I found out that when Mr. E. went into the bulb in a business way, this Wolf Nose Crick Ranch went around bankruptcy, instid of through it, becuz, mostly, nobody thought it wuth a—a thought. An' to them as think strange of ten thousand steers, even dogies, bein' bought by a busted boomer, I'll state that any man with the same range, an' not absolutely a convicted hoss-thief, could've got 'em by givin' the same cutthroat chattel mawgitch. Old Aleck Macdonald did sure sell 'em to Mr. Elkins reasonable, though, because James R. had made him a good deal of money in this boom, an' they was only dogies anyhow.
Now, this bein' my evenin' fer tellin' the truth, I'll state that ten thousand dogies is sure a complicated problem on the range. The distinction between them an' reg'lar native range cows lays in the lap o' luxury in which the dogies is dangled in the farmin' regions where they originate. The first little blizzard, they'll hump up an' blat fer home an' mother. They'll gaze fondly at a butte ten mile off, expectin' doors in it to slide open, an' racks full of clover an' timothy to pull out an' be forked out to 'em. They look grieved an' wring their jaws becuz water with the chill took off ain't piped to their stalls, an' they moan 'cause they ain't no stalls. I'd as soon run a Women's an' Babies' Home. You cain't get it into their heads where the water-holes is, an' it's allus an even break whuther they'll stan' an' freeze in their tracks, or chase after some bunch of 2:10 natives ontil their hooves drop off. That's why Macdonald talked as he did about 'em, as I'm informed.
"Take 'em," says he, "an' don't flatter yourself I'm donatin' anything. They's no feed fer 'em in their native Iowa at any livin' price, an' on the other hand, fifty per cent. of 'em'll die gettin' over their homesickness on the range. You'll have it in fer me fer stickin' you, when you know more about the cattle business. Fer the Lord's sake take 'em before they eat me out of every dollar I've got left!"
Some of this was straight goods, an' some stall; but that first winter was a special providence if they ever was one. So mild and barmy from September to March that the prairie-dogs forgot to hole up, an' Mrs. Elkins served Thanksgivin' dinner in the open air on the pizziazzy at the Ranch. An' she rode the range with Jim consecutively, an' said she'd found her 'finity in this cattle biz. As for him, the main thing the matter was that failure o' his a-millin' through his mental facilities. But this was their honeymoon, we found, an' that, an' no losses on the range, helped his case, an' by spring he begun to shoot the persiflage into the gang, an' set up an' reach for things to beat fours. As for the dogies, none of 'em had the faintest show fer a beller. The grass was like new-mown hay; every little snow was follered by a chinook; the water-holes was brimmin'; an' all went merry as a marriage bell.
"The fact is, Aconite," says Mr. Elkins, addressin' me, "I knew when I heard that burst of phonetic lava from your lips at Belle Fourche, that there'd be no fear of low temperatures if you could be induced to stay by the cows, and blow off once in a while."
He had the hot air under wonderful control, hisself, an' felt good at the way the stock was comin' on—March, April, May, an' fresh feed, ponds full o' ducks, cute little young wolves about the dens, an' every one o' the ten thousand dogies stretchin' to see hisself grow. But the fall—the fall was sure a bad one fer both feed an' water. The dogies, however, couldn't fairly be called such any longer, havin' recovered from what Jim called their acute nostalgia, an' bein' pret' near's good rustlers as natives. An' well it was fer 'em, fer grass was sca'ce, an' a son-of-a-gun of a while between drinks. After you got away from the crick—an' you jist had to git away f'r grass—it was a good day's ride to water, east, west, north, south, up'r down. On the hay-slews we had to prime the rake with old hay 'fore we could make a windrow. Laff if you want to, but they was whole outfits with less hay than some folks has gover'ment bonds. We had about enough to wad a shotgun, an' was merchant princes in the fodder line. The steers, lookin' like semi-animated hat-racks, as the Old Man said, come through the cold weather in a shrinkin' an' sylph-like way, so thin that you could throw a bull by the tail a dum sight furder'n I'd trust some folks, an' that's no dream!
By this time Mr. Elkins was a sure-enough cow-man, president of the Association and the biggest man from Spearfish to Jackson's Hole. He knew some confounded joke on every man in the cow-country, an' not only called 'em all by their fust name, but had one of his own f'r most of 'em. Mrs. Elkins, havin' pulled him through his own dogy stage, dropped out of the cow business, an' devoted herself to kids. I knew that this dogy proposition was a sort of a straw that Jim Elkins grabbed at as he went under, an' it done me an' all the fellers good to see the percentage of loss so small, even if the brutes wasn't puttin' on weight as they orto, an' the price was away down, an' we knew we shouldn't be ready to sell when the mawgitch got ripe. Old Macdonald was Jim's friend, though, an' would sure extend the note when it come of age; an' fur's we could see, these dry seasons was only delayin' the clean-up.
So I thought, an' so thought the Elkins family, as peaceful as a Injun summer morn, an' as happy as skunks. But along in June of the third year, just in the last of the round-up, out comes what Elkins called our Nemmysis in the form of a jackleg lawyer with news of Macdonald's death, and papers to prove it, an' him appointed executioner of the estate of A. Macdonald, diseased. He wanted to see the cattle the estate had a mawgitch on. I was app'inted as his chaperon to show him the stock, an' it bein' a hurryin' time o' year, I exhibited to him ten 'r 'leven thousand head of mixed pickles, and called it square. He didn't know a cow-brand from one plucked from the burnin', an' credited us with a township or two of O-Bar-X cow stuff I run him into the first day out. I didn't feel that he was wuth payin' much notice to, if he hadn't had the say about the Old Man's mawgitch.
I gathered from him that he was goin' to rearlize on the outfit in the fall. I went so fur as to p'int out what a grave-robbin' scheme this was, an' how this dogy stuff had been kep' in the livin' skelliton department f'r two years by drouth an' a hell-slew of other troubles, an' couldn't possibly do more than pay off the mawgitch, an' leave us holdin' the bag in the wust country f'r snipe outside of the Mojave desert.
"They'll pay out," says he, "an' that's all I'm required to look out fer."