David Lannarck, Midget: An Adventure StoryHarney, George S.
General
David Lannarck, Midget: An Adventure Story
Harney, George S.
Adventure stories; Circus -- Fiction; Western stories
"Of those who came to try it out, only four stuck to a final deed. Two
of these are at this end of the project. Carter runs a filling station
at the forks of the road and Withrow, next to him, hunts, traps, and
plays a fiddle. I acquired the two tracts at the far end of the
project and Gillis, our enterprising neighbor, owns two parcels next
to me and operates the abandoned tracts under grazing allotments. This
is a real ranch; small, as compared to others, but modeled as a farm
in the East, for Gillis is a real farmer. I make the guess that when
you grow homesick and tired of the loneliness at my place you will
headquarter at the Gillis place, in fact I have made that kind of
arrangement with them. They have a telephone, a radio, a phonograph,
and take plenty of newspapers and magazines, and, best of all, there
is a kindly, enterprising woman there to manage, to cook and can the
fruits and vegetables, and do the homey things that makes life fit to
live.
"They have cows, chickens, turkeys, pigs, and raise plenty of feed.
But they are an oasis in a desert. Except for our place, they have no
neighbors within fifteen miles. Mrs. Gillis is a worker and a planner.
She sells pigs, turkeys and calves, in Laramie and Cheyenne, more than
one hundred miles away; she has a working arrangement with the
filling station down at the roadside, whereby they sell quite a lot
of her canned stuff and preserves. She's always got something to sell
and sells it, market or no market.
"I depend on them for almost everything. Even the car and trailer out
there belongs to them. I bought a stock of chickens off of them, and I
rent a cow and calf from them. Really, while you have come out here to
my place, you will subsist for the most part off the Gillis family."
"Well the outlook gets better and better each time you add a chapter,"
said Davy as they walked out to the car. "How many in the Gillis
family?"
"Just two, Jim and his wife. But staying with them is Landy--Landy
Spencer, Mrs. Gillis' brother. He's older, is an oldtime cow hand that
has retired, when Mrs. Gillis will let him. He's been in the West
since boyhood and knows the game, but doesn't play it. He just putters
around, when Mrs. Gillis isn't after him to do something, and that's
the reason he stays up at our place most of the time. You will like
Landy. He is the one that located your horse over at Lough's B-line
Ranch. I had told him of your wanting a little horse, and this week,
while Gillis and I were blasting out the rock and setting the pump,
Landy strayed over to Lough's and located the nag. Landy says as soon
as he sees you, he can tell instantly if the horse will fit."
"I've got a saddle in that keyster, and he can measure by that," said
Davy, "and anyhow I don't want a little, low-headed, round-bellied
hoss that can't go places. If he is a cowboy, he will know the kind."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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