The boss shook his head sadly over the clamor that ensued. He spoke of the matter as a man of feeling would acquaint a wife of her husband’s taking-off; but it had to be. An order had come to deliver Molly to Bockus, the butcher at Blackwater.
What! Lose Molly? The boss was locoed, or worse. Had he by any chance secured a bottle, of whose whereabouts we were in ignorance? We would buy the cow ourselves first.
It was an off-day. The branding was done, and the Tumbling K outfit was awaiting the arrival of a purchase of four thousand steers from the South. Thus it came about that twelve of us rode into Blackwater, and Big John was spokesman. John was not much of a speaker, being given to profanity when a congestion of language threatened, but he had a grand theme, and talked about Molly in a way that made us cough.
“Bless my heart,” cried the owner of the Tumbling K, when the nub of the matter was revealed. “Bless my heart!”
He gaped, then squeezed the mighty muscles of Big John’s shoulder and laughed. All this fuss about a cow--one forlorn dun cow. The puncher grinned in his turn, shuffling his feet; for they knew and understood each other, these two, having been associated for eighteen years. That is why Bockus received the strange explanation he did when he called to protest against the delay in delivering Molly.
“It’s just this way,” the cattleman observed, slipping an elastic band about his tally-book. “If I let you have that cow for thirty, I lose precisely nine hundred and thirty-seven dollars. No; Molly stays.”
“Nine hundred and--Why, man, you’re crazy! How’s that?”
“Ask those strikers of mine,” came the answer, accompanied by a chuckle. “Great weather, isn’t it? How is veal selling to-day?”
“But look a-here, Vance, let me have the calf, anyway. You owe me that much,” the fat Bockus protested.
“All right. Send out for him, though,” said the cattleman.