Dave wuz on his stummick,
Readin' the news at his ease-like,
When Bill comes, brave, sayin' what he'll do to Dave
In words what could walk away, cheese-like.
Ol' Bill's fist wuz man-size
Sure as any alive—
But Dave, never squintin', turns over the printin'
An' there wuz his Forty-five.
Bill he chokes an' swallers,
But Dave he's gentle an' mild,
An' they talks together o' cows an' the weather,
An' allows they is re-con-ciled.
From Medora Nights
Where, meanwhile, was the Marquis de Mores?
A casual observer, during the spring of 1885, might have remarked that physically he was never long at any one place; but that metaphorically he was on the crest of the wave. The erection of the great abattoir, which had replaced the more primitive structure built in 1883, gave an impression of great prosperity. Actually, however, it was a symptom of failure. It had, in fact, been erected only because of the irremediable inefficiency of the original smaller structure. By the end of 1884 the Marquis had discovered that the slaughtering of twenty-five head of cattle a day could not, by the most painstaking application of "business methods," be made profitable. It took more than butchers, the Marquis found, to operate a slaughter-house. An engine was needed and an engineer, a foreman, a bookkeeper, a hide-man, a tallow-man, a blood-man, a cooper, and a night-watchman. These men could easily take care of three or four hundred head a day, and they were required to take care only of twenty-five.
The Marquis was not without executive ability. He had, since the preceding autumn, sought competent advisers, moreover, and followed their suggestions. Among other things, these advisers had told him that, owing to the unusual quality of the stem-cured grass in the Bad Lands, beef fit for market could be slaughtered as early as the first of June when beef commanded a high price.
Accordingly, on June 1st the new abattoir was opened. Every precaution against waste had, it seemed, been taken, and for fear lest the branch houses in Kansas City, Bismarck, and elsewhere should be unable to absorb the output of the slaughter-house and interrupt its steady operation, the Marquis secured a building on West Jackson Street, Chicago, where the wholesale dealers in dressed beef had their stalls, with the purpose of there disposing of his surplus.
