was approaching. At the railroad locomotives pulled their great trains of empty cattle cars and left them, so many here, so many there, on the sidetracks by the shipping pens. And from all parts of the back country the herds were converging, driven by patient cowboys with their neckerchiefs over their mouths against the dust they raised.
"So long, Tom. Good luck."
Along with the cattle was moving the wheat. Trucks and wagons, their bodies built up with temporary boardings, rocked and careened along the roads toward the small red elevators along the track. They moved onto the scales, were weighed, dumped, weighed again. The men who drove them waved their hands and shouted:
"So long, Tom. Good luck."
And as the car bumped along the box in the back seemed to echo the words:
"So long, Tom. Good luck. So long, Tom. Good luck."
