Page:The purple pennant (IA purplepennant00barb).pdf/190

Rh when I struck college. Paid them a half-year's tuition—education's cheap out that way, friends, and it's good, too—and looked around for something to work at. Didn't find anything at first and so one day I go down to a stable run by a poor thing name of Cheeny and hires me a bronch for a couple of hours. I can always think a heap better when I'm on a horse, it seems. Well, thinking doesn't do me much good this time, though, and I heads back to town telling myself the best thing I can do is roll my blanket and hit the trail. But when I gets back to the stable, which isn't much more than a shed and a corral built of railway ties set on end, this poor thing name of Cheeny says to me: 'Know anyone wants to buy a nice livery business?' 'Supposing I did?' says I, squinting around the shack. 'Why, here it is,' he says. Well, to come right down to brass tacks, he and I did business after a day or two. He wanted to hike back to Missouri, which he ought never to have left, and we made a dicker. I was to pay him so much a month till we were square. Course I knew that, as he'd been running the place, he wasn't making enough to pay his feed bill, but I had a notion I could do a bit better. Did, too. What I bought wasn't much—half a dozen carriages about ready to fall to pieces, five bronchos and a little grain and