Some More Horse Tradin' (18 page)

I got my pocketknife out and I worked real careful. This mare's ears had gotten pretty sore, and they were touchy. I cut that silk thread, unwound it off of that ear, unwound it off the other ear—and you never saw the likes of thread! It took a whole lot of it. And those gals had worked that thread in there to where it didn't even show. They had that hair so bright and slick, and it lay over that thread that was so tight—but when I turned it loose, both ears just flopped every which way. That old mare had the laziest ears you ever saw—and it sure did change her expression—and mine.

While we were working around these ears, I noticed my
hands turning a dark shade of brown. I knew they had that old mare cleaned off; but the palm of my hand was a little sweaty, and I just rubbed it right hard over her head. All kinds of color came off on my hand.

That old mare was mossy-headed. You never saw as much white hair show on a mare's head, and the more I rubbed, the whiter it got. It got white down around her eyes: she was so old that she was grey-headed before those gals painted her head.

I opened her mouth. Her teeth were as long as a pencil—well, maybe not, but they sure were long.

Old Frank just fell down in that car and just lay there where we'd broken open a bale of hay and just laughed till he hurt. I was kinda sick about the deal—yet it was funny to me, too. I wasn't quite in the humor to laugh, so I finally kicked him in the ribs with my boot toe and told him to get up there and put up the bars on that boxcar door. I had heard the train whistle, and I was kinda glad it was coming. I wanted to get out of that country before I found something else wrong with my mare.

About the time the train hooked on to our car, a station wagon drove up. It was loaded with those gals, and they were awavin' and ahollerin'. I squalled at this blue-eyed, black-lashed Vermont maid and said, “What did you color that mare's head for?”

“Why, honey,” she answered, “you thought that color was so beautiful on my eyelashes and eyebrows! I didn't think you would mind it on that nice mare's head.”

Frank and all the gals just died laughing. But as the train pulled out I squalled at them right loud again, “Anyway, it took eighteen New England maids to cheat one Texas Cowboy.”

I
had been to Granbury and spent most of the day doin' more loafin' than business, and was on my way back to the ranch. I was ridin' a good horse named Dan and it was still the heat of the day, so I was lettin' him take his time when one of those little quick summer thunder showers built up and got me and him wet in the matter of a few minutes and then passed on and the sun came out. Well, ridin' along in the heat of the summer and gettin' a quick shower never bothered a cowboy; you wouldn't even think about changin' clothes because when the sun came out, they'd dry on you in a little bit.

I rode up to Davidson's store at Thorp Springs to break the ride home and stopped for a little local conversation and refreshment. Davidson's store was a small country mercantile sort of place with groceries and dry goods and a small amount of shelf hardware. As I ate my bar of candy and drank my Coke, Mr. Davidson set in to sell me a dry change of clothes. And I told him that would be kind of foolish, that the ones I had on would be dry in a few mintues.

I put up considerable argument that I wasn't interested in buyin' clothes every time I got wet and he pulled out a good pair of black-and-white-stripped duckin' britches and a blue duckin' shirt that would come near enough to fittin' me and told me that I could put on a change of clothes for a dollar bill. Well, that sounded like a bargain and I went in the back of the store to change clothes.

Some of the grown men of the community were sittin' up in the east door discussin' the problems of farmin', which didn't sound too entertainin' to a cowboy that wasn't interested in turnin' the grass bottom side up, so I didn't pay a lot of attention until I heard the Professor. A university professor that wasn't nearly old enough to quit teachin' had moved into the community and had said that he retired from teachin' in order to live on the land and enjoy farmin'. He was full of brilliant ideas and well impressed with his vast knowledge of general subjects and his particular knowledge
of farmin' and was generous in explainin' his views. He always brought up the fact that education took time and money and it was a pity there weren't more well informed men engaged in farmin'. Well, you could tell by his conversation that he was more than willin' to share his vast knowledge with us ignorant people that had been makin' a livin' off the land while somebody had been payin' him to learn their children readin' and writin'.

While I was changing clothes, he began to expound on the matter of fertilizer. He had just put out some fertilizer and was glad to see this little shower melt and send it into the ground. I asked Old Man Davidson what kind of manure would melt. And he said, “Now, Ben, you ought to be smarter than that. The Professor is referrin' to ‘commercial' fertilizer that is ground up from mineral rocks and then spread on the ground.”

I said, “Well, that might be a daintier way to enrich the soil, but I doubt if it's ever gonna take the place of good fresh stall horse manure.”

I didn't break into the conversation that the older men were carryin' on. I just made my respectful howdies and went on about my business. I tied my had-been-wet clothes on my saddle and they were nearly dry by now and as I rode off toward the ranch, I wondered why I had let old Davidson talk me out of that dollar.

The next time I ran on to Professor Know-It-All was at a Sunday afternoon singin' at the country church. A bunch of men were sittin' out under the big oak trees where they could hear the singin' and still get in some visitin' and have the privilege of smokin' their pipes after the big dinner that had been served on the grounds. Professor Know-It-All took advantage of a pretty fair gatherin' under them trees to explain how he had irrigated his garden by usin' the law of gravity to flow the water from the windmill zigzag and cross-ways down the hill and what a great advantage it was to have enough education to be able to take proper advantage
of the angles that it took to flow that water with so little fall to the ground because he had such a complete knowledge of the law of gravity. Well, I had heard something about this gravity business and when he looked up at me with his all-knowing smile, looking as though he expected some sort of favorable comment, I said I wished they would modify them damn laws of gravity so when an old bronc threw me, I wouldn't fall so fast and so hard.

The neighbors all laughed and Professor Know-It-All said, “Ben, you will have a greater appreciation of knowledge as you grow older and try to learn the important things of life.”

I decided the singin' in the church house would sound better at closer range and there might be some of them young fillies sittin' close enough to the back where I could move into a better class of company and smell a little perfume instead of that smoke comin' from them pipes, so I left that bunch of brain-bustin' and went inside.

I was out of circulation for a week or more workin' cattle before I got back to town. I went to the meat market where they had tables in the back and you could eat all the barbecue and bread and onions that you wanted for a quarter. I sat down on one of them long benches at the table after I had filled my plate, and who walked in but Professor Know-It-All. He got his meat and bread but said he would “decline” the onions. Then he walked over and made me move up the bench and he sat down on the end by me.

We carried on a little light conversation while the Professor minced around with his meat and I had my mouth full. Directly somebody got up off the far end of one of them benches and the man on the other end like to have fell on the floor. After the laughin' and hurrahin' was over and the people got through chokin' on their meat, the Professor set in to explain the law of physics and the balance of weight on that bench, and he stressed the importance of education and the knowledge of these complicated doings that could be simple. Of course, he touched on the fact that education was expensive
and he couldn't expect everybody to understand what he was talkin' about. When I finished my barbecue and started to leave, I told him I thought physics was a dose of medicine and he sure had enlightened me.

The next time I stopped at the store, Mr. Davidson told me that Professor Know-It-All was havin' trouble with his mules. One day when I was ridin' up the road, I met him drivin' his mules to a wagon. We stopped in the middle of the road and he told me he was havin' an awful time workin' that team of mules and felt that Mr. Bennett had taken undue advantage of him and had sold him an unbroke pair of mules. Well, I glanced at the mules and I had seen them many times before. The Professor had adorned them with a new set of leather harnesses and you could tell by the looks of the mules that he was takin' extra-good care of them.

I consoled him a little by tellin' him that I felt he and the mules would finally get used to each other and they ought to work out all right because if Old Man Bennett could work 'em, a man of his vast knowledge and education shouldn't have any trouble with 'em. This made him feel good and you could see him strut a little even though he was sittin' in the spring seat.

One day I passed the farm that Professor Know-It-All had bought and saw him drivin' his team of mules to a cultivator. The rows ran out to the road fence and turned, so I just thought I would wait for a little of that smartenin' up in the shade of a tree since he wasn't more than a hundred yards away. As I watched him comin' down the row, I could see that this nice pair of sorrel mare mules had sweated until they were breaking out in a lather and they were nervous and looked like they were tryin' to cross their heads across the tongue and were both walkin' on the middle bed.

Professor Know-It-All pulled them up at the end of the row and walked over to the shade of the tree. He was wearin' new work clothes, which most farmers saved and wore to town a few times before they went to the field in them. He set in
to tell me in very properly phrased English how disgusted he was with the way his team of mules were acting that day as he tried to cultivate his corn crop. He said that they had tromped the young corn down on the middle row and in their twisting around caused him to cut down some corn with the cultivator plows. He added that he believed he was going to be forced to sell them and probably get a team of horses since he knew they were more intelligent than mules. There was just too wide a spread between what he knew and what mules knew for him to be able to work them satisfactorily.

I knew what he had given for these mules and it had dawned on me what was the matter with them, so I decided that here might be a good opportunity for me to make a little money, and maybe, too, I could contribute to his education, which he had thoroughly impressed upon me was generally expensive. I said, “Professor, if you are goin' to sell the mules, you might just as well sell 'em to me because I ain't got no more sense than to be able to tell what a mule is thinkin' about.”

I bid him $100, which was $50 less than what he had paid for the team of mules. Well, I could tell right quick that this was cuttin' him deep, so I set in to explain to him that something you couldn't use wasn't worth anything to you and you had better get what you could out of it and apply it to something more suitable, such as a pair of good gentle horses.

He stomped around and kicked his toe in the dirt and took a clean white handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped around his head and collar and said after a good bit of silence that he would take $125 for the mules. I bid him $115, and after some more deep thought and considerable and brilliant conversation, he decided to take my offer of $115.

As I began to dig around in my pockets for the money—it was customary for traders in those days to carry a right
smart of money—I told him that it would be better to use a different type of harness for horses and since that was new harness and had hardly been used and fit the mules good, that I would like to buy it too. He said that he always tried to have the best of everything and that I might not be interested in giving as much as the harness had cost. I told him that it might be more than I could afford, but how much did the harness cost? He added up the cost of the collar and the lines and so forth and it all came to $45, which would make the team and the harness cost $160. I counted him out the money, and he folded it up, put it in that white handkerchief, and stuck it in his shirt pocket and buttoned the flap.

I said, “Well, you'll want to drive back to the barn and take your cultivator, so I'll turn in at the gate and meet you up there, but before you start to the barn, if you don't mind, I'd like to change the harness a little on these mules. You couldn't make 'em drive any worse.”

Well, when Professor Know-It-All bought this new harness and put these new lines on his team, his education in simple matters seemed to be a little short. The outside line on each mule or horse runs straight from the driver's hand through a ring on the hames at the collar and down to and fastens on the outside rings of the bits. Then the checkline that runs across from the outside over to the other mule and hooks onto the inside ring of the other mule's bits has to be attached to the long line with a buckle, making it adjustable, and by reason of the distance across the tongue of any implement or just because the mules have to be far enough apart to walk good, the checkline is much longer than the outside line.

Well, Professor Know-It-All had put these new lines on that new harness just backwards and the checkline was the outside line and the short line was the inside line and he was constantly pullin' the mules toward each other, which made them work on top of the bed—especially with their forefeet—instead of in two separate furrows on each side
of the bed. And the only way that those mules could have ever made a turn at the end of a row was just to use their own sense in spite of the way Professor Know-It-All was pullin' them. He wasn't a big man and not overly stout in his arms, which had been developed openin' and shuttin' a book and usin' a pencil, so the mules had managed to survive this awful line arrangement.