Horse of a Different Color (25 page)

Monday and Tuesday Nick and I scrubbed and polished till the place shone like a new penny, then on Wednesday I had an auction. Including my household furnishings, it brought in as much as my entire investment in the butchering business, although there was little from the slaughterhouse that could be sold.

Thursday morning I went to Oberlin to say goodbye to Mr. Frickey, John Bivans, and my other friends there, then stopped at Cedar Bluffs for a visit with Bones on my way home. In the afternoon Nick set off for Omaha, driving the Maxwell and carrying a check for fifteen hundred dollars in his pocket. That evening I went up to see Effie, took her a little present, and told her she’d always be my second-best girl. Then I rode over to spend the night with the Miners and turn old Kitten out to graze away her remaining days along the banks of Beaver Creek.

The next morning—my twenty-third birthday—George drove me to McCook, and with my roving days behind me I swung aboard the eastbound express. I had a fair-sized roll in my pocket, and a couple of thousand dollars in my account at the Farmers National in Oberlin. It wasn’t as much as I’d had when I first went into the livestock business, but I was sure it would be enough, for I believed I could make a living for a wife and family wherever other men could.