CHAPTER IX

CUTTING HIS EYETEETH

A widely advertised stock sale was an event in the country for the
twofold reason that it furnished the opportunity for neighbours with
fifty and more miles between them to exchange personal news and
experiences and also to purchase blooded animals for considerably less
than they could have been imported.

This was particularly true of the Canby sale, where the "culls," both in
horses and cattle, were better than the best animals of the majority of
the small stockmen and ranchers. In consequence, these sales were
largely attended by the natives, who drank Canby's coffee and ate his
doughnuts while calling him names which are commonly deleted by the
censor.

It was the custom also for such persons as had a few head of horses or
cattle to dispose of, but not enough for a sale of their own, to bring
them to be auctioned off with Canby's. So it had come to pass that the
stock sale at Canby's ranch was second only in importance to the county
fair to which all the countryside looked forward.

Therefore Wallie, whose notion of a stock sale was of the vaguest, was
much surprised when after riding in the direction his visitor had
indicated and spending hours hunting for gates in wire fences, had come
upon an assembly of a size he would not have believed possible in that
sparsely populated district.

Unless they denned in the rocks, the question as to where they lived
might have puzzled a person more familiar with this Western phenomenon
than Wallie.

There were Ford cars which might have been duplicates of Henry's first
model--with trailers containing the overflow of children--together with
the larger cars of the more prosperous or more extravagant, as happened.
Top buggies were in evidence, relics of the Victorian period, shipped
out from Iowa and Nebraska--serviceable vehicles that had done duty when
their owners were "keeping company." Lumber wagons were plentiful, with
straw and quilts in the bottom to serve as shock-absorbers, while saddle
horses were tied to every hitching post and cottonwood.

When Wallie arrived in his riding boots and breeches he immediately
shared attention with a large, venerable-looking Durham that was being
auctioned. The Durham, however, returned the stare of the crowd with
blase eyes which said that he had seen all of life he wanted to and did
not care what further happened, while Wallie felt distinctly
uncomfortable at the attention he attracted, a