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 blasé 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, and wished he might find Canby.
As he stood speculating as to whether the folds of skin around the Durham's neck might be an indication of his age--a year for a fold, after the manner of snake-rattles--his attention was diverted to a group that was interested in the efforts of one of its members to pry a horse's mouth open.