RICKS OF THE TRADE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 279, 24 November 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

RICKS OF THE TRADE.

EMINISCENCES OF A DEALER

THE TWILIGHT LODGE,

(By SUNDOWNER.)

It was in the days when s ood Romney-cross two-tooth wethers were worth about twelve shillings a head, and hard enough to sell at that, that I was commissioned to buy a good many thousand sheep for various clients of the firm who employed me. It is not an easy job buying stock for other people —one falls heir to more kicks than pats—and the job was made no less difficult .for me in that I was really acting in the double capacity of buyer and at the same time, agent for the seller. There is always a tendency,. I think, for an agent in such a position to favour cither one master or the other, and the man on the ground, who, into the bargain is also paying you the commission, is 'likely to have the greatest pull. I had seventeen or eighteen thousand sheep—mostly wethers—to buy on the trip I refer to, and was rather downhearted at the very doubtful results of my efforts to hold the scales fairly as between buyer and seller. Some vendors I felt I had made enemies of for life, for I was too young at the dealing game to realise that no farmer ever expresses satisfaction at a fair deal, and I was miserably anticipating the cold reception which my purchases would receive when they came under the critical eyes of their new owners at the end of a three weeks' road journey. There were still three thousand more wethers to get, and I had these offered to me in one line from a far-back station. This man's sheep were usually not bad, though as he did not breed them himself, but stocked up each year with hoggets, they were somewhat mixed in type, but with a bit of judicious drafting into small mobs for the various buyers they could be niade to look quite respectable. No, it was not the sheep I was frightened of, but the owner.'

1 He had the reputation locally ol being a pretty ''hard case," and I'd been warned half a dozen times, if once, to keep my wits about me. if I hoped to come out of the encounter with a shred of reputation for business ability left. His transactions, of course, were always —ox almost always—"within the law," but somehow shrewd dealers who had measured swords, with him in the past had ruefully had to face a balance on the wrong side of the ledger for thai deal when the accountings were made. Contrary to my expectation, I-found our redoubtable client an admirable host. He provided us amply at our midday dinner, and then, as he explained that there had been a delay in mustering the sheep,' entertained us with yarns of the old days.

So pleasantly did the time pass in this manner that it was drawing on towards dusk when we set forth to the yards where the sheep awaited us. They' were held in a large yard, almost a small paddock, which would hold, I suppose, about four thousand, and to my surprise they looked much better sheep than I anticipated being shown.

My first opinion was that they were well worth the money asked for them, but I wished to make sure that the five per cent rejection offered would be sufficient to take out any wasters which might be in the.mob. The old chap, still more interested'in his reminiscences than in the sale of his stock, walked with me slowly round the boundary of the yard, which, from all sides rose towards a low hill, or mound, in the centre. It was noticing this peculiarity, I think, which re-aroused my slumbering suspicions. Were the sheep as big and as good as they looked? | Leaving my host without explanation,

I sprinted through the sheep to the top of the hill, and from there looked down on wethers which appeared half the size, even in the deepening twilight, of what thev looked from below.

I bought the sheep that night at eighteenpence less than he had asked for them, with a ten per cent rejection, and still they were too dear! The moral of all this is: Never buy stock in the twilight, and always reinem-. ber that thev look twice as big when you look up at them standing on a hillside. There is another moral in it somewhere, but I've forgotten what it was. Perhaps you have seen it! When we became better friends, the old chap told me that the lull and the twilight dodge had made hundreds ot pounds for him,