Horse of a Different Color by Ralph Moody Page B

throwed over to Scott’s pool hall,” he told me. “Bob, he sure must have made a heap of dough on them cattle he shipped a couple of weeks back. Wouldn’t let nobody else spend a dime, and he bought Scotty plumb out of sody-pop and near-beer and ceegars.”
    I didn’t want to hear any more, so asked, “Have you got a dozen rolls of four-foot heavy-duty hog wire on hand?”
    “You betcha!” he answered. “Bob, he give me the order last night. Tells me you’re putting in a thousand top-grade whiteface steers and five hundred shoats, and got to fence the whole place hog-tight and bull-strong to hold ’em. Bob, he’s sure a big-time operator, and you’re a lucky kid to get teamed up with him.”
    The more I heard the less lucky I felt, especially when I found that the bill had already been made out to Wilson and Moody. I didn’t bother to explain that there was no such firm, but paid for half the wire and had the other half charged to Bob.
    When I got back to the Wilson place Bob wasn’t there, only one post hole had been dug, and there was a drove of shoats rooting in the corn piles. For a moment my temper flared hot enough to make my mouth dry. I started turning the team, to drive up to the bank and tell Bones the whole deal was off. Then Betty Mae came running toward me from the house, singing out gaily, “Hi, Balp! Gi’me horsie wide.”
    With that happy little face beaming up at me I couldn’t stay angry, and I couldn’t go off and leave her. “You wait right there, so you won’t get stepped on,” I told her, stopped the team, and jumped down to pick her up. With her squealing, clinging to my back like a monkey, and hugging me around the neck with both chubby little arms, I took her for a piggyback ride to the back door, put her inside, and told her, “You stay right there till I come in for dinner. If one of those horses stepped on you he’d mash you flatter than the grasshopper that sat on a railroad track.”
    I’d unhitched the horses and was leading them toward the barn when I heard the chattering valves of the Buick behind me. The moment the motor stopped Bob shouted. “I sure got us off to a flyin’ start this morning!”
    I didn’t look around, but he followed after me, calling out, “Daggoned if I ain’t just stole us nine of the prettiest white-faced steers you ever seen. Every one of ’em will scale mighty close to seven hundred and thirty-five pounds, and they’re worth leastways a dime a pound, but I bought ’em at sixty bucks around.”
    To keep any sound of anger out of my voice I waited until I’d put the horses in their stalls, then turned toward Bob and asked, “Where did you get the steers, and how did you pay for them?”
    “Didn’t have to pay for ’em,” he told me jubilantly. “I got ’em off’n old man Macey, and his stuff is mortgaged clean up to the ears. All we got to do is tell Bones and sign up a note for the five hundred and forty bucks.”
    “Did you tell Mr. Macey that top grade feeders were worth only eight dollars a hundred?” I asked.
    “Shucks, no!” he laughed. “The old geezer reads the drover’s news like it was mail from home, so you can’t catch him up much on the pound price, but he don’t know nothing about cattle weights. He hung out for an average of eight hundred pounds at first, but I kept on telling him they wouldn’t scale an ounce over five hundred, so we finally come together on sixty bucks a head.”
    “Bob,” I said, “there are a few things we’d better get settled before we go any further.” Then, after telling him where I drew the lines between haggling and cheating, I said, “You’ve already earned the reputation in this township of trying to cheat on every deal you get into. Unless that reputation is cured right at the start, any man doing business alongside of you will be tarred with the same stick, and I’m not going to get tarred. From now on you’ll make no deal that I’m in any way connected with unless