SOUTH DAKOTA AGAIN 177 



I would "beat them to it" and get it over with as 

 soon as possible. 



Just the same we earned a few dollars during 

 that week, and as we had no livery or board bills 

 to pay it was all "velvet." Considering how hard 

 we "went after them" however, we did a very 

 poor business. 



As an illustration of how hard we "went after 

 them" that week I will relate the following. One 

 morning as we stopped at about the fourth farm 

 without having done any work, we saw a farmer 

 in a field cultivating corn. We pulled up to the 

 fence and waited until he came down to our end 

 of the field. He was driving a team of pretty 

 good horses to the cultivator ; they were small but 

 good chunks, and one of them looked just a bit 

 thin. We told the farmer who we were and what 

 we did and suggested that he let us examine the 

 thin horse's teeth. He consented to have it done 

 after some argument, and the horse's mouth 

 really needed attention. He said we could come 

 around in the evening and fix them up; but we 

 were afraid he might change his mind by that 

 time, or possibly somebody might talk him out of 

 the notion. So we talked him into the notion of 

 having the job done right away, and we fixed 

 those teeth right there in the corn-field. He had 

 no money with him, so we got him to write a note 

 to his wife ordering her to pay us $2.50 ; we drove 

 to his house and collected the money. 



On another occasion we wrote a prescription 

 for a farmer for use on a lame horse, charging 

 him one dollar for it. When we got ready to 



