I liked it all. Something told me that here was my field--this square plot of prairie, where is carried on the largest commissariat business of the world. In spite of its filth and its ugly look, it fired my blood to be a part of it. There's something pretty close to the earth in all of us, if we have the stomach to do the world's work: men of bone and sinew and rich blood, the strong men who do the deeds at the head of the ranks, feed close to the earth. The lowing cattle in the pens, the squealing hogs in the cars, the smell of the fat carcasses in the heavy wagons drawn by the sleek Percherons--it all made me think of the soft, fertile fields from which we take the grain--the blood and flesh that enter into our being. The bigness of it all! The one sure fact before every son and daughter of woman is the need of daily bread and meat. To feed the people of the earth--that is a man's business. My part was to drive a wagon for Dround at fifteen a week, but I walked out of the Yards with the swagger of a packer! CHAPTER VI FIRST BLOOD _Wholesale--The little envies of life--Learning how to read--What there might be in sausage--Schemes--A rise in life--Big John's favoring eye--Going short of pork--Uncertainty--Five thousand dollars in the bank_ I told them all at the supper table that evening how I was going into wholesale with Henry I. Dround & Co. Slocum nodded approvingly, but before any one could say a word of congratulation, Hillary Cox snapped this at me:-- "So you were looking out for yourself with that Carmichael man! I thought the Enterprise wasn't big enough for your talents. A desk in the inside office, I s'pose?" "Not quite yet," I laughed; but I didn't say how little my job was to be. Miss Cox had given me up. I don't believe she meant to be disagreeable, but somehow we had become strangers, all at once. There were no more gossips on the front steps or Sunday parties. Ed went to church with her in my place. They were getting very close, those two, and it didn't take a shrewd eye to see what was going to happen sometime soon. The others were more generous than the little cashier and inclined to make too much of my good fortune. For the first time in my life I had the pleasure of knowing that folks were looking up at me and envying me, and I liked the feeling of consequence. I let them think I was to get big wages. "I suppose you'll be leaving this ranch before long?" Lou suggested. "Oh, I shouldn't wonder if I might move over to the Palmer House."