Stand Up and Die
Page 23
“He’ll be shown again?”
“Nope, he’s had it. Once a two year old goes international grand champion, he can’t compete again. This fellow might win for years if we could show him. Got to give the others a chance. Win again with one of his get, maybe.”
“So now he’s—” Heimrich did not finish.
“Herd bull,” Ballard said. “Herd sire. Breed him a couple of times a week. Artificially, as we do it. Say he lives to be ten—he’s three, now. Sire a million dollars’ worth of animals, with any luck. See why nobody wants to sell him? And you talked about destroying him!”
He had been naive, Heimrich realized.
“Up to now,” he said, “I take it he’s never seemed mean. It would be difficult to show a really mean bull, probably.”
“Sure,” Ballard said. “Nope—always been gentle as—well, as a heifer calf. Up to now.” He looked at the bull. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked the animal, and Prince turned his head away and nibbled hay.
“This characteristic you call ‘sogginess,’ ” Heimrich said. “I gather he passes it along.”
“Sure,” Ballard said. “That’s the whole point, captain. You start with him—perfect type of the best beef animal in the world. His get—bulls and heifers—inherit his characteristics. That’s the theory, anyway, and with breeders who know their business it mostly works out. Oh—now and then we get one that doesn’t look like much, and maybe we steer him and fill a deep freeze. But that’s incidental. The whole business is planned to end up with a lot of steers with characteristics like these”—he patted Prince—“big, well-sprung ribs, smooth rumps, no waste to speak of in the neck or legs—just a hell of a lot of beef on the hoof. Out on a ranch in the west, maybe. Not pure breds, mostly. Blacks bred out of other stock, for the most part. But turning up the best meat. No horn bruises, for one thing. Doddies breed horns right off almost anything, so—”
He was, evidently, off again. But now Heimrich stopped him.
“Characteristics,” he said. “They get passed along pretty consistently. And—bad disposition would too, Mr. Ballard? Meanness?”
That stopped Ballard. It stopped him abruptly. He looked steadily at Heimrich for some seconds.
“Might,” he said. “A lot of people would figure it would, captain.”
Heimrich nodded his head. He said, “Well—”
“Seen what you want to?” Ballard asked, and when Heimrich nodded, led the way out of the stall, into the central passage of the long barn.
“All you want to know?” Ballard asked, latching the gate. The bull moved to the fence and poked a black nose partly between two rails. “Wants to be petted,” Ballard said, and rubbed the black nose.
“What happens now?” Heimrich asked. “To the herd, I mean?”
“Wouldn’t know,” Ballard said. “Have to ask the boys. The old girl’s sons. Me, I wouldn’t want to guess.”
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Copyright © 1953 by Richard and Frances Lockridge
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ISBN: 978-1-5040-5045-6
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