Free Acres of Unrest by Max Brand Page A

thoughtful than ever. “Every ten dollars that he’s spent on these old things would cost more than a hundred to replace with new. This here ranch of yours, Ross, was never fixed up like this before. Not that I ever seen it. But what will you use two eight-mule teams for? Expect to work them all on that little strip of bottom land?”
    “Pete has rented the rest of the bottom land off of the Cumberwell place, and he’s got an option to keep on with it for five years, if it pays him.”
    Andy Hale whistled. “More and more,” he said. “But we’ll see what this dry farming turns out.”
    “Not dry. Pete has brought in a couple of pumps, and he’s going to pump water up from the creek and get it onto that land.”
    At this Andy whistled more loudly than before. “Where’s Ruth and Charlie?” he asked. “They came over with me. Where did they go gadding?”
    “There’s Charlie out yonder, looking at the saddle stock.”
    “Andy, my boy is gonna give your Charlie a run for his money when Will Nast comes to decide between them.”
    “Only,” said Andy, “I’m cursed if I see how Greek and Latin can help a boy to learn how to do these things.”
    “It’s the habit of learning that counts, and not the things that are learned,” said Ross. “Why, the Greek and Latin may be nothing useful out here in the mountains, but Pete, he knows how to study things. He listens to everything that everybody has got to say. Take advice from a greaser, Pete would. He sizes up what everybody has to say. Besides, he’s got some books on cows and cow raising and on irrigation. He talks about rotation of crops and such things until you get black in the face, pretty near, listening to him. But come and see him and talk to him yourself. He’ll be asking you questions as fast as you can answer ’em!”
    Andy stood for a long moment, lost in thought. “Is this football?” he asked at last.
    “I dunno,” said Ross Hale, tamping the tobacco firmly into his pipe bowl. “Pete says that it beats any football that he ever played, and he sure talks as though he meant what he said. Let’s go find him.”
    “I want to round up Ruth,” said Andy. “I want to find her and bring her along, because, ever since Peter came back home, she’s been wanting to see him mighty bad. She’s pretty sorry for him, Ross. This’ll let her see that a Hale ain’t the sort of a man that other folks can afford to be sorry for, even when a Hale happens to be crippled a mite. Ross, I take off my hat to your boy…only, tell me where does he get all of his backing?”
    “Back East. He’s got friends. Friends that have seen him rip down a football field and make his touchdowns. And they got the confidence that he canmake other kinds of games pay. And they’re right. I couldn’t stand a five-thousand-dollar mortgage when Pete come back. But yesterday I sashayed into the bank to see how our credit was standing, and I found out that they would advance us up to ten thousand without no questions asked, right now.”
    So the two brothers walked slowly across the corral from the new sheds, where the tools of Peter were now securely housed against the weather.
    “But can you run a place with junk?” asked Andy. “I’ve never seen it tried before.”
    “Paint and oil is the main things with Pete,” said his brother. “Some of them tools look pretty rusty. But they been cleaned off and oiled, and all of the working parts is sound. The stuff that ain’t any good is weeded out. And what’s housed is all ready for use. It scares me when I think how much money has been sunk in this place. But I tell you that in these here few weeks the boy has spent as much money as I’ve spent in getting him his whole education. And I’ll tell you what…football pays. And so does Greek and Latin!”
    “It does, maybe,” Andy Hale admitted. “And you’re right that Will Nast will be mighty interested in hearing about all of these here improvements that your boy