Horse of a Different Color by Ralph Moody Read Free Book Online

Marguerite and the little girls as if they were my own sisters. I didn’t let Bob go any further, but told him, “I won’t go into partnership with you, Bob, but I’ll talk to Bones in the morning, and will do anything I can short of partnership to help you stay in the feeding business.”
    Monday morning I was waiting when Bones came to open the bank. While the key was still in the lock he began telling me that if I’d go into partnership with Bob, do the buying and selling, and keep my fingers on the purse strings and wastage, we’d make twenty-five thousand dollars apiece within a year. I thanked him for his confidence, but said that a partnership wouldn’t work, because neither I nor anyone else could control Bob or make him any different than he was. “You’re wrong,” he told me. “You could control him easy enough if he knew that he couldn’t make a deal or borrow a dime without your say-so, and I’ll make that clear to him right from the beginning.”
    “How deep is he in the hole?” I asked.
    “Without knowing how much feed there is out there, I couldn’t tell you,” he said, “but there’s a balance of just under forty thousand on the books. Like you, Bob didn’t have a dime when he came here, but he had a family to support. I can’t say how much of his balance is for interest and living expenses. But he bought a lot of corn back in September when the price was fifty cents a bushel higher than it is now, and he’s probably let a thousand dollars’ worth go to waste. I’d be willing to say that ten thousand of his account is water already over the dam, just between Bob and me, and won’t have anything to do with the partnership. I’ll make up a new note for thirty thousand, then call Bob in, and when you’ve both signed it you’ll be fifty-fifty partners, right down the line.”
    “I’ll risk everything I own in any business I think is a good one,” I told him, “but I won’t risk a dollar for a man who, because of his own fault, has nothing but debts.”
    “Don’t know as I blame you,” Bones said, “but it’s a pity for you two not to get together some way. Bob’s too irresponsible to handle a business alone, and you don’t know stock feeding well enough. But teamed together you couldn’t help making a fortune, and to have a prosperous feeding outfit here would be the best thing that could happen to the corn and livestock farmers in this township. As you say, Bob don’t have anything to put up as security, so I won’t ask you to put up anything either. You team up with him and I’ll lend the partnership enough to feed out three hundred steers and half that many hogs, and all the security I’ll ask is a mortgage on the feed and livestock. Is that fair enough?”
    “Perfectly fair,” I said, “but I still won’t risk going into partnership with him. Even though you took a mortgage on only the feed and livestock, I’d have the whole debt to pay off if we happened to run into a loss.”
    “Why do you say you’d have the debt to pay?” he asked sharply. “If you fellows happened to run into a little loss—but I don’t see how in blazes you could—it would be the debt of the partnership and could be made up out of the profits on the next bunch of livestock you fed.”
    “Isn’t any partner legally responsible for all the debts of a partnership?” I asked.
    “Well, legally, I suppose,” he said, “but . . . ”
    “Then there’ll be no partnership,” I broke in. “I’ve already told Bob that, but said I’d do anything short of it to help him stay in business. Couldn’t he and I buy, feed, and sell livestock together without being in partnership?”
    “How do you mean?” he asked.
    “Well,” I said, “suppose that each of us put up half the money—either our own or borrowed—to buy livestock, hay, corn, and pay all the other expenses, then fattened the stock in a single lot and divided the proceeds evenly when it