“We got plenty of water and all outdoors. We didn’t lose one per cent last summer, and winters was when we didn’t lose nothing. The increase is a crime, ma’am. If we’d hold a rodeo in our band—which we’d ought to—God knows how many we’d find in the T.L. I’d bet sixty-five thousand! And the mesquite full of long ears that no man claims. If we can’t do well no stockman in Texas can.”
His eyes avoided hers as he gave these Homerically mendacious figures. But he went on stoutly:
“Yet you talk of quitting! Why should you? The old Laguna is the richest range in Texas. Our grass sets ’em out a hundred and fifty a head heavier than them damned coasters from below, ma’am.
“And if you talk of turning off us men, where’d we go? What’d we do? I ask you that, anyways, ma’am.”
“If there was any market,” began Taisie, “it would be different. As it is, the more we brand the poorer we get.”
“Well, all right; we ain’t any poorer than our neighbors. Market? Of course there ain’t no market! Rockport has failed—canning cows don’t pay. Hides is low. There’s nothing in the steamship trade, and no use driving East since the war is over. Besides, with such good water and range as we got on Del Sol, why, nothing ever dies; so there ain’t no hides no more.
“As for long ears, slicks, we’re as good off as old Sam Maverick, that wouldn’t never bother to brand nothing hardly, and so found hisself swamped when the war was over. We got less unworked long-ear range west of us than anybody, but nobody tries to sell hides or cows now. The New Orleans market costs more to get a cow to than the cow comes to when he’s there. The steamships has us choked off of everything east of us; we can’t ship nothing and break even on it. Every one of us knows that, of course.”
“Too many cows!” Taisie’s head shook from side to side.
“Yes! Enduring the war, cows just growed like flies in here and all over Texas. Market? No, that’s so. But when you once get to raising cows, ma’am, and branding cows that no one else has raised, and seeing the herds roll up and roll up—why, it’s no use! No cattleman can do no different. If we had a market—why, yes. We hain’t, and ain’t going to have; but what’s the use crying over that? Shall every stockman in Texas lay down and quit cows just because he can’t sell cows and ain’t got no market? If he does the state might as well quit being a state. It might as well, anyhow, since the damn Yankees taken it over to run since the war.”