Horse of a Different Color Read Online Free PDF

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 suggest 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