“This surplus now,” he said. “I was figuring to put into horses. They’ll almost give you horses nowadays just to come and drive them off. If you don’t mind my throwing a few head up on your range, I’ll buy up a little bunch and pay you fifty cents a head for pasture fees, agreeing to get ’em off your grass November first.”
“We’d better let him put ’em on, Joe,” Nate agreed. “It’s that much more security for that loan.”
Even under favorable circumstances the horse market was poor and now with all those recently combed from the Strip as a surplus, horses could be purchased at one’s own price. For a week Carver rode early and late. The average run of Indian ponies were selling for less than five dollars a head but it was not this class of horse flesh which Carver sought. He selected young mares and geldings, ranging from eleven to twelve hundred pounds in weight, which would serve for light work stock, and eventually he drove fifty head well toward the northern extremity of Hinman’s range. They had cost him an average of ten dollars apiece and he had paid cash for half of them, issuing verbal promises to pay for the rest. He rode back into Caldwell with something over a hundred dollars in his pocket.
The equipment of all the deserted ranches in the unowned lands was banked up in Caldwell. From the Coldstream Pool Carver purchased ten sets of harness at fifteen dollars a set and three heavy wagons at forty dollars each, paying his last hundred down and his personal note for the balance.
Hinman witnessed this last transaction.
“Considering the size of your original stake you’ve stretched it to cover considerable territory in the last few months,” he said.
“It’s only my surplus I’m spreading out so thin,” Carver explained. “My capital is still intact.” He exhibited his silver dollar. “My one rule of life is never to impair my principal.”
“Fine,” Hinman encouraged. “That’s conservative business. I was satisfied you’d play it slow and safe.”
“Now if you’ll do me just one more little kindness I’ll be grateful;” Carver said. “You and Nate engage Freel in conversation up on the corner where he’s standing and inside of five minutes I’ll saunter up and direct the course of the interview.”
“I’d like to hear it,” Hinman said. “We’ll detain him.”