Four telegrams, he murmured apologetically. Mr. Blake is confident that two of them are very important. One of them concerns that Chile shipment of bulls
And Paula, slowly drawing away from her husband and rising to her feet, could feel him slipping from her toward his tables of statistics, bills of lading, and secretaries, foremen, and managers.
Oh, Paula, Dick called, as she was fading through the doorway; Ive christened the last boy hes to be known as Oh Ho. How do you like it?
Her reply began with a hint of forlornness that vanished with her smile, as she warned:
You will play ducks and drakes with the house-boys names.
I never do it with pedigreed stock, he assured her with a solemnity belied by the challenging twinkle in his eyes.
I didnt mean that, was her retort. I meant that you were exhausting the possibilities of the language. Before long youll have to be calling them Oh Bel, Oh Hell, and Oh Go to Hell. Your Oh was a mistake. You should have started with Red. Then you could have had Red Bull, Red Horse, Red Dog, Red Frog, Red Fern and, and all the rest of the reds.
She mingled her laughter with his, as she vanished, and, the next moment, the telegram before him, he was immersed in the details of the shipment, at two hundred and fifty dollars each, F. O. B., of three hundred registered yearling bulls to the beef ranges of Chile. Even so, vaguely, with vague pleasure, he heard Paula sing her way back across the patio to her long wing of house; though he was unaware that her voice was a trifle, just the merest trifle, subdued.
Chapter VIII
Breeders GazetteThere was little need for conversation. Thayer was distinctly disappointed in this, for he felt that the purchase of ten carloads of such expensive creatures was momentous enough to merit much conversation.
They speak for themselves, Dick had assured him, and turned aside to give data to Naismith for his impending article on Shropshires in California and the Northwest.
I wouldnt advise you to bother to select them, Dick told Thayer ten minutes later. The average is all top. You could spend a week picking your ten carloads and have no higher grade than if you had taken the first to hand.
This cool assumption that the sale was already consummated so perturbed Thayer, that, along with the sure knowledge that he had never seen so high a quality of rams, he was nettled into changing his order to twenty carloads.
As he told Naismith, after they had regained the Big House and as they chalked their cues to finish the interrupted game:
Its my first visit to Forrests. Hes a wizard. Ive been buying in the East and importing. But those Shropshires won my judgment. You noticed I doubled my order. Those Idaho buyers will be wild for them. I only had buying orders straight for six carloads, and contingent on my judgment for two carloads more; but if every buyer doesnt double his order, straight and contingent, when he sees them rams, and if there isnt a stampede for whats left, I dont know sheep. Theyre the goods. If they dont jump up the sheep game of Idaho well, then Forrests no breeder and Im no buyer, thats all.
As the warning gong for lunch rang out a huge bronze gong from Korea that was never struck until it was first indubitably ascertained that Paula was awake Dick joined the young people at the goldfish fountain in the big patio. Bert Wainwright, variously advised and commanded by his sister, Rita, and by Paula and her sisters, Lute and
Ernestine, was striving with a dip-net to catch a particularly gorgeous flower of a fish whose size and color and multiplicity of fins and tails had led Paula to decide to segregate him for the special breeding tank in the fountain of her own secret patio. Amid high excitement, and much squealing and laughter, the deed was accomplished, the big fish deposited in a can and carried away by the waiting Italian gardener.
And what have you to say for yourself? Ernestine challenged, as Dick joined them.
Nothing, he answered sadly. The ranch is depleted. Three hundred beautiful young bulls depart to-morrow for South America, and Thayer you met him last night is taking twenty carloads of rams. All I can say is that my congratulations are extended to Idaho and Chile.
Plant more acorns, Paula laughed, her arms about her sisters, the three of them smilingly expectant of an inevitable antic.
Oh, Dick, sing your acorn song, Lute begged.
He shook his head solemnly.
Ive got a better one. Its purest orthodoxy. Its got Red Cloud and his acorn song skinned to death. Listen! This is the song of the little East-sider, on her first trip to the country under the auspices of her Sunday School. Shes quite young. Pay particular attention to her lisp.