Horse of a Different Color Read Online Free PDF Page B

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