Horse of a Different Color by Ralph Moody Page A

grin.
    “Don’t you know that notes signed by a minor for anything but food, clothing, and shelter are worthless?” he demanded.
    “Yes, sir,” I told him. “That’s why I thought you might like to wait till tomorrow for the signing.”
    The note I signed the next morning was for twenty-three thousand dollars and the mortgage covered my horses, wagons and harness, together with “all chattels of whatsoever sort or kind” bought with the proceeds of the loan. Across the face of the note Bones wrote
    [ I hereby guarantee not to hold Ralph Moody liable for any debt which he has not personally contracted.
    Harry S. Kennedy, December 16, 1919 ]
    After the signing I moved down to the Wilson place, but all I took with me were the old Maxwell, Kitten and her saddle, what few clothes I had, and the account books from my wheat-hauling business. I’d planned to move enough furniture to fix up a room for myself in the bunkhouse, but Marguerite wouldn’t hear of it. She said I was to sleep in the house and be one of the family—and no one was ever happier to join a family than I was to join hers.

5
    Old Man Macey’s Steers
    W ITH headquarters adjoining town and the railroad siding, I hoped to double my trading and shipping business. But to do it I needed pasture space so I’d be able to buy any type of cattle and hogs I could get at a good price, then keep them until I had enough of some particular grade to ship a carload. On the Wilson place there was a twenty-acre field north of the creek, and forty acres of rich valley floor to the south, but the fences were only two-strand barbed wire. The day I moved there I made a deal with Bob that I’d pay three quarters of the taxes and mortgage interest on the place, and half the cost of fencing it with hog-tight woven wire. In exchange I was to have year-around use of the north field, and use of the south field until May. We would then plant it to corn, sharing the work and dividing the crop equally.
    Loose hogs were still rooting in the corn piles, and the hired men still loafing around the place. I suggested to Bob that he set the men to repairing the feed lot fence, and said I’d pay half their wages until the end of the month if they’d fence the two fields and a stackyard around the hay and corn piles. “There’s no sense keeping ’em another day,” he said, “and I aim to pay ’em off tonight. You and me can do the whole daggone job without a lick of help. It won’t take us scarcely no time to string up the fence, and we can do it in odd hours while we’re buying feeder steers.”
    “I don’t want to start buying feeders until the fencing is done,” I told him, “so I’ll be able to pick up shipping stock at the same time. Men are cheaper than interest, so hadn’t we better keep them a few days? One could go to Oberlin for hog wire in the morning, while the other repaired the feed-lot fence and dug post holes for the stackyard.”
    “Look, Bud,” he said, “you don’t need to worry none about me not pitchin’ right in on the work. You go get the wire in the morning, and I’ll fix the feed-lot fence and dig the stackyard post holes while you’re gone. With posts a’ready set around the rest of the place it won’t take the two of us next to no time to staple up the hog wire. I’m going to Oberlin for groceries tonight anyways, so I’ll pay the boys off and take ’em along. It ain’t right to pay men off without you ride ’em back to town.”
    Right after supper Bob drove away with the men, it was way past midnight when he came back, and at four o’clock in the morning I left to get the wire. Bob had the biggest and showiest team of horses in Beaver Township. They were bright bays weighing a ton apiece, but were slow afoot, and it was well after eight o’clock when I pulled into the Oberlin lumberyard. “How come you wasn’t at the celebration last night?” the yardman called.
    “What celebration?” I called back.
    “The one Bob Wilson