Horse of a Different Color by Ralph Moody

in a pile. After he’d taken careful measurements of each stack and pile and examined samples from them, he spent half an hour figuring, then called Bob and me.
    “Well, this is what I make out of it, boys,” he told us. “The corn measures to be something over twenty-one thousand bushels, but so much of it’s nubbins and the like that I calculate there’s no more than sixteen thousand eight hundred bushels of feedable grain. If I owned it I’d be glad to get a dollar and a dime a bushel for it, so that’s the price I’ve put down. The feedable hay measures four hundred and twenty tons—maybe one or two more or less—and a man could buy all he wanted of the same grade, delivered right here on the place, at fifteen dollars a ton. That makes the whole works, hay and corn together, worth twenty-four thousand, seven hundred and . . . ”
    Bob’s face turned grayer and grayer as George talked. Suddenly he broke in angrily, “Now wait a minute, George! Something’s all wrong with them figures of yours! There’s leastways thirty-five thousand dollars’ worth of feed here, and I ain’t going to . . . ”
    George looked up over the tops of his glasses and, without seeming to interrupt, said mildly, “Well now, Bob, I’m not so good at doin’ sums in arithmetic, but Dave, the teller up to the bank, he’s a crackerjack. Suppose we go on up there and have him do the arithmetic over again. All I know for sure is that I’ve got the measurements right, and how much yield of corn there’ll be to a yard of cobs, and what the stuff’s worth a bushel or ton at today’s prices. I figure the hogs would net about twenty-seven hundred dollars if you was to ship ’em, so that’s what I’ve valued ’em at.”
    Bob was so sure Dave would find some big mistake that he was the most cheerful among us on the way to the bank. But his anger flared when Dave came out with the same figure as George’s. Again he shouted that the feed was worth thirty-five thousand, and that he wouldn’t settle for a dime less. Bones let him blow off steam for a couple of minutes, then he told him, not unkindly, “I wouldn’t like to foreclose on you, Bob, but if you keep on you’ll leave me no choice. I believe you boys, working together, can make good profits in the feeding business. If you pitch in and do your best, I’ll wager that by this time next year you’ll have all your debts paid and be on the road to prosperity.”
    Holding a grudge, sulking, or staying angry more than a minute or two were not among Bob Wilson’s faults. I never knew another man who could forget his troubles so quickly or enthuse more ardently at the prospects of finding a pot of gold at the foot of the next rainbow. To see and hear him when Bones had finished speaking, no one who didn’t know the facts would have believed that he was dead broke and more than twelve thousand dollars in the hole. In his own mind he was already far along on the road to prosperity, and his only anxiety was to get started on our venture without another minute’s delay. “You don’t need to worry none about me pitchin’ in,” he sang out. “I aim to pay off them men of mine just as quick as the papers get signed up so’s I can write checks.”
    “It wouldn’t take Dave more than half an hour to make up the notes and mortgage papers,” Bones told him, “and there’s no reason why you boys can’t sign ’em this afternoon.”
    “I don’t believe it would be good business for me to sign them today,” I said.
    Bones whirled around toward me and demanded gruffly, “Now what are you backing off about?”
    “I’m not backing off from anything,” I told him, “but I thought you might want to. Tomorrow will be my twenty-first birthday.”
    His face turned grayer than Bob’s had been. “Why didn’t you tell me you were under age when you first came here?” he asked in a voice that wasn’t too steady.
    “Because you didn’t ask me,” I answered with a