Through Time and the Valley

12. Dobbin Is a Communist

12 Dobbin Is a Communist We rose at six the next morning and went right to work putting our gear in order for the trip. Around seven Mrs. McGarraugh called us to breakfast and we dropped our work and went to the house. We had hoped to get an early start on the day, but at the breakfast table good coffee and good companionship conspired to hold us longer than we had planned. After the meal, the conversation turned to horses and Mr. McGarraugh told us about a horse he had ridden in his youth. "He bucked for a whole mile and I stayed with him, but I'm not sure it was worth it. When I got down, I was bleed119 120 - Through Tim.e and the Valley ing from the nose and ears." He took a swig of coffee. "Boys, you can never trust a horse, no matter how gentle he seems to be." I nodded, thinking of how gentle Dollarbill seemed to be. By eight-thirty we had loaded the animals and reported to the front of the house for some last minute picture taking. Mrs. McGarraugh emerged from the house with a little Kodak camera and told us to pose beside the animals. Mr. McGarraugh stood on the sidelines, tapping his toe and gazing mournfully off to the east, as if calculating the height of the sun against the work he had planned for the day. Then the order came down for him to get into the picture. He grumbled and muttered in protest and took up a rigid position beside Dollarbill, where he continued to scowl out at the prairie. "Look this way," said Mrs. McGarraugh, squinting into the viewfinder. We obeyed, but Mr. McGarraugh just pulled his hat down further over his eyes. "Leroy! Look this way." Finally he swung his eyes around and glared at the camera. "Smile." Bill and I were laughing by this time, but Mr. McGarraugh never did crack a smile. We said good-bye to the McGarraughs and rode south down the county road. We looked into the coming day with nothing but dread. Not only were we getting a late start, but half a mile down the road Bill noticed a slight limp in the mule's front legs, a sure indication that he had developed sore feet the day before. This observation plunged us both into a gloomy silence, and for a while we even considered turning back. But we decided to go on, and resigned ourselves to a creeping twenty-mile march across the burning prairie in the heat of the day. When we left the McGarraugh land, we entered the Lips Ranch, one of the largest ranches in the northern Panhandle, and one which had known only two owners since the 1880s: the lady from downstate who owned it then, and an old codger named Bill Whitsell who put the ranch together. A bachelor who lived alone Dobbin Is a CorruTlunist - 121 in a house called Red Camp, Whitsell managed to assemble more land than any other man in the region, and in the process built up a reputation for being as tight as the bark on a tree. He worked hard, lived on bacon and beans, hired outside help only when it was absolutely necessary, and showed no mercy in his land deals. Whitsell was an expert on how little protein supplement a cow needed to survive the Panhandle winter. They say that after a big blizzard he would throw a sack of cottonseed cake over the saddlehorn and ride out to check his cows. Those he found standing were presumed to be healthy and fit, and he wasted no time on them. When he came to a cow that was lying down, he would gallop straight toward her, shouting and waving his arms. Ifshe managed to stagger to her feet, he figured she could stagger some more and find enough forage to survive. Ifshe was too weak to stand, he threw her a handful of cake and went on. For years Whitsell lived alone at Red Camp, eating his beans and socking away every dime he didn't put into land. Then one fall he shipped a load of cattle to Kansas City. By this time he was a shriveled old man with gray hair and sagging skin, who probably resembled his own cows after a hard winter. He had more...