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Show /0S filled the syringe, he bared his arm, he lifted that mare's tail out of the way and put that syringe about two feet into her, in above his elbow. That didn't work eithe^ Dad got his money back and bought a jack stud of his own. He rfnever tried to substitute for the jack but even so he surely earned the crisp white Stetson which he wore to town, the tooled high-heeled Justin boots, and any pride which went with them. I remember him with his yellow mustaches, which he grew after my grandfather Wild Bill died and which to me gave him a reckless air, though he wasn't that. Farmers risk it all every time they plant a seed; they don't have to go out looking for a gamble. They because live on hard work and faith, and it our work was often hard, dull and dirty, ^ " we had to look up from it to watch the leaf bud and the blooming wild rose, to see greening meadows and fields neat with sprouting corn, to see alfalfa wave green under a summer breeze and to welcome the Cottonwood's akuKH autumn gold, to feel the comforting weight of harvest, to see a chaste beauty in the white of winter, t a drift of snow across a ditch, wind-sculpted, and beneath it the secret life of the water. Whatever the dirt or depression there had to be time to scrub off the manure and go to town, there had to be big hats and cowboy boots, however useless there had to be something to satisfy that deepest craving for a sweet melody. For the jackass I have to say that he fathered some fine-looking mules. Even so, Dad never used any of those mule teams, he sold them all, better than horses or not. He preferred horses. But that first spring, with Dad^ hght ^ | £ + w a s h a r d l y a M r e a r o u n d without a sweleing belly, whereupon Dad took Old Phil out of his special corral, took away his oats, and kicked him out with the cows to forage for himself. Of course, the next spring it was back to the special corral, special diet and Your Majesty again. But since farmers didn't breed their work mares annually, that spring Old Phil had fewer duties and got shoved out with the cows earlier. Beauty was in with the cows too, we figured she was too smallyto hurt |