“Why, you’ve missed your calling—you’d make a fine second mate on a river steamboat, driving niggers,” called back Quince Forrest, as the first guard rode away.
When our guard returned, Officer intentionally walked across Stallings’s bed, and catching his spur in the tarpaulin, fell heavily across our segundo.
“Excuse me,” said John, rising, “but I was just nosing around looking for the foreman. Oh, it’s you, is it? I just wanted to ask if 4.30 wouldn’t be plenty early to build up the fire. Wood’s a little scarce, but I’ll burn the prairies if you say so. That’s all I wanted to know; you may lay down now and go to sleep.”
Our camp-fire that night was a good one, and in the absence of Flood, no one felt like going to bed until drowsiness compelled us. So we lounged around the fire smoking the hours away, and in spite of the admonition of our foreman, told stories far into the night. During the early portion of the evening, dog stories occupied the boards. As the evening wore on, the subject of revisiting the old States came up for discussion.
“You all talk about going back to the old States,” said Joe Stallings, “but I don’t take very friendly to the idea. I felt that way once and went home to Tennessee; but I want to tell you that after you live a few years in the sunny Southwest and get onto her ways, you can’t stand it back there like you think you can. Now, when I went back, and I reckon my relations will average up pretty well,—fought in the Confederate army, vote the Democratic ticket, and belong to the Methodist church,—they all seemed to be rapidly getting locoed. Why, my uncles, when they think of planting the old buck field or the widow’s acre into any crop, they first go projecting around in the soil, and, as they say, analyze it, to see what kind of a fertilizer it will require to produce the best results. Back there if one man raises ten acres of corn and his neighbor raises twelve, the one raising twelve is sure to look upon the other as though he lacked enterprise or had modest ambitions. Now, up around that old cow town, Abilene, Kansas, it’s a common sight to see the cornfields stretch out like an ocean.
“And then their stock—they are all locoed about that. Why, I know people who will pay a hundred dollars for siring a colt, and if there’s one drop of mongrel blood in that sire’s veins for ten generations back on either side of his ancestral tree, it condemns him, though he may be a good horse otherwise. They are strong on standard bred horses; but as for me, my mount is all right. I wouldn’t trade with any man in this outfit, without it would be Flood, and there’s none of them standard bred either. Why, shucks! if you had the pick of all the standard bred horses in Tennessee, you couldn’t handle a herd of cattle like ours with them, without carrying a commissary with you to feed them. No; they would never fit here—it takes a range-raised horse to run cattle; one that can rustle and live on grass.”
STORY TELLING
“Another thing about those people back in those old States: Not one in ten, I’ll gamble, knows the teacher he sends his children to school to. But when he has a promising colt to be shod, the owner goes to the blacksmith shop himself, and he and the smith will sit on the back sill of the shop, and they will discuss how to shoe that filly so as to give her certain knee action which she seems to need. Probably, says one, a little weight on her toe would give her reach. And there they will sit and powwow and make medicine for an hour or two. And while the blacksmith is shoeing her, the owner will tell him in confidence what a wonderful burst of speed she developed yesterday, while he was speeding her on the back stretch. And then just as he turned her into the home stretch, she threw a shoe and he had to check her in; but if there’d been any one to catch her time, he was certain it was better than a two-ten clip. And that same colt, you couldn’t cut a lame cow out of the shade of a tree on her. A man back there—he’s rich, too, though his father made it—gave a thousand dollars for a pair of dogs before they were born. The terms were one half cash and the balance when they were old enough to ship to him. And for fear they were not the proper mustard, he had that dog man sue him in court for the balance, so as to make him prove the pedigree. Now Bob, there, thinks that old hound of his is the real stuff, but he wouldn’t do now; almost every year the style changes in dogs back in the old States. One year maybe it’s a little white dog with red eyes, and the very next it’s a long bench-legged, black dog with a Dutch name that right now I disremember. Common old pot hounds and everyday yellow dogs have gone out of style entirely. No, you can all go back that want to, but as long as I can hold a job with Lovell and Flood, I’ll try and worry along in my own way.”
On finishing his little yarn, Stallings arose, saying, “I must take a listen to my men on herd. It always frets me for fear my men will ride too near the cattle.”