Horse Tradin' (32 page)

Well, that “Kid” with me and “it's easy” was about to drive me beyond the kid stage. I was aging fast from wondering how we would do it. He got all harnessed and hooked up one morning and pulled out in the road in front of the house and started to leave. I said: “You never have …”

“Yeah, I know, I never have,” he said. “In about three nights from now I'll camp down close to Godley. That won't be far out of Cleburne. You bring your mules and spend the night at the wagon with me, and I'll get 'em in shape that you can take 'em to Cleburne the next morning and show 'em to this promisin' young mule buyer. The trip will be so short that I don't think the dye job will run on 'em.”

Well, I'd finished the winter, and I'd fed my cattle, and I was through with the mules, and they were a year older by the calendar but six years whiter. So on the appointed day I saddled up, tied my mules to the saddle horn, and started off to find my Irish gypsy friend's wagon.

I went through Granbury and on down through Cresson
and on over to Godley. My old Irish friend was camped down below Godley two or three miles—out by the side of the road where there was a little pond of water and some fresh grass, a nice place to camp and not too far from Cleburne. The next morning was Monday, and it would be a Trading Monday, which would be an ideal day to be in Cleburne.

I rode into camp and we had our “howdys” out, and I staked my mules over to one side where they wouldn't mix up with his. He had a fire going, and it was sort of late. He was frying up some meat and stuff and had a Dutch oven full of sour dough biscuits; so we sat down and ate a big supper. It was the spring of the year and it got a little chilly, so we sat around the fire a little while before we unrolled the bedrolls and went to sleep. I still didn't know about coloring these mules—but he knew I was there, so I wasn't going to bring it up.

The next morning was a bright, sunshiny morning and he said: “Well, this is a nice clear day for our little chore.”

I said: “It don't seem to me like it's such a little chore.”

“Oh,” he said, “it won't take but just a little while. I got the fixin's the last town I came through.”

I said: “Well, I'd still like to know about these fixin's.”

“Oh,” he said, “Don't let it bother you. It's easy. These mules are gentle?”

“Sure, they're gentle!”

Well, in the meantime I had roached their manes and sheared their tails up neat to their bodies, and they were looking good. I had trimmed a little of the long hair off around their fetlocks and under their chins. The mules
were in good shape so far as dressing and brushing and currying were concerned. They just lacked that little tinting job.

We finished breakfast, and my Irish horse-trading friend set the black kettle off the fire, over to one side, and said he was going to have to let that cool. “I still don't know what you're doing,” I said.

“Kid, don't worry. I know what I'm doing.”

“I believe you,” I said. “I'm just waiting for the demonstration.”

He reached back in the wagon into a little box and brought out some black Easter egg dye. I told him, “Now this ain't Easter—and anybody knows that the bunny didn't bring these mules—and I don't see how that is gonna work.”

He said: “Kid, don't let it bother you.”

Well, he made up that black Easter egg dye in that pot with me asking: “How in the world are you gonna get it on 'em?”

“Oh,” he said, “that's the simplest part about it.”

He reached back in the cooking part of his old wagon and got three great big brown hen eggs. He didn't cook them, and he didn't crack them. He took those hen eggs and dipped them in that Easter egg dye. Where he wanted a little dapple, he would mash the small point of the egg into the hair and turn it around. That dye would come off the egg in a nice little round circle. Then where he wanted a big dapple, he would change ends and dip that egg in the dye and turn it around on the hair. The dye would come off the egg to where the hair would stay white in the middle. Then if he wanted a long, oblong kind of dapple along the bottom of the belly, he would use the egg the
long way. I stood and watched him, and he worked just as nimble and fast as anybody can ever imagine. In about an hour's time he had a nice pair of dapple-gray mules with the little dapples where they belonged, the big dapples where they belonged, the dark dapples where they belonged—and of course the lower parts of the legs were already black and didn't need any touching up.

When the sun got up higher and brighter and the dye dried on these mules, they were just simply beautiful. They were just as nice a pair of mules as I had bought before, and I thought about taking them back home with me. But I knew we might have another shower, or I might get them wet with sweat again. And too, the teeth hadn't changed any. They were still too long, and too rough, and too wide. That corner that had been put there changed their ages in part of their mouths only.

When he got them dappled out pretty he said: “Now, Kid, you'd better go back to the ranch and feed your cattle and see how much you can get 'em to weigh. This is a professional job, and I'd better wind it up for you.”

I told him that I'd let him wind it up for me, but that I was going to go along to watch the show.

We pulled in on the trades square in Cleburne, and it was the middle of the morning and lots of other traders were there. A good many mules were standing around, but it was still early enough in the spring that there was a good demand for mules, especially good stout heavy well-fed mules that could go to work. I sat around on my horse and watched. Didn't anybody know me much. I'd mosey around horseback from one wagon to the next. I didn't have any other trading stock with me.

Sure enough, after a while here comes this overly
dressed son-in-law with a big diamond horseshoe stickpin and a great big diamond ring and a great big white hat—and a bigger mouth. He came to buy some mules for his father-in-law, and he was carrying that long checkbook. He walked around the wagon and talked to my Irish friend a few minutes. He picked out a brown mare and he picked out a bay horse. Then he said: “I think I'll have to have that pair of dapple-gray mules.” He looked in their mouths and asked: “How much for them?”

My friend said: “$300.”

“Aw—they're a nice pair of mules and they're ready, but they're not worth quite $300.”

My old horse-trading friend said: “I don't get many mules with that quality, and I'm really not capable of knowin' what they're worth. What do you think you can give for 'em?”

“Well, I could give you $250.”

My friend said: “I couldn't take that, but I'd take $275.”

“Aw—that would be too much. I'll give you $265.”

I was holding my breath, and my Irish friend was a-pawing around on the ground like a horse that was tied to something he didn't like, but directly he said: “I guess that'll be all right. You can just pay me.”

The son-in-law whipped his big long checkbook out and made out a check for the bay horse and the brown mare and the gray mules. He hollered across the yard at a Negro to come and get them and lead them off for him. He wouldn't have wanted to get his gloves off or get them dirty leading that stock around. After all, he wasn't spending his own money.

So I waited until he got away with them, and I got
down off my horse and leaned up against the wagon wheel and stood there and laughed a while.

My old Irish friend said: “You don't want this check. I've got the money on me, so I'll just pay you.”

He gave me my $265. I told him that I had $250 in those mules, but I had worked them all winter, so I would take $225. I gave him back $40 for his trouble.

He said that was getting a pretty good price for Easter egg dye that early in the season, and he thanked me. I told him to come by and camp any time he was in my part of the country.

He told me that I'd better go back to making cattle get fat—then when I got cheated, it would be by weight and not by color.

Along in the
early thirties, I had passed all winter in a two-room shack out on a ranch and wintered a string of big steers with intentions of sending them to
northern feeders the following summer or fall. It had been a mild winter. The cattle had not been too much trouble to tend to, and I'd had lots of good horses to ride, with plenty of time on my hands to socialize.

There was a schoolmarm in the nearby village that I had been giving the rush act through the winter, and we had been having lots of fun. There was a bunch more young folks in and around the little ranch town, and we had parties, moonlight picnics, and wolf hunts for social entertainment through the winter, as well as eating hamburgers and going to the picture show on Saturday night.

I guess I had gotten farther away from the cow business, with this schoolmarm, than I realized. I had been keeping a special ordered blue serge suit in the pressing parlor in town, and I would ride in horseback, put my horse in a corral next to the feed mill, then go to the pressing parlor and the barbershop and get smoothed off and dressed up.

This schoolmarm had a new Model A Ford convertible coupé—the first Ford I ever saw with a standard shift and two pedals in it—and we would get in it and take on whatever social activities were going on.

So the winter had passed and had been very enjoyable. It was spring of the year and grass had put out. The mesquites were leafing out. Cows were licking themselves and having baby calves. Horses had all slicked off, would swell up when you cinched them and hump up when you tried to ride them. It was hard to get the big boys and girls to go to school, and it was still harder to keep the little ones in the schoolhouse after they got there. So it was the natural time of the year for a school-closing.

One Friday afternoon my schoolmarm picked me up
to take me down about twenty-five miles to another town where her daddy was superintendent of the schools. She said that there was going to be a big weekend—a party Friday night and Saturday night and some kind of goings-on Sunday—and she wanted me to go home with her and stay at the house with her folks, and we could come back Sunday night or Monday morning.

Well, I wasn't too well house-broke for such affairs, but it sounded like a lot of fun, so I went along.

Sure enough, the old folks were expecting me to come home with her, and they were all set. The old man was a fine old Southern gentleman, very light-complexioned and probably of Irish descent. His wife was a good-looking, black-headed woman, and this schoolmarm had gotten her features and his coloring—which sure did turn out to be a good cross. But on second glance at her mother, you could readily determine that the professor had kept school close to the Reservation when he was a young man; and my schoolmarm's grandmother was probably the daintiest little creature that ever dusted out a wigwam with a wild-turkey-wing duster.

Sure enough, we went to parties, dinners, and feeds, and had a big time over the weekend. Sunday, after church, the old man and I were a-settin' on the front porch waiting for the schoolmarm and her mother to get dinner ready. There was another little girl about nine years old, almost a tomboy, and cute as she could be. She came out and took me by the finger, wanting to lead me off to show me her pets. She had a black and white pet rabbit and a banty hen with some baby chicks. Well, I had raised lots of rabbits and banty chicks, so she and I had a big visit. She was a real sharp, likable little kid.

We had started back to the front porch with her leading me by the finger when she said: “It sure will be fun having you for my big brother. We can just do all kinds of things together.”

I tried not to booger from a little girl—but that double harness rattled in my face and spooked me just as bad as shaking a chain harness at a saddle horse.

We had a real good Sunday dinner. I minded my table manners and didn't eat with both hands all the time. I bragged on the old woman's cooking and laughed at the professor's jokes.

We started back in the middle of the afternoon. This cute little schoolmarm was full of talk and plans, so I hardly opened my mouth—which was quite unusual for me. When she finally did slow up, she told me that her mother thought I was real nice and her father said I was just like an “own son.” There was that double harness shaking at me again.

We got into town about dark, drove around to the corral where my horse was, and she told me the coming Friday night was school-closing. There was going to be a big country play and an ice cream and cake supper after the play was over. She said she was going to be awfully busy with the details and arrangements, but that I could come over to the school horseback. I told her that suited me just fine.