it was this that most people had come for. It went on for the rest of the afternoon. They sold the old stuff first, then the cow-calf pairs and the butcher bulls and finally the lots of calves and yearlings. They pushed the cattle in from one side, held them in the ring for the bidding, and moved them about to show them to best advantage, the two ringmen stepping out or tapping them with the white prod-sticks, then pushed them through the other metal door into the outback for the pen-back crew to sort out. Each pen was numbered with white paint to keep the animals separate, and all of them had yellow tags on their hips saying which lot they belonged to. On the wall above the metal doors electronic boards blinked TOTAL LB . and HEAD CT . and AVERAGE WT. There were advertisements on the walls for Purina and Nutrena feeds and Carhartt equipment. And below the auctioneer’s booth this sign: NOTICE ALL GUARANTEES ARE STRICTLY BETWEEN BUYER & SELLER.
    The McPheron brothers sat high up in their seats and watched. They had to wait until late in the afternoon for the sale of their yearlings. Around three in the afternoon Raymond went down into the diner and brought back two paper cups of coffee, and sometime later Oscar Strelow sat down in front of them and turned sideways in his chair to talk, remarking on a pen of his cattle that one time sold so poorly he’d driven out and got drunk afterward and when he got home in that sorry state his wife was so mad she wouldn’t talk to him but went straight into town the next morning and bought a brand-new Maytag washing machine, writing out a check for the entire amount right there, and Oscar said he didn’t think it was a good idea to offer any comment about it to his wife just then and he still never had.
    They kept running the cattle through. The younger of the ringmen was the one watching the bidders and they looked at him purposefully, making a nod or raising a hand, and he’d holler Yup! looking back and forth from one bidder to the other, Yup! and when the last bidder gave up and looked away the auctioneer up in the block cried: I sold them out at one hundred sixteen dollars to number eighty-eight! and the young ringman released the cattle out of the ring. Then the older ringman in a blue shirt with a big hard belly hanging down above his belt buckle let the next lot in through the steel door on the left and began to holler.
    Boys, they’re a nice pair of steers. I’m going to let you all in for ninety-five dollars!
    Boys, she’s a long-haul calf. She looks a little like a milk cow. Seventy-four dollars!
    The only thing wrong with this one is she’s got a short tail and that’s stupid!
    Boys, she’s got a little knot on her jaw. Dry it, it won’t amount to nothing.
    A heifer girl and a good one!
    All right. Seventy-seven dollars! Let’s not play games.
    The cattle sale went on. And one time there was a big lot, eighty head of them, that the ringmen ran through fifteen and twenty at a time until they came to the last bunch and these they kept back in the ring as representative of the whole lot, and all the while the older ringman was hollering: Boys, they’re a good outfit. Take a good look at them, you’re not going to see them again. They’re a good feeding outfit, boys. Eighty cows. Eighty dollars. Come on!
    And there was one other time in the afternoon when Harold, sitting up in his seat above the sale ring, began to bid on a pen of butcher cows. After he bid a second time Raymond turned to look at him. Was that you? He thought that was you trying to bid on them.
    It was.
    Well what the hell are you doing?
    Nothing. Having a little fun.
    We don’t need no more cattle. We’re trying to sell some here today.
    I ain’t going to buy any. I’m just having some fun raising the price for somebody else.
    What if you get stuck with them?
    I won’t.
    Yeah. But what if you do.
    Then I reckon you’ll just have to get your pocketbook out and