Horse of a Different Color: Reminiscences of a Kansas Drover

by Ralph Moody

  When Bob and I were in Kansas City in August, the Kansas City Star had just completed a radio sending station so powerful that it could be heard clearly for five hundred miles. Every noon one of the newspaper men at the stockyards broadcast the market report for the day, telling how much stock of each type had arrived and the high and low price each grade had brought at the morning auctions. I bought an instruction book on building radio receivers and the materials for a crystal set, but was so busy after we got home that I didn’t get it finished and working well until corn-shucking time. Half the farmers in Beaver Township wanted a radio as soon as they’d heard mine, so I agreed to build one for anybody who would shuck a hundred bushels of corn for us and send to Sears Roebuck for materials. The materials arrived the Monday after I’d had my visit with George, so I fixed up a bench in the bunkhouse and spent every moment I could spare from feeding and trading on radio building. As I worked I picked up nearly everything coming over the air, and the more I heard the more it seemed to me that George was right. The price of wheat slipped off another dime, corn dropped to sixty cents, and hogs nose-dived three dollars, though fat steers held steady.

  By the end of the week I was so worried I could hardly sleep, but Bob was gay and carefree as a robin in May, for he’d believe anything that was to his advantage and nothing to his disadvantage. When I tried to explain the nine-month hog cycle, the fact that the upward phase had ended in September didn’t bother him at all. He laughed uproariously and told me, “Shucks, the only trouble is that them hogs don’t know they’ve fell off’n their cycle yet. Soon as they find it out they’ll get up and start to running like the devil was after ’em. And when they do you’ll see the market jump right back to twenty dollars or better. Did ever you try to stop a scairt hog when he got to running?”

  After that I never tried to discuss the market with Bob, but all that kept me from going for another visit with George was that I didn’t want to act like a scared kid. The day before Thanksgiving hogs took another sharp drop. When the broadcast ended I was willing to admit being scared. I saddled Kitten and had ridden to the Miners’ front gate before I noticed the McCook taxi standing in the dooryard. George had all his cattle corralled, and there were two well-dressed strangers with him, looking them over. I didn’t think anyone had seen me, so turned Kitten back for home, my mouth dry with nervousness and worry.

  As soon as I’d unsaddled I set to work on a radio requiring enough concentration to leave no room for worry. I had no idea how long I’d been working on it when the bunkhouse door opened and George came in. “Reckoned I’d drop by and see how you go about makin’ one of them contraptions,” he told me as he ooched his behind up onto the bench beside the coil I was winding.

  For maybe ten minutes I tried to tell him about sound waves and frequencies, and things like that, but we both knew that we were only making talk. At last he chuckled and told me, “I’ll be jiggered if I ain’t gettin’ to be as superstitious as Effie. Reckon I’d light out and run myself to death if a black cat was to cross the road in front of me.”

  Trying to act offhand, I kept my eyes on the coil and asked, “What are you getting superstitious about?”

  “Well,” he told me, “like Effie’d say, the moon ain’t in exactly the right phase for settin’ a hen, and it’s seemed to me like the stink from under the woodpile was gettin’ a mite ranker here of late. So when a couple of buyers from Ioway happened past this afternoon, lookin’ for Hereford breedin’ stock, I let ’em have a few carloads to be shipped Saturday.”

  I still didn’t look up, but asked, “What did you do, run advertisements in the Iowa newspapers?”

  “Oh, a couple of ’em,” he said. “You know, I ain’t as young as what I used to be, and Irene’s been at me of late to take things easier. Without us havin’ a boy of our own, and with good help hard to come by, I reckoned I might as leave cut the herd down to a few good heifers.”

  “Do you think it’s getting dangerous enough that Bob and I ought to ship our stock this weekend?” I asked.

  “Wouldn’t say so,” he said thoughtfully. “Before I come in I stopped by the scales and lost a couple of dimes to Bob. Your steers look mighty good for bein’ less than ninety days on corn, but Bob says they need another month to top ’em out real good, and I’d agree with him. If you was to ship now you’d do well to get thirteen dollars a hundred at the auctions, and you’d take an awful lickin’ on your hogs. They need another month’s growth to bring ’em up to bacon size, and it’s plumb crazy for hogs to be sellin’ like they are now, at six-fifty below fat cattle. One or both of ’em’s got to move till the gap’s no more’n two dollars, and I can’t believe fat cattle will take any such a drop till things get a lot worse than what they are now.”

  For the rest of the month the news coming over the air wasn’t disturbing enough to keep me awake nights. Then, on December first, the fat cattle market went to pieces like a homesteader’s shack in a cyclone. By the fourth the price of prime steers had dropped from $16.75 to $12.85. But instead of coming up to help close the gap, bacon hogs dropped to $9.75, though wheat remained steady and corn actually went up a nickel.

  Bob quit listening to the livestock reports when the fat cattle market disintegrated, went to McCook or Oberlin every day, and often failed to get home until after midnight. He stopped weighing steers, seldom went near the feed lot, and when I tried to talk to him about shipping he told me, “Shucks, them cattle and hogs don’t belong to me no more. If the big shots up to the bank want ’em, they can come and get ’em.”

  Two of the bankers came on December sixteenth—my twenty-second birthday—when prime steers at Kansas City had dropped to $10.50 and bacon hogs to $9.10. What brought them was Bob’s having overdrawn his bank account by more than a hundred dollars. He wasn’t at home, and when I told the bankers that I didn’t know where he was, one of them became as pompous as a turkey gobbler in April. He strutted to the feed lot, looked over the gate, and told me roughly, “Order cars and ship this stuff before the price goes any lower! We’ve taken all the loss we aim to on it.”

  Ever since the noon broadcast I’d considered shipping on Saturday, but I’ve never liked being roughly ordered around, so decided not to do it. I waited for the man to finish, then said, “The notes and mortgages on this stock aren’t due until January fourth, and I don’t believe you hold them, do you? Didn’t Mr. Kennedy discount them to a Kansas City cattle loan company?”

  His face turned almost purple and he bellowed, “That don’t make any difference. We’re guarantors on the loans, and we’re not going to risk any further loss. Ship this stock Saturday!”

  “I can’t talk for Mr. Wilson,” I told him, “but if you want my half shipped this Saturday I’d suggest you get a court order.”

  The man wasn’t too careful of his language when he told me how sure I might be that he’d get a court order, and he drove out of the dooryard so fast that the spinning wheels burned rubber off his tires.

  That evening Bob came home while I was feeding, so I called him out to the lot and told him about his overdraft and the bankers’ demand that we ship our stock on the coming Saturday. “Them guys don’t scare me none,” he blustered. “Any time they want this stock they can send the sheriff after it. They can’t take no more away from me than what they’ve got a mortgage on.”

  “Oh, yes, they can,” I told him. “With those bad checks they can easily get an attachment on your half of the corn crop, and you know there’s a bad-check law in this state. It might be you they’ll send the sheriff after.”

  He blustered a bit more, but for the first time there was a sound of worry in his voice, and he went to the house muttering to himself. All through supper he was irritable as a dog with canker in its ears, went to bed while I was milking, and drove away toward McCook soon after I went out to feed the stock next morning. I was working on a radio in mid-forenoon when I heard Bob’s contagious laugh and the sound of unfamiliar men’s voices. I stepped to the bunk
house window as Bob and two strangers came out of the stockyard, climbed into a new Buick touring car, and drove away. About an hour later Bob came back in the old Buick, pulled to a stop in front of the bunkhouse, and sang out jovially, “Let the daggoned bankers try stealin’ that corn now and see how far they get.”

  I opened the door and asked, “What did you do, trade your half of it for that 1921 Buick?”

  He lowered his voice and said, “I ain’t that big of a fool. I put enough cash in the bank to make them checks good, but that’s all they’re going to get their fingers on. Sure, I made a deal for a new Buick, but I only paid a hundred bucks down. That way the dealer’ll keep the ownership papers, and these smart guys up to the bank can’t steal it away from me. Don’t say nothing to Marguerite about it. I aim to save it for a Christmas surprise—or maybe New Year’s. It’ll take a week to get the model I dealt for out here from Omaha.”

  With money in his pocket, a new Buick on order, and the new bankers outwitted, Bob was fairly prancing. At every chance he flashed a roll of bills that would have choked a bull, and Marguerite must have believed he’d struck it rich. They made four shopping trips to McCook, each time coming home with armloads of packages.

  The Thursday before Christmas, Bones phoned and asked me to come to his house. When I got there he led me into the parlor and told me, “I hope you understand that I don’t have the say about what goes on at the bank any more—that is, no more say than one vote gives me, and that’s precious little.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Are they after my hide?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly say that,” he told me, “but you got their dander up when you told them to get a court order. You know, of course, that mortgaged stock can’t be moved across a state line without authorization from the mortgage holder. Well, they’ve taken up you boys’ notes from the loan company, aiming to force you into shipping your stock in the bank’s name by refusing authorization for it to cross a state line otherwise. If you ship that way, the entire proceeds will have to be paid to the bank, and I have a notion that they plan to impound every dollar of it, claiming that you and Bob are in partnership. They know different, but you’d have to sue to get your money, so the burden of proof would be on you.”

  “Is there any way to avoid it?” I asked.

  “That’s what I called you up here for,” he told me. “If you were refused shipping authorization on your half of the stock—subject to mortgage, of course—you’d have a legal damage claim. It would include any loss sustained because of market decline, feed, and care of the stock from the time of refusal until ultimate sale. The bank’s only defense would be to prove partnership, and the burden of proof would be on them. They know it, and I don’t believe you’ll have much trouble in getting an authorization when they find out that you know it.”

  “Is there any legal reason to keep Bob and me from dividing our stock now?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” he said. “You can divide it any time. That’s part of the agreement under which the loans were made.”

  “And could Bob turn his half over to the bank before the mortgage is due, whether or not the new men agree to it?”

  “If he stopped feeding the stock they’d have to take it. What else could they do to save their situation?”

  After thanking Bones I drove around the back way and pulled up in front of the bank as though I’d just come from home. When I went in the man who had ordered me to ship the stock was at Bones’s old desk, and there were only he and the cashier in the bank. I stepped to the rail and said pleasantly, “Good morning. I plan to ship my stock on Christmas Day, so dropped in for an authorization, subject to the amount of my mortgage.”

  “There’ll be no need of an authorization,” he told me without looking up. “Ship the stock in the bank’s name!”

  “Maybe Mr. Kennedy forgot to tell you,” I said, “but the bank doesn’t hold title to the stock, only a mortgage on it.”

  He looked up, stared at me, and said roughly, “That makes no difference. The mortgage is for more than the stuff’s worth. Now get out of here, kid, and do as I told you! I’m busy.”

  I bent over enough to rest an elbow on the rail, and said as though we were having a pleasant conversation, “That’s true of Mr. Wilson’s stock, but he won’t be asking for an authorization. He’ll be turning his stock over to the bank on his mortgage, probably this afternoon. If you’d like, I’d be willing to ship it for you at fifty dollars a carload. Whoever decided not to give me an authorization probably didn’t realize how fast the market is falling, or that my note isn’t due until January fourth, or that I’d have a damage claim against the bank for . . . ”

  I stopped in the middle of the sentence and started toward the door, but before I got my hand on the knob a panicky voice called out, “Hold on a minute, Moody, will you?”

  When I looked back the man was coming toward the railing with a forced smile on his face. “It does sound like the man that made the decision didn’t have all the facts before him,” he said. “You see, Harry Kennedy hasn’t been well of late—that’s why we had to take over the management here—and we’re finding that there’s a lot of things he forgot to tell us, the way a sick man will. Let me have about an hour to get hold of my associates and I believe we can find some way to give you and Wilson shipping authorization. You’d both ship if you had the authorizations, wouldn’t you?”

  “That’s right,” I told him as I stood in the open doorway, “but don’t bother about them unless your associates are perfectly willing. Now that I’ve come to think of it, I can see that I’d make more money the other way. Anyhow, I’ll drop back in an hour.” Then I stepped outside and closed the door.

  I drove around the back way again, stopped to tell Bones of the conversation, then went on to Oberlin to do my Christmas shopping. I wasn’t feeling as affluent as Bob, so made five dollars cover candy for Marguerite and Effie and a toy for each of the girls. It was exactly an hour from the time I left the Cedar Bluffs bank until I was back, and my reception was somewhat warmer than before. The man at Bones’s desk came to the railing with an envelope in his hand, and saying heartily, “It was just as I suspected. Poor old Harry forgot to give us all the facts, but now that we’ve got the straight of it we’re more than glad to accommodate you. I’ve got the authorization all made out here. Look it over and see if it fills the bill.”

  It was typed on the bank’s letterhead and released our stock for shipment and sale, subject to a claim for one half the net proceeds plus $20,667—the amount of my note and accrued interest for four months. Below the bank’s name the man had scrawled his own name illegibly, with V P after it in large, clear letters. From that day on, he was always spoken of around Cedar Bluffs as V P.

  I read the release carefully, put it in my pocket, and said, “That’s okay. We’ll ship Saturday, and hope to get the stock into the earliest auctions Monday morning. Do you want our agent to mail you a check, or would you rather I’d telegraph you the amount, so you can draft on him by wire?”

  V P walked to the door with me, saying, “Send me a telegram, will you, Bud? Since we took over the management, this bank is as safe as a church, you understand, but—Harry overlending like he did—we’ve been a bit tight for ready cash.” He opened the door for me, and as I climbed into the dilapidated old Maxwell, he called out cheerily, “Drop in whenever we can do anything for you. Always glad to accommodate our friends.”

  After going by to show Bones the authorization, I stopped at the depot and ordered seventeen cattle cars and three double-decked hog cars. The rest of the afternoon and all day Friday I spent getting ready for the big shipment, but Bob paid no attention to the stock, and gave me no help. While he and Marguerite were trimming the tree that evening, I went up to the telephone office, partly to take Effie her box of candy, but mainly because I knew she’d find me the help I needed. To move as much stock as we had from the feed lot to the shipping pens, sort, and load it, would be impossible for one ma
n, or even two, and with conditions as they were I didn’t feel that I could afford to hire help. Effie had known for more than a week that I’d lose almost everything I had on the stock in the feed lot, and had shed many a tear over it. After we’d visited for maybe fifteen minutes, I mentioned that Bob and I were going to ship our stock next day.

  “On Christmas?” she asked incredulously. “I never heard the likes! What you doin’ that for?”

  “Because it falls on Saturday,” I said, “and I’m afraid to wait another week with the market falling the way it is.”

  “Hmmfff,” she sniffed, “I’d think it would be hard to get help on Christmas Day. Who-all did you get?”

  I grinned and told her, “I haven’t got anybody yet, but George Miner always lends a hand, and I’m going to try to put a burr under Bob. As my grandfather used to say, ‘I’m feelin’ porely of late’—or maybe it’s just plain stingy—but there won’t be much left out of this shipment for paying help.”

  That time Effie didn’t sniff, but snorted. “My lands! Why on earth didn’t you let on about it sooner. Here it is ha’-past-eight a’ready, and if it was any night but Christmas Eve half the folks in this township would be abed. Now sit still and keep your trap shut while I get out a line call. There’s any Lord’s quantity of folks in Beaver Valley that would be glad to lend you a hand if they knew about your shippin’.”

  As she spoke her thumb was pushing the key in the 4-4-4 ring that signaled a line call. She made the call sound as though our shipment would be the greatest historic event of the century, and that taking part in it would be an honor. “There! That ought to do the trick,” she said when she’d pulled the line plugs. “Now you go on home and get some sleep. You look plumb beat out.” She took the headphones off and walked to the door with me, then gathered me into her arms as if I were still a little boy, gave me a kiss full on the mouth, and told me, “God bless you, boy, and a merry Christmas to you. Don’t get any notions in your head that the folks in this valley don’t know what you’re goin’ through.”