Centennial (155 page)

One member said brightly “We hear you’ve taken an option on some of the Volkema land out at Line Camp. That would be just great.”

Brumbaugh pushed himself away from the table to survey carefully the ecologists who were driving him out of business, and when his eyes met Garrett’s he gave a slight wink. “Gentlemen,” he said slowly, “I may have a surprise for you.”

He was imposing that morning—fifty-six years old, tough-minded like Potato Brumbaugh, and one of the wealthiest cattlemen in the west. He had prospered by being ready at any moment to make unpalatable decisions. The citizens of Centennial had considered him crazy when he sold his bottom lands along the Platte, but he had seen earlier than they that sugar beets were a dying proposition. They had predicted failure when he devised his plan for buying young steers and fattening them scientifically, absorbing the risks of the market, so that if prices went up he made a fortune, which he could easily lose if they dropped. He was the new type of westerner, the revolutionary entrepreneur, and for some time he had been anticipating the day when ecological considerations would force him to abandon his huge feed lot. Indeed, the closing down of the sugar-beet plant, with its resultant loss of pulp, would make a change of location desirable for him, so as an opportunist in the good sense of the word he welcomed the committee’s decision.

Garrett could not anticipate what his long-time friend was about to do, so he listened attentively as Brumbaugh said, “For some months past I’ve been weighing the merits of a change, and your decision this morning forces my hand. I think we’d better call in the press.”

The chairman coughed nervously. “Are you sure this is the time?”

“Quite sure,” Brumbaugh replied, winking again at Garrett, and as the men waited for the reporters, Brumbaugh asked, “Aren’t you weighing some rather serious decisions of your own, Paul?”

Garrett flushed, then said, “None that I know of.” In fact, he was perplexed on many points, but he did not care to discuss any of them with his neighbors.

“I mean about your Herefords.” Garrett tried not to betray emotion, and Brumbaugh continued: “I heard in Montana the other day that Tim Grebe was heading down this way, and in our business, when Tim Grebe shows up, it means only one thing.”

“He could be heading for Denver,” Garrett said evasively.

“They said he was coming to Venneford,” Brumbaugh said, staring at Garrett.

Now the reporters filed in, and Brumbaugh addressed them: “For some time the citizens of Centennial have opposed, and rightly so I think, the continuance of my feed lots on the edge of town. Reasons of health, sanitation and odor have been advanced, and I concur. Gentlemen, I’m in a position to announce that starting immediately, I shall move.”

The chairman interrupted to say, “Mr. Brumbaugh is taking his lots out to Line Camp. So we won’t really lose the benefits of his operation, only the smell.”

This brought smiles, which Brumbaugh halted with an announcement that stunned his listeners: “I’m dividing the lots into two halves. One part will locate west of Ottumwa, Iowa. The other part, northeast of Macon, Georgia.”

“Can Centennial survive?” the reporter from the
Clarion
asked. “Losing Central Beet on Tuesday, Brumbaugh Feed Lots on Thursday?”

“Centennial’s always survived,” Brumbaugh said. “It’ll adjust to this new situation.” After allowing this harsh conclusion to be digested, he added, “Newspapers and radio stations should be preparing citizens for the time, perhaps not far distant, when even the famous cattle ranches in this area will have to close down. You can’t run Herefords on land worth two thousand dollars an acre. Especially if your aquifers run dry and you have to import hay. I’m taking my feed lots to where the rain is ... to where hay is abundant. If you take away my beet pulp, I have to go to the cottonseed cake.”

That was a gloomy night in Centennial, for many families were hit by the dual loss. “Is the town finished?” descendants of the pioneers asked. “Are we to go the way of Line Camp and Wendell?” The town banker, who saw two substantial accounts vanishing, told his wife, “It’s possible for every banking need in this town to be supplied from Greeley, or better yet, Denver. All we’re left with is a holding operation, and that has never appealed to me. I think we’d better reconsider that job offer in Chicago.”

It was on November 23 that the hardest blow for Garrett fell. Early that morning a large red Cadillac sped south from Cheyenne, pulling up at the Venneford Ranch. It was driven by Tim Grebe, now fifty-one years old, a handsome, florid-faced cattle salesman from eastern Montana. After the slaughter of his family he had lived with Walter Bellamy, the former land commissioner, who had sent him to the agricultural college at Fort Collins, where he had graduated near the top of his class. He had been hired by a large Hereford rancher in Wyoming, and some years ago had left that job to become managing partner in a very large ranch put together in Montana by a Texas oilman. He had gained fame as an innovator and in recent years had traveled widely throughout the west, helping ranchers revitalize their herds, introducing new methods and new types of exotic European cattle.

He had trained himself to be a master persuader, and as he put down his teacup he looked directly at Garrett and spoke with that gentleness which had earned him a leading position in the industry: “Paul, I’m an old Hereford man myself. I can remember the psychological wrench I suffered when I had to give up my herd, and I understand how men feel when they finally decide to protect themselves.” And from his papers he produced that famous newspaper photograph from the year 1936. It was enclosed in plastic and showed a fourteen-year-old Timmy embracing a Hereford.

“I remember that,” Garrett said. “I was nine,” and he remembered, too, the other events of that fatal day. Tim Grebe exploited his photograph for that very reason; when ranchers recalled the gruesome deaths at Line Camp, they were more apt to be receptive to Grebe. He was no longer a big-shot rancher from Montana with brash ideas and the million-dollar Texas bank account. He was a country boy who had survived his own hell.

“So when I come to reason with you, Paul, I come as a friend who’s been through the mill. Let me tell you,” and he accented the word you slightly, “what your real position is.” And he ticked off each of the problems that had been concerning Garrett.

“First, your Herefords are not entirely freed from the dwarfism introduced by Charlotte Lloyd and her fancy experts. You clung to the Emperor line too long. Great bulls for exhibiting in hotel lobbies during the stock shows. Fatal when it came to breeding. To eliminate the errors Emperor introduced, you’ve got to have new blood.

“Second, your Hereford yearlings don’t weigh enough. You’ve watched ranchers who’ve switched to the exotics shipping their steers off to market eight weeks ahead of you and saving all that feed.

“Third, and this isn’t of top importance, because of light pigmentation the Hereford has always been subject to eye cancer and udder burn. You can eliminate both these faults with a simple crossbreeding.

“Fourth, your cows, when they do have calves, never produce enough milk to fatten them.” He paused and lifted his empty cup.

“Want some more of that tea?” Garrett asked quietly. Skillfully Grebe had identified each weakness Paul had been pondering.

“That’s a great tea. Sort of smoky. What’s in it?”

“Special blend my family’s been drinking for generations. Cured with tar.” He sipped from his own cup, then said with awkward sincerity, “I appreciate your coming.”

“Let’s look at your problem from a detached point of view, and believe me, Paul, you can consult anyone you wish, and if they’re honest, they’ll tell you about the same. So I invite you to check up on every statement I make.” He drank deeply of the hot tea and continued.

“If you stick to pure Herefords, Paul, it’ll take years to tighten up your herd, and even then you’ll have made no progress on the big items that mean money. So I say bluntly, ‘You’ve got to crossbreed.’ You’ve got to introduce new blood in new ways, painful though the thought may be.”

“I’m prepared.”

“Good. Now, you can do it in two ways. The Curtiss people have some truly great bulls and they’ll sell you semen for artificial insemination. Pick the right breed and the right bull, and you can turn your herd around in five years. First year you get half-bred cattle. Second year you get three-fourths. Third year it’s seven-eighths. And in the fourth year you get fifteen-sixteenths, which in our profession counts as full bred. I’ve used A.I. and it works. You breed more of your cows, and you breed them in the first estrus cycle, which means ninety-six more pounds per calf at the end of the growing season as compared to the cow that gets caught only in the fourth “estrus cycle.”

He leaned back, allowing Garrett time to digest the arguments of the opposition. “If you want to go A.I., I can put you in touch with two fine young men who work for Curtiss, and they’ll have the semen out here the minute you want it. But I earnestly advise you to consider my way.”

“That’s why I asked you to come down,” Garrett said.

“Good. Paul, I’m going to hit you with a blizzard of revolutionary ideas, so fasten your seat belt. I want you to buy, from me, if you like the breed I’ve elected, sixty young bulls, thirty of them half-bred at four hundred and fifty dollars each, thirty of them three-quarters bred at six hundred each. That’s an initial investment of thirty-one thousand, five hundred and it sounds like a lot, but let me show you how you can amortize it overnight. I want you to sell every one of your Hereford bulls to the bologna manufacturers—they’re paying top dollar these days because they want tough, tasty old meat. I can get you a very good contract, and you wind up owing me less than ten thousand dollars, which I’ll spread out over three years.”

“What’s your thinking on specific breeds, Tim?”

“It’s all here in the book,” Grebe said, handing Garrett a pamphlet with numerous photographs showing the results of crossbreeding Hereford cows with bulls of the various European breeds imported recently into Canada. But before Garrett had a chance to leaf through the pages, he said, “One of the very best crosses, of course, is one you know well, Hereford and Black Angus. The dark pigmentation of the black bull eliminates eye cancer and udder burn. And you get a handsome calf, body jet-black like the Angus, face snowy white like the Hereford.”

Now he let Garrett turn the pages. “Briefly, the story on the Europeans is this. The biggest animal is the Chianina from Italy, a white bull, but I don’t like the color of the Hereford-Chianina calves, and I don’t think you would either. Most popular has been the Charolais, and with the Hereford they throw a beautiful tan cross, but it has many weaknesses. Hottest new item is the Maine-Anjou, a French animal, black-and-white, very good on milk production and beef. But the beast I like—and I’ve put my money where my mouth is—is the Simmental, that big reddish animal from the Simme Valley in Switzerland. I’m not going to sing its praises, because you’ve seen the literature, but as an old Hereford man I will tell you this. Because the Simmental’s basic coloring is so close to the Hereford, you can have a Simmental-Hereford cross and the calves will retain a red body and a good white face.” He showed Garrett color photographs of sixteen such crosses, and the calves looked so much like Herefords that sometimes Garrett could not detect the cross.

“I’m not concerned with color,” Garrett lied. “What else will the cross do for me?”

“It will introduce hybrid vigor. Any cross will improve a Hereford ranch ten percent. Any fine European will improve the herd fourteen percent, simply because it introduces new strains of resistance. And the best Simmental will improve it eighteen percent.

“Your cows will give more milk. Eye cancer and udder burn will be diminished. But the big difference will be that the Simmental has never been bred to look good in hotel lobbies. It’s a draft animal, big and rugged, and it shows in the calves. Look at these figures!” And he showed Garrett the comparisons:

Measurement
Hereford Simmental Cross

Weight of calf at birth 70
87

Weight at 205 days 410
575

Weight at 345 days 940
1129

“And those extra pounds mean extra dollars. On the same amount of food, the crossbred will give you nearly two hundred pounds more per animal, and that’s profit.”

He waited for Garrett to study the chart, then said confidentially, “I think that because of your fine reputation as a cattleman, I might be able to get you a couple of rabbits.”

“Rabbits?”

“Haven’t you heard about the latest development in Canada?” Garrett hadn’t, so he explained. “As you know, none of the European exotics can ever be imported into the United States. Hoof-and-mouth disease. So we bring them into Canada and export sealed and frozen semen from there. All those great bulls you see in the pamphlets live in Canada. We have none in the States.

“But a team of brilliant Canadian veterinarians have developed a system that frankly amazes me. They do it with rabbits, and it goes like this. They identify the finest Simmental cow in the world. They inject her with hormones, so that she produces not one or two ova but scores. Then they inseminate her with the very best bull in the breed, so that instead of producing one superior calf a year, like an ordinary cow, she is prepared to produce sixteen or seventeen at one shot.

“Of course, her womb wouldn’t be big enough to accomplish this, so as soon as the ova are fertilized, she is cut open—perfectly harmless operation—and the fertilized ova are stripped away from her tubes, and we have a dozen or so potential calves from the two greatest parents in the world.