Horse Tradin' (28 page)

I took three gentle saddle horses and—with lots of stout, soft ropes that I had been using for stake ropes at night on this trip—rigged them each one with a loose rope collar around the neck, down close to the shoulders. Then I tied another rope fairly tight around the body to make a surcingle, and tied short ropes from the collar rope to the surcingle.

I would crowd a pair of mules up in a corner, lead or push one of the gentle horses up close, get ahold of a mule drag rope, and tie it to the collar rope on the horse. With this collar rope tied back like it was to the surcingle rope, lots of strain was being taken to the surcingle, which went around the horse's entire body. My saddle horses had everything done with them and knew how to pull from a saddle horn or a breast collar; with this rigging they could drag a pair of sore-headed mules easy.

Well, I had three spans of wild mules tied to three saddle horses and one saddle horse left to put my good heavy pack on. I had worked that night before to get my pack ready—my bedroll, cooking gear, extra ropes, and halters and stuff that I had to have—and I put it on this dun horse. He was a good big stout horse and used to carrying a pack, and I had my pack harness and my pack saddle on him good and tight. Old Beauty looked wise and ready when I got on her, opened the gate, and eased in and started the horses and mules all out in the open.

These mules tried to run, but these gentle saddle horses they were tied to would jerk them and pull them back. They couldn't very well get away. I herded them
out there on the glade by the corrals about thirty or forty minutes, maybe an hour. I had a bullwhip in my hand, and I would ride in to these mules that were pulling back and hit them with that bullwhip and drive them back with the others. Finally I had them bunched up pretty good. I never did fight my saddle horses that the mules were tied to, but I got them headed out toward the road. They ran crossways a few mesquite saplings and had to get unwound and start over, but by the time I got these mules to the road they were pretty well beat and had begun to line up and walk pretty good. They realized they were caught. The saddle horses had been kind of careful. Hadn't any of them got hurt or pulled very bad, and they had been a controlling influence on the pairs of mules they were tied to.

I rode out in front and opened the gate and drove them all through the gate. I had my packing outfit that I had left Kansas with, before I bought any big teams. I had my saddle horses I started with. I had six head of good young mules worth $100 a head. I had my money in my pocket that I started with, and a profit besides.

I was only about two days from home, a week before Christmas. If it hadn't been the dead of winter, I might have gone back to Kansas for more big work horses.

When I was
an aspiring young cowman, still not quite twenty years old, I had gone to the brush in the fall to winter a large string of steers. My partner
and I had several pastures leased, and we stocked them with steer yearlings and two-year-olds which we would winter on the range and sell fat off the grass in the late summer. This kind of operation took a lot of cowboyin' which could not be done without some good, stout, hard, usable horses. They didn't have to be pretty, but they had to savvy a lot of cow and be able to take a good deal of abuse from long, hard rides and bad weather.

This particular winter I had a black horse in my string that you wouldn't fall in love with because of his appearance, and after you rode him all day you would almost hate him. His back was long, his shoulders were straight, his hindquarters were powerful, and he was a little jug-headed but deep in the body, with heavy bone and lots of muscle. The hair up and down the backs of his legs would well denote that his grandma had more than likely pulled a plow. One of the pastures the steers were in joined the Brazos River, and when the river was out of banks, the fences would be washed away and we would have steers in the bog. You could tie this old black horse to a steer and pull him out with the saddle horn and lariat rope without too much strain on the horse. He was also useful for lots of other heavy jobs.

This explanation will cause you to understand why I had endured this old black horse; but now it was spring, and the grass had begun to come in the draw, and the cattle had begun to fill up and shed a little of their winter hair; so I had it on my mind to get me a road horse, and the black was the one I thought needed trading the worst.

I saddled up bright and early one morning and rode into Cleburne, Texas (about twenty-five miles), by noon. Sterling Capps ran an old-fashioned livery stable about a
block from the public trading square, and he was always glad to put up a cowboy's horse, gather news about the country he came from, and inform him on the most important happenings since he was last in town.

I rode into Sterling's livery stable and got down off the black, about half churned to death from riding that short-trotting horse with all that power clear to town. As the man led him away to unsaddle and clean off, Sterling remarked about what a big, fine, stout horse I was riding. I wasn't about to explain to my friend Mr. Capps that the horse was jarring the pigtails on the Chinamen on the other side of the earth every time he hit the ground; nor did I explain that the main purpose of my trip was to trade him for something with an easier movement and a more appealing general conformation.

I walked to the main part of town—it was a short distance or I wouldn't have walked it—got a haircut and a shave, which after a long winter improved my appearance some, and went over to the hotel and ate a town-cooked dinner that was sure good after a winter's siege of batchin'. When I moseyed back down to the livery stable, Sterling's handyman had my horse brushed and curried—and to a man not too well versed on stride and ease of motion who was looking for a big stout horse, he would have made a striking picture.

As I had ridden into town, I had noticed a gypsy horse traders' camp on the creek; I also had noticed that the men and horses were gone from the cap wagon. I resaddled the black horse and tried to hold myself up nice in the saddle and let him walk real slow across the market square. There was a wagonload of pigs that a farmer was trying to sell, so I sat on my horse and looked over into this load
of pigs—not that you could have given me a pig, but I needed some way to kill a little time until someone noticed my black horse.

After not too long a spell, I looked over to one side and there stood a gypsy horse trader. You could tell them from way off; that was before cowboys had heard about TV, and it was the gypsy horse traders that wore loud shirts. This old boy had on one of the loudest shirts and the baggiest britches; his feet were little bitty, and he had on soft-toed shoes. He looked at me a minute, took his shabby hat off, and that greasy black hair fell down over his ears. He said in a very humble and polite voice: “Meester, you have a very fine horse, and I need heem to work to my wagon. Vould you care to trade?”

In a very unconcerned manner and uncouth voice I said: “I don't know. What you got to trade?”

He motioned toward his trading wagon, which was just a few yards away. I rode up and looked at his horses without getting off mine. There was a beautiful chesnut-sorrel mare about fifteen hands, well kept, with a flowing flax mane and tail. She was tied to the endgate of the wagon, and his other horses were tied along the side and up toward the front. You could tell she was really something special, because he gave her lots of room where the other horses couldn't kick her or get their heads tangled in her halter rope. She had a beautiful short back, a long sloping shoulder; the arch of her neck and throat latch and the beautiful chiseled head were something to behold. Her flax mane and tail had been combed out with a fine toothcomb, and her tail almost drug the ground. I knew without untying her that she would be a dream walking, so I said to this gypsy: “You got no business with a mare
like that. She won't match anything you got to work, and these clodhoppers around here don't know how to appreciate that filly, so I guess I'd let you trade her to me.”

The gypsy put on a real good act and told me how precious she was to the family, and that they just never traded her off, and that I'd have to pick something else. I said: “That's your mistake. I don't have to pick anything else 'cause I don't want to trade for anything else.” And I reined my horse to ride away.

The gypsy said: “Wait a meenute, Meester. Maybe you would geeve me a leetle deeference between thees mare and your horse.”

I knew then that I was smarter than the gypsy, so I got down off my horse to look at the mare. She didn't have a pimple or a pin scratch on her and was about an honest six-year-old (by honest, I mean that her mouth had not been changed). He insisted that I ride the mare, and it wasn't hard to get me to try her out. I put my own saddle on her, and she stood very nicely. I stepped on her and rode on off across the trading square. I got out on a back street with her, and she was the nicest mannered mare that you ever could imagine. She had a long, sweeping fox trot and nodded her head just enough to rattle the bit—and didn't jar you the least bit out of the saddle. I told myself that I believed I'd cheat that gypsy out of that mare.

In the meantime, of course, he and his kinfolks had gathered around the black horse and gone over him with their beady black eyes and nervous little twisted fingers, and they knew all there was to know about him. After a batch of unnecessary conversation about the good and bad points of both horses—which no horse trade would
be complete without—I offered him $50 difference, which was a pile of money in those days. I never did get off the mare, and the gypsy and his brothers never did quit talking—with all six or eight hands in the air—about how that would be stealing her and she was worth many times more than the black horse.

The reason I didn't offer to give him any more was because that was all the money I had in my pocket, outside of a little change I had to pay Sterling at the livery stable and eatin'-money to leave town on. They had a meetin' between where I sat on the chesnut mare and the black horse; when they came back out of the huddle and went to putting their hands in their pockets, the first gypsy said: “Me take $50.”

I paid him and rode off back down to the livery stable so Sterling and the rest of the town boys could congratulate me on a good day's work as a shrewd horse trader. As I rode in, I had the mare reined up just a little so she was hitting her best stride, and people up and down the street had to stop and watch her pass. Sterling said: “She moves like a thief in the night.”

I stepped down and said: “Ride her off a little ways, just to realize she's real.”

As he came back and got off her he said: “She's real nice.”

We put her in a stall, and I visited a little while longer. Late that afternoon I started out of town. Just as I rode out of the gate my old friend Sterling, with a whimsical smile on his face, said: “Ben, does that tail belong to that mare?”

There was a little question mark in the tone of his
voice, and to this least of my worries I answered: “I reckon so. It's following her.” And it didn't cross my mind but that all was well.

I rode back to the ranch in solid comfort, fed my new traded-for mare off the porch of my batchin' shack, and left her in the yard instead of putting her out with the other horses.

Along about this stage of my life, all I knew a currycomb and brush were for was to scratch the sweat off horses' backs and knock the dry foam and sweat off their sides where the cinch rubbed. And sometimes I did this with a short broken piece of wood, or I found a corncob was just about as good as a currycomb. I fed, watered, and rode the mare, and her mane and tail soon were hanging in ropy-like strings and lacked the beautiful fluff they once had displayed. But that didn't bother me much, until one morning I walked down to the pen where I had left her the night before, picked up my bridle, and started into the pen to catch her.

The mare was standing with her hindquarters to the gate, and as I walked through the gate I thought she had sprouted an elephant tail in place of a horse tail. That long, beautiful flax tail was hanging by a snag on the fence on the other side of the corral. And the stump of that mare's tail didn't have a hair on it.

The gypsies had fashioned a tail for the mare which they had fastened on with elastic bands—and she was a sickening sight to behold with her “falsy” off.

When I was
ranching in the Brazos River country of West Texas, I had a lot of horses of various and sundry kinds—might even have been a few sorry ones among them. All my horses were on the light-boned side, and I was in need of a work horse or two to use to a wagon.