Some More Horse Tradin' (16 page)

Well, after a while we went in to this dinner. The cook was an old woman with her hair drawed up tight in a knot on
the back of her head, but she was nice and she said she was glad to have company. They had a big dinner. Of course they had it at suppertime, and it was a little hard for me not to say supper. Anyway, we got through that all right, and kinda late we said our good-byes and got on our horses and went back to camp. On the way home we walked along kinda slow, and I went to telling Frank that I believed this summer deal might be all right if we could just sell some horses, too.

By Sunday that sign was astoppin' everybody. They were coming to see Texas cow horses. They were feeling of them and talking about them; it was a little hard for me to understand that Yankee lingo, but I was catching on a little more all the time. They said some things about horses that I didn't quite savvy, but they were sure strong on “trying” these horses. They would try them and try them and come back the next day and try them some more—and bring two or three more people with them to offer opinions about each horse. On Saturday of the week that I had put the sign up on Wednesday, I sold my first horse—for cash—and got $300 for him.

Well, he was worth about $150 in Texas; I guess I had $50 more in him for expenses, so I was about to make a $100; and that would be the first money we'd seen since we got there.

I was cleaning off horses Sunday morning when up drove Mr. Brent. He got out of this long black Pierce-Arrow and said, “I see you have changed your sign.”

I said, “Yeah, and it's making a lot of difference in my business. I'm not sellin' any horses, but I'm havin' lots of lookers.”

“That Texas Cow Horses' will make any of these boys up here come to look. They don't know but what a Texas cow horse is a Spanish pony, and I am sure they have been surprised to learn that you have some nice horses with breeding and size.”

I said, “Oh, we've had lots of compliments on our horses and lots of visitors and lots of tryin'—but I've sold one horse.”

“I think it will get better. These New Englanders are pretty clannish. You would not have had more lookers if the first one had not found something.”

I said, “Shore 'nuff?”

“Yes. You are in a strange land—to you. But these people will probably all buy horses before they wear you out looking at them.”

I said, “I sure hope so.” Then I told him about the girls at the camp coming down and looking and that we had been going up there—and that some of our horses were up at the camp now where the girls were going to try to teach them to be hunters or jumpers.

That brightened him up considerably; and when he realized that I might have some business, he looked at this good bay horse that he had ridden the Sunday before and said, “I think I'll ride this horse again today.”

I said, “Fine,” and we got his rigging out of the car and saddled up the horse for him. He rode a little while and came back and got down and went to cleaning the horse off himself. He took the saddle off and went to rubbing this horse down and sponging off his legs. (We had got a sponge. We had begun to catch on to this grooming business.) I told him Frank would do that.

“No,” he said. “I always groom my own horse.”

“Well, that's fine, but I didn't know this was your own horse.”

“Yes,” he said, “he will be. However, we may have to discuss money. Your figure may be too high.”

“No, I don't think so. He's the best horse we've got and I'm gonna sell him dirt cheap. I just want $500 for him.”

He threw his sponge over in a bucket of water and went to kinda shaking his hands out in the air. Then he reached in his pocket and got a spotless white handkerchief out and wiped his hands off. He said, “I detest sponging another man's horse on Sunday.”

“You sure did swap that horse off quick, didn't you, since
I told you $500? It's just like I said, Canada's farther away from Texas than this Yankee country is, and I guess they get tougher the farther north you go.”

He didn't dare laugh—he hadn't near decided not to buy this horse. He just smiled a little and said he felt like he could afford $350 for the horse.

I told him I was sure glad he was in good circumstances, but that I couldn't take $350. He was going to have to afford $400.

He stomped around awhile. Finally he said, “If you weren't a friend of Will Rogers, I wouldn't pay it.”

I said, “If that was my excuse, you ought to pay me $1,000 and I could send Will part of it.”

He just laughed and wrote me out a check for $400 and said that he would send his man up with a truck sometime during the week and pick up the horse. I sure thanked him—and by that time there were a few more people around the barn looking at horses. They all had on those fancy Sunday riding clothes, those pantaloon britches, and hard-topped, flat-heeled boots. Some of them had been there before, and they were making themselves quite at home.

One horse there had been tried by the same man five times. We had ridden this horse the day before, and the girls had jumped him the day before that. So when this man said he was going to try the horse again, I said, “No, I don't believe you are unless you are gonna buy him. You've tried that horse enough, and he has been ridden pretty hard this week. I'd prefer that you didn't try him unless you are gonna pay for him.”

Well, this kinda ruffled him a little bit. He kinda growled and said this was a very impolite way to treat a guest. I said that I didn't know horse traders were ever guests, but in my country you don't ever try a horse that many times, so I just believed we would turn the horse back in the barn.

This made him mad, but he had a friend with him, so he said, “Do you still want $400?”

I said, “Yes sir.”

“I wouldn't give you but $300.”

I said, “That would be enough. Just give it.” He didn't know it, but I only had $50 and expenses in that horse that lacked a whole lot being my best horse. I was afraid if this man kept on tryin' him, he might find out that the horse wasn't so good; so we sold him right quick.

Mr. Brent was listening to all this. “Ben,” he said, “you are being too abrupt with these people. Talk like that might be all right in Texas, but it won't go over here.”

I said, “To hell it won't. Here's the man's check.”

Mr. Brent laughed and got in his car and said he would see me again.

The next week passed off fast. We were having the time of our lives up at the girls' camp teachin' riding lessons or ataking riding lessons or rompin' and stompin' and playin' in the meadows of the green mountain country of Vermont. One night we fixed them a big Texas barbeque down at our barn. Even the old woman cook came. They just had more fun, and everybody laughed and hollered and squealed and took on.

Then on Sunday the parents of all these young gals came out to watch their horse show—the likes of which I had never seen before. They introduced Frank and me as Texas cowboys, and we showed the people how a reining horse reined. We roped and cut and ran back and forth—of course they didn't have any cattle there to demonstrate on, but we roped a few fenceposts. Then I ran by Frank and he roped my horse, and he ran by me ahorseback and I roped his. They thought that was marvelous, I guess. They just never heard of such a thing.

While I was playing with my rope dropped loose, one of my horses got out of the barn and ran into the arena. As he ran past me, I just caught him by the forefeet with my loop. The whole crowd just ohed and ahed. Of course that old pony had been caught by the forefeet lots of times, and he
froze in his tracks. He never made another move until I walked up to him, slipped the other end of the rope around his neck, and took the loop off his feet. You never heard anything like that cheering when I led him out of the arena. You would have thought these people were at the biggest rodeo ever held at Pecos, Texas.

Before the parents went home that day, they just about bought the rest of our horses. We had more business than you could think about. These people weren't too hard to separate from their money because their girls had been riding and using our horses and trying them out. Each girl knew which horse she wanted, and some of the mothers and fathers were buying horses for themselves.

By this time I was getting pretty far along with this blue-eyed Vermont maid, this cute filly that was the teacher. I didn't stop to notice whether she was older or younger than I was, and Apache Frank was busy being a ladies' man and entertaining all the young ones. But this blue-eyed, black-lashed Vermont maid had gotten me over a lot of that bashfulness that cowboys are afflicted with.

People don't generally know it, but cowboys who are raised out in the range country and stay with a chuck wagon and grow up kinda wild—such cowboys don't know much about gals. They just know that some of them are pretty and others sound nice and most of them smell good. There are lots of things young cowboys don't know about gals, and this was pretty much my condition that summer I set out for Yankee country with my load of cow horses.

But she had begun to get me over my timidness, and I had learned a lot about the fair sex from this Vermont maid. She would get her classes over in the mornings, and then she would take the station wagon and come down by our barns. I would have my horses worked out and exercised; I'd leave Frank agroomin' his horses; and she and I would drive down to town and sip soda and laugh and tell jokes and have fun. I sure thought I was doing awful good with her. I had traded
her a horse, too. She had a Morgan stallion that was a little too much for these girls. He was a little rank and hard-mouthed, and they were too light-armed to be able to handle him; so she traded him to me for a nice dun gelding.

Well, this dun gelding was quite a horse. He was only four teen-two hands high, and we called him Quickie. The girls thought that was a cute name for a horse, and they had all been aridin' Quickie. But they got to using him in pole-bending contests, and he was pretty trigger-happy on that bridle rein. This pole-bending contest was something new for a cowboy. They never did bend a pole. That wasn't the idea. It ought to have been called a horse-bending contest, because they would line these poles up and run a horse through them, reining him and bending him between the poles; and when they got to the end of the poles, they would turn the horse and run him back through this line of poles. Well, this dun horse was just so fast on the turns—that's why we called him Quickie—that anytime you touched him you'd better be settin' good and tight 'cause he was fixin' to do something.

Well, Quickie had spilled just about every gal up there that was trying to ride him on those flat saddles, and they were getting a little unhappy with him. But, still, my teach-filly had traded for him—and she got to asking me why he couldn't be slowed down. I told her that cowboys spent a lifetime trying to put a rein on a horse, teaching him to be quick, and there wasn't any point in trying to get him over it. This made sense to her, but she was not happy about that horse trade.

Well, I wasn't going to trade her back this Morgan stallion. The Morgan horse breed originated in Vermont from a little stud named Justin Morgan. A Vermonter by the name of Richard (Dick) Selman came to Texas in an early day and brought with him many pure Vermont Morgan horses. I worked on the Selman Ranch near Brady, Texas, as a boy—breaking weanling colts to lead at a time when there were
more than four hundred Morgan horses on the Selman Ranch. Now I had a Morgan stud that was the start of a herd of Morgans for me—and I didn't want to trade this stud for anything.

One morning we had gone downtown to sip a little soda and be sociable, and she brought Quickie up again. She wished I would trade back for him. I had to tell her then how proud I was of this Morgan stud and that I hoped to trade for two or three Morgan mares to take back to Texas with me and start a little band of Morgan horses. This interested her. She smiled and said, “Then it is all right. We'll do something else with Quickie.” And she got real nice and polite and just made me feel a little ashamed of myself for holding her to the horse trade.

But she really wasn't cheated. Her girls couldn't ride old Quickie, that's all. There was a lot of cowboys couldn't ride him, either. Quickie could turn through himself and not get out of shape—which is quite an accomplishment for a good cow horse.

Apache Frank and I were so busy having fun that we hadn't paid too much attention to what the business situation was. We had four of the horses left that we had brought with us and this Morgan stud, which meant we were nearly out of the horse business. To stay in Vermont living in style just to show four horses—that didn't make much sense. I told Frank that we were liable to be getting ready to ship out of that country. The first thing he did was to tell all these gals how they were going to miss him—he was an over-all ladies' man, I tell you. They, of course, broke the news to that blue-eyed, black-lashed Vermont maid of mine. They didn't want us to go back to Texas. Oh, they just took on and made us feel so good. They were even talking about how they would like to come to visit us some summer.

We were all for that. We just let on like we had room for all of them. But in one of those little batchin' shacks out on
the ranch where we stayed, you couldn't have got their saddles and clothes in it if they had all come to visit—but that didn't worry us too much.

I had one exceptionally good horse left—a blue roan horse, fifteen hands high, weighing eleven hundred, and six years old. He was one of the most useful horses I ever owned, and I thought that since I had sold several horses real high I could afford to keep the roan and ship him back to Texas. Well, this Vermont maid took quite a shine to this horse. I didn't let Frank ride him. I kinda kept him to myself. I thought if I didn't get him sold, I didn't want any fresh teachin' put on him that wouldn't suit me.