Free Horse of a Different Color by Ralph Moody Page B

bringing only thirteen fifty at Kansas City, down ten dollars since September, and I expected them to go lower. None too anxious to buy, I told Ashton, “I’m sorry, but the best I could offer is thirty dollars a head.”
    “I’ll take it,” he said without a moment’s hesitation.
    When we moved on, one farmer after another asked for our best offer on his steers, and accepted it without a quibble. Then, at prices fully two and a half dollars a hundredweight below the Kansas City market, he sold me all his hogs except his brood stock. By mid-forenoon I became frightened. With the most successful farmers in the township selling off their hogs I was afraid to buy any more, but refusing might cause hard feeling that would hurt my future business. There was only one man whose advice I dared take, so I told Bob to wait for me at the next four-corners, then set out for George Miner’s as fast as old Kitten could cover the ground.
    I found George sitting in a sunny corner of the wagon shed, picking the Christmas turkey. He kept right on picking while I told him what was worrying me, then without looking up he asked, “Ever herd sheep?”
    “No, sir,” I told him, “I was never around sheep.”
    “Well,” he said, “let an old ewe start to blattin’ and head off some place—no matter if it’s off the top of a bluff or out into a blizzard—and the whole flock will follow after her unless there’s somebody close by to head ’em back. I was minded of sheep last night when Irene and I went to a little Christmas shindig over to Dave Goodenberger’s. Folks got to talkin’ about you and Bob buyin’ feeder steers, and about old Grandpaw Macey, and you buyin’ up stuff to ship, and the likes. Al Ashton said he’d a’ready waited too long for the hog market to turn back up again, and reckoned he’d wasted every bushel of corn he’d fed in the last month. Said he aimed to sell every hog on his place, exceptin’ only his brood stock, if you made him a reasonable offer. Well sir, before you could say scat-my-cat every hog farmer in this valley was singin’ the same tune.”
    George went back to picking feathers as if there were nothing more to be said, so I asked, “Are you going to sell?”
    “Why, someday, I reckon,” he said, “but I ain’t in any hurry about it. It appears to me like it’s fat cattle and feeder steers that’s too high, not hogs.”
    “Then you’d advise me to keep right on buying?” I asked.
    “Wouldn’t advise you one way or the other,” he answered. “A man ought to make up his own mind . . . specially in the livestock tradin’ business.” Then he peeked up at me through his bushy eyebrows and asked, “Hadn’t you best to be goin’ along if you and Bob aim to get them steers bought before Christmas?”
    After our talk I stopped worrying, and the deluge continued. With no haggling to be done, Bob and I moved rapidly from farm to farm. At almost every one we bought a number of excellent feeder steers, and I seldom failed to pick up a dozen or two hogs, along with a few shipping cattle. By dusk on Christmas Eve, we had bought what we believed to be the three hundred best feeder steers in Beaver Township, and I was fairly swamped with shipping stock. Altogether, I’d bought more than five carloads of hogs, and four of mixed cattle and calves, together with five hundred bushels of corn and twenty tons of hay.
    Christmas was the best I’d ever spent away from home. As soon as the girls had opened their presents and we’d had breakfast I saddled Kitten, took the box of candy up to Effie, and rode on to my place to spend the forenoon with my horses. Marguerite’s dinner was glorious, and I ate as though I’d never heard of a diet. In the afternoon we popped corn and played games with the children, then gathered around the player piano in the evening, singing carols and hymns till bedtime.

7
    Blizzards and Backaches
    T HE morning after Christmas I got out the books I’d used