GRAND ISLAND.
Before we arrived at Grand Island we learned from Jackdo that most
cowmen unloaded their cattle there and drove them back and forth through
the stockyards awhile in order to accumulate a large amount of mud on
them. This Grand Island mud is very adhesive and once steers is
thoroughly immersed in it the mud sticks to them for weeks and helps
very materially in their weight. A shipper told him that before he
stopped at Grand Island he used to wonder what cattlemen meant by
filling their cattle at Grand Island, but now he knew it was filling
their hair full of mud. Sometimes he said the mud was a little too
thick, kind of chunky and fell off, and sometimes it had too much water
in it and drained off, more or less. But when it was mixed just right it
would settle into their hair like concrete cement. It's quite dark in
color, fortunately, and if they've had a rain it is easy to get pens
where you can immerse your cattle all over and thus make them the color
of the Galloways, which is the most fashionable color for cattle in the
market.
He said there was cases where cattlemen had got a good fill on Grand
Island mud and sold their cattle weighed up there to feeders who put
them on full feed for six months and they weighed less in the market
than to start with, because the feeders had curried the mud off them.
Sometimes he said after people left Grand Island with their cattle and
before the mud got well set, there would come a hard rain on them and
the mud washed off in streaks and gave the cattle kind of a zebra
appearance. Especially was this true where the cattle had originally
been white. He said we would be expected to order some hay and pay for
it and get the mud for nothing. It was just like a boot-jack saloon,
where you bought a high-priced peppermint drop and got a pint of whiskey
throwed in.
[Illustration: _Joe Kerr Loading Sheep for South St. Joe._]
'Twas here at Grand Island that we met Joe Kerr again. We had met him in
Utah before we shipped, and he had tried very hard to get us to ship our
cattle to the coming live stock market of the United States at St. Joe.
Kerr travels in the interest of the St. Joe stockyards, and while in the
fullness of our youth and conceit when we first loaded our stock we
wouldn't have taken a suggestion from Teddy Roosevelt, yet we had grown
older and had lost some of our self-confidence; in fact, I've often
thought since these experiences that the old proverb, "He who ships his
range cattle to market place of selling them at home leaves hope
behind," would apply to most range shipments.
Now it seems Joe Kerr had kept posted as to our movements right along
through friends of his who were in the sheep business and who had
trailed their herds past our train at different times on their trip
East to sell their sheep for feeders, and Kerr had made such nice
calculations by casting horoscopes and looking up the signs of the
zodiac that he knew to a month when we would arrive in Grand Island, and
was waiting there to persuade us to ship our stock to St. Joe in place
of Omaha. He was right on the spot to help us unload them; knew all the
pens where the mud was the deepest, even helped us smear the mud into
their hair on the few spots that was missed, when we were swimming them
through the mud batter. Joe had loads of statistics for sheepmen,
cattlemen, horsemen and hogmen that would convince any man that wasn't
too suspicious that St. Joe was the best market. He had beautiful
colored maps of the yards, showing the clear limpid waters of the
Missouri River, flowing along at the foot of the bluffs; the waters
swarming with steamboats and smaller craft; the city of St. Joe covering
the bluffs and river bottoms for miles, and just down the river at the
lower end of this great city was stockyards and packing plants laid out
like some great city park and hundreds of acres, all paved with brick,
laid into walks and floors for the pens with perfect precision, and all
divided in different compartments for all kinds of live stock;
everything arranged so sheep could be unloaded one place, hogs another
place, cattle another, so as to admit of no delay in unloading when
stock arrived. He told us that their yards were kept so clean that
ladies could walk all over them in rainy weather without soiling their
costumes. Said no Sheenies were skinning people in their yards. He made
such a square talk we finally agreed to split the shipment and let part
of the train go to St. Joe, and sent Jackdo along to take care of the
cattle.