“A livery stable! While you were in college?” asked Fudge.
“You said it, hombre. Had to do something. Didn’t have much of anything but what I had on when I struck college. Paid them a half-year’s tuition—education’s cheap out that way, friends, and it’s good, too—and looked around for something to work at. Didn’t find anything at first and so one day I go down to a stable run by a poor thing name of Cheeny and hires me a bronch for a couple of hours. I can always think a heap better when I’m on a horse, it seems. Well, thinking doesn’t do me much good this time, though, and I heads back to town telling myself the best thing I can do is roll my blanket and hit the trail. But when I gets back to the stable, which isn’t much more than a shed and a corral built of railway ties set on end, this poor thing name of Cheeny says to me: ‘Know anyone wants to buy a nice livery business?’ ‘Supposing I did?’ says I, squinting around the shack. ‘Why, here it is,’ he says. Well, to come right down to brass tacks, he and I did business after a day or two. He wanted to hike back to Missouri, which he ought never to have left, and we made a dicker. I was to pay him so much a month till we were square. ’Course I knew that, as he’d been running the place, he wasn’t making enough to pay his feed bill, but I had a notion I could do a bit better. Did, too. What I bought wasn’t much—half a dozen carriages about ready to fall to pieces, five bronchos and a little grain and alfalfa. The bronchs weren’t so bad, if you excuse their looks. What they needed mostly was food. Trouble was, though, that everyone out there who needed a horse had one, and I saw that if I was to make anything on that investment I’d have to make my own market. Which I did.”
“How did you do it?” asked Perry eagerly.
“Introduced the wholesome recreation of riding. Used to take a string of bronchs up to college in the afternoon and stand ’em outside the Hall. Then when anyone came along I’d ask him if he didn’t want to hire a horse for two bits an hour. At first I just got laughed at. Then one or two fellows tried it for a lark, and after that it went fine. I gave riding lessons to some of the girls—Morgan is co-ed, you know—and the next year I had to buy me more horses. Paid that poor thing name of Cheeny in full before I’d been there six months. When I left I sold out to a man from Lincoln and did right well. Now you talk.”
“Wh-what did you do next?” asked Fudge interestedly.
“Went down to Texas and got a job with a firm of engineers who were running a new railway down to the Gulf. I’d taken a course of civil engineering. Met up with a slick customer who looked like a down-east preacher and went shares with him on some oil land. Still got it. Something happened to the railway about that time and they stopped work. That left me strapped and I hired out as a ranch hand. After that I went to punching down near Las Topas.”
“Punching?” queried Fudge.
“Cows.”
“You mean you were a cowboy?” asked Perry eagerly.
“Four years of it.”