"Two hundred dollars!" His voice sounded like the squeak in a telephone receiver.
The auctioneer cupped his hand behind his ear and leaned forward:
"What?"
The incredulity in his tone prompted Wallie to raise the bid to two hundred and twenty-five when he repeated it.
The auctioneer struck his forehead with his clenched fist and staggered back dramatically, demanding:
"Am I insulted?"
"That ain"t possible," croaked a voice among the spectators.
"Two hundred and fifty!" The bid came from a ministerial-looking person who was known as a kind of veterinary occasionally employed by Canby.
"Three hundred!" Wallie challenged him.
"That"s more like it, but still an insult to these n.o.ble brutes I"m selling. Who says three and a quarter?"
"And a quarter!" came from the veterinary.
"And a quarter--and a quarter--gentlemen, what ails you?" He looked at the "bone and sinew of the nation," who prodded each other.
"Three hundred and fifty," Wallie responded.
"Three-fifty! Boost her faster, gentlemen! Boost her right along! Am I offered four hundred?"
"Four hundred!" The bid was the veterinary"s.
Wallie quavered:
"Four hundred and fifty!"
"Five hundred!" his opponent came back at him.
Wallie hesitated.
"Think of it! Going for five hundred!"
The auctioneer looked at Wallie, who could not have been paler in his coffin.
"Five twenty-five!"
"Good! Now, sir," to the veterinary.
"Five-fifty!"
He turned to Wallie:
"Am I done, gentlemen?"
Wallie stared at him, his throat too dry to answer.
"Must I give away the best pullin" team in the State for a puny, piddlin" five hundred and fifty dollars?" he pleaded.
"SIX HUNDRED!" Wallie cried in desperation.
With the bid Canby raised his hat and ran his fingers through his hair casually and the veterinary stopped bidding.
"Done!" cried the auctioneer, "Sold to Mr.--the name, please--ah, Macpherson, for six hundred dollars---- A bargain!"
Between relief and joy Wallie was speechless, while Canby congratulated him and the crowd bestowed upon him glances of either derision or commiseration, according to the nature of the individual.
While he stood trying to realize his good fortune and that he was the owner of as good a pair of work-horses as ever looked through a halter, a figure that made his heart jump came swiftly forward, and with her hands in the pockets of her long motor coat, stopped in front of his team and scrutinized them closely.
Helene Spenceley looked from one of the horses to the other. She saw the dilated pupils, the abnormally full forehead, the few coa.r.s.e hairs growing just above the eyelid, and they told her what she had suspected.
"I am sorry I did not know it was you who was bidding on these horses,"
she said, turning to Wallie.
"Did you want them, Miss Spenceley? I am sorry----"
"Want them? You couldn"t give them to me. They are locoed!"
"Locoed!" He could only stare at her, hoping never again to feel such dismay as filled him at that moment.
He had only the vaguest notion as to what "locoed" meant, but it was very clear that it was something highly undesirable. And he had been cheated by Canby, who had known of it and advised him to buy them! Such duplicity was without his experience, and sickened him nearly as much as the thought of the $600 he had invested in horses so radically wrong that Helene Spenceley would not take them as a gift.
The single thought which came to solace him as he stood humiliated and panic-stricken was that she resented the dishonest trick that had been played upon him.
Canby came forward to greet her, with his hand out. She ignored it and said indignantly:
"I should have spoiled this sale for you, Mr. Canby, if I had seen who was bidding on these locoed horses."
Though Canby flushed, he shrugged a shoulder and replied callously:
"We all had to get our eyeteeth cut when we came to the country."
CHAPTER X
THE BEST PULLING TEAM IN THE STATE
Leading the cow, and aided by "Tex" McGonnigle, who boasted that he had a heart as big as the country he lived in and was willing to prove it by helping him with the locoed horses, Wallie made fair progress as far as the gate in the last wire fence, where "Tex" had to leave him.