Some More Horse Tradin' (9 page)

We rode around them and whipped them into a bunch and started off with them again. When they got to the edge of the greasewood and mesquite, they made another wild run to leave. Some of them fell to their knees, others just stood spraddle-legged and gasped for breath; but the harder they tried to run, the more their throats expanded and the worse they choked. We had some mares get down, but not for more than a few minutes. When they got down, they quit breathing so hard, and then they would come back up.

It was a broad, plain trail going to the gate. About the time the first mare started down it, the others began to bunch up behind her. By then I had my lariat rope out with about twenty-foot length of doubled rope—and he had his—and we could ride in and brand these mares with a hard lick if they tried to get out of the bunch. Once they began to get their breath, they were no trouble to drive. Oh, every now and then one would begin to break out, but she wouldn't go more than a few yards before she would begin choking. When she did, you could ride around her without any hurry and put her back in the bunch.

We were outside the gate in less than an hour and going down the public road. The mares were walking nice and slow, but some of them had broken out in a sweat—not from heat so much as from fright and lack of air. The old gentleman would ride up to a mare, and while that good horse of
his walked alongside the mare, my friend would loosen the lock knot and slip the rope enough for the mare to breathe easily. By the time we had gone four or five miles, he had loosened the rope on each of the mares, and they were all trotting along perfectly at ease and getting all the wind they needed. But they were in a fenced road with no way to turn back and no way to get away.

For a while they traveled at a long, sweeping trot. We rode in a lope to keep up with them. These mares were unusual in their soundness of leg, wind, and limb—and in their body conformation, eyes, and heads. They were good horses, and I had noticed there was a marked resemblance between them and the horse my friend was riding. I hesitated to say anything about it. I had given him one opportunity to tell me about his horse, and he didn't; so I decided to bide my time further. I supposed I would learn about it later on, and in the meantime he had been all-wise in everything that he had done so far.

In the late afternoon we drove the mares into the corrals at the mercantile. There was no more than a dozen men standing up and down the streets, in the mercantile, and at the post office—but by dark there had been fully a hundred people by the corrals to look at these mares. Most of these people in the little town of Rio spoke Spanish. I understood some of it, but not all. But there was quite a lot of explanation and commotion and hand waving about the Shield mares.

I went to buy some hay, and the old man in the mercantile showed much surprise that the Shield mares were in his corrals. “I am glad to see them,” he said. “Always I hear much about them, now I see the Shield mares. They are beautiful. Señor Boquel, before he departed this earth, was great horseman and many years my good friend.”

The corral fences behind this old mercantile were in reasonably good condition. There was a gate on the east side
and a gate on the north side in front. Only at these gates did you need to worry about a horse getting away. So we stretched lariat ropes across the gates and tied them shut at both ends. We also used the baling wire off the hay we were feeding to tie these gates securely. My gentleman friend picked up some tin cans and wired them loosely to the gates; then he picked up a few smooth rocks about the size of your thumb and dropped them in the cans. He said that any attempt to open the gates by a man or horse would rattle the cans and wake us up—and we would have plenty of time before anyone or anything could get those gates unwired.

All of this was wise, and these were things I had never heard of before in my horse experience. Of course it was an eye-opener for me to meet a man of such wide experience and such clean, true, distinct use of the English language. Now I admired 'most everything he did, and I listened carefully to everything he said. He had taken an extreme interest in my business and in saving the Shield mares for me, yet “rascal”—the word which he used to describe the young Collin—was the strongest term I had heard him use in the two days and nights we had been together.

We built a small fire, cooked some grub, and sat and watched the mares get settled down. The twenty-mile trip to town had jaded them some. They were quiet, and I talked about how good they were, and how proud I was of them, and what I intended to do with them in the way of establishing me a band of horses. All of this seemed to interest my friend, and then I asked him what I would owe him for his services. I didn't use the word work, or hire, or any of those common things. He was truly a genius at what he was doing, and he had rendered me more service than just being a hand.

He said that I had trusted him, and that he trusted me; that although he had little money—he had been conveying his money to Mexico while he had worked in this country—he
would prefer taking some of the Shield mares instead of being paid in cash.

I told him that sounded fair to me, and how many mares did he feel like he should have for his services? The brands looked like they had been blotched on some of the older mares, but they were all Shield mares, and he had seen the mares now as much as I had.

He told me that if I would travel west with these mares about twelve or fifteen miles the next morning, I could turn up a road to the north that would be a good road to drive these mares toward Fort Worth. He would help me on up to where this road turned off, and then he would turn south, cross the Rio Grande, and go into Mexico at almost the same point. On the road, we would talk more about what mares he wanted.

I told him that would be fine. After all, I didn't need over fifteen or twenty of these mares to establish a band of horses; I had thought about selling a part of them to get some of my money back, and we would discuss this as we went up the road tomorrow. I told him, too, that this had been a very unusual experience in my career as a horse buyer—to buy mares of this quality, and then to have found a man who knew so much about handling mares—and that I would never forget the things he had taught me on this trip.

His voice softened some toward me as he spoke. “It goes well with an older man when a young man is grateful to him for knowledge and help. I am glad that we met. This love of yours for good horses, it will perpetuate the Shield strain.”

We went on to sleep, but sometime in the night I was awakened by the rattle of a can. I got to my feet, and I saw that he was halfway to the gate. It was only a mare rubbing against the gate and was no cause for alarm. Of course we both slept lightly, and we got up at daylight to start our trip as early as possible. There wasn't enough water at the
store for my mares, and according to my friend, I could water my mares after I turned north on the road he suggested.

We turned the mares out in the road just at dawn. He rode on ahead and I brought up the tailin's as we drifted them to the outskirts of town. In just a little while we got to where there were no side roads, and he dropped back and we rode along together. The mares were leveled off walking. Everything was goin' rather smooth, and I thought this would be time to bring up about the mares he wanted. I asked him, “Which of the mares would you prefer, and how many?”

He said, “I think my time and labor would be worth one mare, and any of the mares would be good enough.”

I said, “My friend, and that's the only name I know for you, your services are worth far more than one mare. I suggest that you pick two of your own liking. Their ages are about their only difference, but you choose whichever two mares you would rather have out of the bunch.”

He must have been a little bit touched by my proposition. His voice softened some and he said, “I do not often pass out my name or my identification. The name ‘friend' means a great deal when spoken in truth between horsemen. I am Don Ricardo Olivorez of the Tree Ranch in the Huachuca Mountains of Mexico.” He paused, and then he said, “I'll tell you more. Several generations ago my people came to the New World from Spain. My ancestors were of noble birth and, experiencing difficulty with the Spanish regime, they decided to come to the New World and start their lives anew. They brought gold, acquired much land, and they brought a number of the purest of the Andalusian horses from the Andalusian mountain country of Spain.

“Both my grandfather and my father were schooled in Spain, as were other members of the family. Each time a family member went to Spain for his higher learning, he returned to the ranch with additional pure Andalusian
horses from the mother country. When I was a young man, they sent me to Spain—and later to England. I was privileged to have the opportunity of much education, but in my lifetime it has been very difficult for the Olivorez family to support good government and at the same time stay in good graces with the powers in Mexico. I regret to explain, but there are times when good government and those in power are not the same.”

He went on to say that his family lands had been sieged many times. The rancho had suffered greatly from taxes and various plundering expeditions, and the present drouth had almost been too much. Although my friend had come to the States to work, he told me that he was the first of the Olivorez family to have ever asked another man for employment.

He said, “The horse I ride is of the purest Andalusian blood. The mares in this road are of Andalusian blood, almost pure. A sister to my father, the lady Broquel, came with her husband to this country. She brought ten mares and a stallion of the purest blood. A few times through the years she sent for fresh blood from the Ranch of the Tree. She cared, but she is old and lives in San Antonio now; and her grandson does not care. He is the young Collin.”

He went on to say that the young Collin's parents were deceased. There were other heirs, but none who were interested in the ranch. And the grandmother knew little of what went on. My friend said that when he saw the Shield mares were going to be disposed of, scattered to the winds, that he decided a horseman should have them. This would prevent their going to the open market to be thrown just wherever they might land. He told me all this in a sad and lonely voice, glancing at me occasionally, but for the most part he looked at the mares or across the dry river into the desert regions of Mexico.

He explained to me about the crossing he wanted to use to go into Mexico. My road that turned north was just about
two or three miles farther up. I knew the general lay of the country pretty well; and I knew the road he was explaining to me well enough that when I got on it I could handle the mares and go on by myself. They were nice to handle, and they had been no real trouble since we got them off that home range that they had been taught to get away in.

I had never seen any pure-blooded Andalusians, and I had begun to look at these mares closely. He told me that the Andalusian horse was the purest of Spanish blood, and that this strain was as old a tribe as the Arabs or the Turks or any of the other old tribes of horses. The Andalusians had been bred in the mountains for bone and muscle, substance and endurance, and all the other things it takes to make a fine horse. Much attention had been given to the selection of individuals with good dispositions. All of this showed strongly in the mares in front of us.

We were about to reach the point where he wanted to turn off and go down and cross the Rio Grande into Mexico. I said, “You haven't said which mares you want.”

He said, “The brand you thought was blotched, it is the Shield brand over the Tree on the last mares that left our ranch. It would be to my liking—and I should be forever grateful—if I could have two of the Shield mares which have been branded over the Tree. I would take them back to the land of my father, who yet lives, that he may see we still have some of the old and true blood.”

“I think you'll be cheatin' yourself in age. These are the oldest mares here.”

He said, “Yes, they will be twenty-four years old. It has been that long since they were born, although they were sent to this country as yearling fillies. Their purity of blood is beyond doubt. They will be all I shall ask of you.”

I told him to cut them out and put halters on them to lead them away. I rode up in front and rode around the mares and stopped them. There was a little bit of grazing, and they stopped and picked on what they could find. I realized
then that there were four of the Tree mares that had the blotched brand where the Shield had been branded over. These mares were old. They wouldn't mean as much to me as they would to him; so when we drove the mares on past the corner where he was going to turn off, and as he turned back to lead his two mares off and these other two old mares were watching them leave, I just rode up and put back these two old mares that had chummed in the pasture with the two he was taking.

He crossed into old Mexico with the four Tree mares. And I went up the road with twenty-four of the purest Andalusian mares in the New World.

I found water about two o'clock that afternoon where a creek crossed the road. My mares filled up, rested, and I drove on up the road. With a bunch of loose horses on an open road, you go to hunting a place to spend the night with them along about midafternoon. About two hours before sundown, I found a set of working pens by the side of the road. They were inside a ranch pasture with a water trough and a windmill. There was no grass in the pasture, there was no grass in the pens; but it was a place to hold them overnight. They had found a small amount of grazing along during the day.

I opened the gates and set them where the horses would go into these corrals. Then I rode on past the horses and turned them back and put them in these pens. It was a good deal before dark, and it would give me time to make a little camp, fix myself some supper, and clean my saddle horse off and wash his back. I'd noticed that there were two or three of these mares that had saddle marks on them. I had about decided that the next day I would ride a mare and let my saddle horse rest. In this extra time, I could catch one or two or three of them, maybe saddle them up and see about their mouths, and see which one I thought might do to ride.