The Tansecky Shuffle

On the Oregon Trail in the early 19th century, in the vicinity of what came to be known as Tansecky Pass in the Rocky Mountains, Wyoming, Rosalyn and Herdon Tansecky had a child too sickly to bear the rigors and privations of continued travel. Stuck, Herdon sent a nephew back to Cheyenne, where his brother-in-law, a man named Roebuck, had accumulated a tidy fortune in dry goods and livestock. The nephew was dispatched with instructions not to return without a deal having been struck that would secure the Tansecky's at least until the child was well-enough to travel, or buried. Roebuck, a skinflint relentless in his usury, came through but with terms that would saddle the Tansecky's with a debt they'd never see the end of. The nephew returned with a caravan of goods and Herdon, having stayed still long enough to witness the ceaseless flow of fellow wayfarers making the same trek - most all of whom registered some biting need - undertook to plant the Tansecky flag for so long as was necessary to exhume his kin from the mountain of debt freshly piled atop them and to wave it over a trading post, provisioned on loan from Roebuck and managed with pinchpenny hawkishness by an unyieldingly bottom-line oriented Tansecky clan.

A Tansecky Shuffle occurs in a system of barter when something of demonstrably far-greater objective value is surrendered by a party to secure something of immediate and urgent need. Arguably the first Tansecky shuffle (at least in the lives of Herdon and Rosalynd) occurred when this small band of Oregon trailblazers traded the destiny of their common dream, which undoubtedly lay to the west of the Rockies, for a life of remorseless poverty huddled amid the unforgiving mountains, in order to save the life of their child. Yet another Tansecky shuffle was won (although, it should be noted, there are no clear winners or losers in a Tansecky shuffle, as the neediest among us, when quenched of his mortal thirst, is as rich as the richest of us) by the brother-in-law Roebuck, who mercilessly leveled interest on a loan that, while representing, to be sure, no mean divestiture of his own wealth, vouchsafed the at least temporary security of the Tansecky babe. Incidentally, the fate of said child is unknown to history. What is known is that, for the seventy-plus years that it hung an open sign on its door, the Tansecky Pass Trading Post ruthlessly plied its own shuffles on those who stumbled in needing water, a new horse, some jerky, or a drum of fat. While no one was ever turned away outright, they did pay dearly for what they most needed.