by Ben K. Green
Next morning I got to thinkin’ that if I sat up straight and popped a whip over that team I could drive to Weatherford by dark. It would be hard on my saddle horse to have to travel alongside of them, but I didn’t think it would hurt that big team of Heidelberg coach horses. So far as I was concerned, the hard-headed German was stickin’ out in ’em worse every day.
I stopped on market square at Cleburne to water my horses. There was a country café right by the trade ground. I hollered at the cook to make me some hamburgers to take with me and bring them out to me and I didn’t leave my team.
The road from Cleburne to Weatherford was a gravel surfaced road with not too much traffic, and I felt like if I just kept ’em at a steady trot that I might take some of that run out of ’em. I drove into Godley in a couple of hours and had these old ponies wet with sweat and breathin’ a little hard and I felt like I was doin’ ’em a whole lot of good. About the time I got even with the schoolhouse, the band was out on the grounds and decided to practice, and on the first big blow these kids gave on their horns, the runaway was on. The trip up to now hadn’t hurt ’em, and I just thought they was breathin’ hard!
I managed to hold ’em in the road and I sawed on the bits and in about three miles discouraged them down to a trot. When I finally got them to where they would turn loose the bits and would stop, I unwired a piece of balin’ wire that was hangin’ to the buckboard and held on to the lines and walked to the front of ’em. I took the bits out of each horse’s mouth and wrapped them good with that balin’ wire, which is a pretty brutal thing on a horse’s mouth, but these horses weren’t causin’ me to develop too much affection for them, and I felt like if I made it more brutal on their mouths, it might be easier on my arms to hold them.
In just a little while they became real sensitive to that wire on their bits and I thought maybe this would be the little trick that would keep their minds on their business. It was gettin’ late in the afternoon when I drove through Cresson and I really thought that I might stop somewhere and spend the night. The railroad track ran parallel to the road, and about the time I was havin’ some of these kind-hearted thoughts, a train whistle blew and I thought, here’s where I tear their mouths open with that wire, but they had had time to learn about that wire and they took those bits beween their jaw teeth and cold-jawed and I couldn’t move that wire to make them a little remorseful by tearin’ some hide off their mouths.
I didn’t see nobody comin’ and nobody behind me and no way for anybody to help and this was the second time they had run away that day. The one thing that was botherin’ me was that I was feelin’ sorry for my saddle horse havin’ to keep up with ’em. After all, he hadn’t done anything wrong. And it so happened that he was thinkin’ the same thing I was and decided he had had enough of that foolishness, so he reared back on that good stout rope tied to that right-hand horse’s hame. He caught that big horse in the air and jerked him and the other horse sideways and drug ’em.just a step or two, and in the scuffle the right-hand horse that the saddle horse was tied to fell to the ground sideways and the left-hand horse stopped just a second after they had broke the tongue out of the buckboard. I eased out of the buckboard, thinkin’ how lucky I was that it didn’t turn over As this one horse got up, I spanked my saddle horse with my line just enough to make him straighten up and I drove them over to the fence still hooked to the tongue.
I cut the long end of the rope that my saddle horse was tied with and tied one end around one horse’s neck and down through his bits and over to the other horse’s bits and then around his neck and then to a big heavy cedar fencepost. I stood and looked at ’em and kind of got over the shock of the runaway and then I very carefully unhooked them from the tongue they were draggin’ and carried it back to the buckboard so I could try to figure out how to patch it enough to get home.
It was broken where the doubletree hooks onto the tongue. About all the tongue does is to furnish a way to guide the buckboard, so I wired the doubletree to the part of the tongue that was still hooked to the buckboard behind the break in the tongue. Then I took some barbwire off the fence by the road and wired the tongue back together and ran the barbwire back to the axle and wrapped it around the tongue and up to the front of the tongue and then I wrapped it around the breast yoke and tied it back against the front end of the tongue. This made a pretty crude kind of a front end, but I thought it would guide well enough that I could drive it home.
By now it was nearly dark and I rehooked my runaway team with my saddle horse tied to ’em and started up the road. I guess they had intended this last little spree to pay off better—they figured they’d get turned loose—and they seemed to wilt a little bit when I hooked them back up. I don’t know whether or not they savvied what a weak tongue they were hooked to, but the doubletree was wired hard and fast and they had a firm pull on the rig. It was about midnight when I drove in home. It had been about a forty-five-mile day and these old ponies seemed give out and appeared to be so gentle that I thought they never would run again.
The next morning I got Guy Oliver at the blacksmith shop to repair the tongue with some iron straps, makin’ it hell for stout. Since I had been gone a couple of weeks or more, I had some ridin’ to do to tend to my livestock, some errands to run, and things to see about, so it was several days before I hooked up my fancy pair of drivin’ horses. It was a bright Saturday afternoon and there were lots of people in town and I thought it would be a good time to show off my drivin’ team and rig. I don’t suppose I thought anybody would be interested in buyin’ them. I just wanted to show off.
I drove up and down the street and around the square down to the wagonyard and these fine horses had so much style and moved so gracefully that old horsemen would stop on the sidewalk and turn and watch them pass. I could see our reflection in the plate-glass windows in the stores and I sure sat up straight and held a tight line and let everybody get an eyeful.
I drove down to the wagonyard and tied them in a spot where they couldn’t very well break loose or get away, and I had no sooner tied ’em than twenty-five or thirty people gathered around ’em. Some followed ’em from uptown and there was lots of conversation about what a fine team they were. Many people didn’t realize what their breeding was until I would tell ’em. I didn’t offer to untie ’em and take anybody drivin’ because I thought that would be just the right inspiration for that pair to have a runaway.
In the late afternoon I started out South Main toward home and a bunch of college kids were practicin’ basketball. The ball bounced out in the middle of the road with two or three of them players wearin’ colored uniforms after it, and just before the team thought to run away, I jerked those balin’-wire bits through their mouths before they could take the cold jaw and drove ’em on home with nobody knowin’ that they almost saw a runaway.
I didn’t keep my secret very long because I took a bunch of kids on a hayride one night and that pair of big fine trottin’ horses ran away going up Oyster Hill and rolled school kids from the top of the hill to the bottom. I managed to swerve ’em into a live-oak thicket and get their heads and harness tangled up to where they wouldn’t hurt themselves nor my rig. We was gonna have a wiener roast, so the kids gathered up on Oyster Hill and built a fire. We had our wiener roast and forgot about the danger of ridin’ in that buckboard and crawled back in it. Oyster Hill was steep which ever way you went up or down it and them squallin’ kids hollerin’ and laughin’ and the load pushin’ down on the britchin’ harness made this pair awful nervous, but while I had ’em up in that live-oak thicket I ran a big heavy rope across from one back wheel to the other back wheel and tied it hard and fast. Then when we moved, this rope worked up to and stopped the wheels when it came in contact with the buckboard bed. This made the team have to pull real hard with those wheels slidin’. I managed to get everybody delivered home safe and got back to the barn with two wheels still draggin’.
Well, by morning the kids had told all their folks about the r
unaway team. Some of them thought it was pretty funny, but some of the old women took it pretty serious and gave me a good talkin’ to about being careless with their little children. They didn’t seem to bother about me.
By now I had begun to develop some scare for this old pair of ponies and had took to drivin’ em in a big oat stubble field as I tried different ways to keep them from runnin’ away and methods to stop them. I used a walking W, smotherin’ straps on their bridles, and about anything else I could think of or heard somebody else suggest. Nothing phased this determined pair of fast-minded horses.
They spent about two or three months around the barn without too much work and I was pretty sick of the deal and could think of a lot of things that I wished I had spent that money on instead of that pair of Kaiser-bred horses. I was takin’ a good deal of hurrahin’ from the traders around town about not drivin’ my “Sunday rig,” as they referred to it.
Pretty soon in the early fall, the town was plastered with them big loud signs and billboards and circulars of various sizes with all kinds of pictures on ’em that Ringling Bros, and Barnum and Bailey Circus was comin’ to town. Of course, they would unload at the railroad with their teams and have a big parade through town to the circus grounds at the end of South Main. I thought that this would be a good place to show off my team and either scare ’em to death with the big animals or have a runaway and lead the parade.
The afternoon before the circus was comin’ I brushed and curried and cleaned them off real good and washed the wheels and the bed of the buckboard, and the next morning about daylight I got them to the railroad station, where all the commotion was. I sat in the buckboard and watched the circus unload, but never let any slack come in the lines and never thought of leaving the team. This pair of big fine horses was scared to death all morning about something or other and the smell of them wild animals got their minds off of runnin’ away. There was so much goin’ on that they didn’t know anything to do but stand and snort and stomp and try to behave, hopin’ nothin’ bad would happen to ’em.
Every now and then somebody in the morning’s crowd would notice my fine team and the teamsters that were unloadin’ the circus wagons would stop and admire them. Strangers asked what the team was worth and they didn’t realize I had some very positive opinions about what they were worth, but what I would take for them wasn’t the same figure, and I would just say $1,000, which sounded like an awful lot of money, so the word was around in a little while among the circus people that I wanted $1,000 for that team.
I waited until the parade toward the show grounds got out in front of me and then I brought up the rear. I didn’t believe this pair of bluffers would have the nerve to run away if they were goin’ to have to pass a bunch of elephants and camels. They traveled up on the bits with their necks bowed and eyes open and snortin’ all the way, and they was touchin’ the ground so lightly that you wouldn’t have thought their hooves would have made a print.
I was kinda enjoyin’ havin’ them mixed up in a bunch of company that they didn’t know what to do with, so I stayed on the circus grounds with ’em all morning. They had the main tent up by dinner, and by now the show-horse trainer had found my team. He came and looked at them and walked around them. He was some kind of a foreigner and I couldn’t quite understand him. He went off and brought back an old dressed-up man with long white hair and diamonds all over him, wearin’ a double-breasted blue serge suit, a big white hat, and carryin’ a walking cane. They looked at my horses and asked if they would drive in that tent—that they needed a team to lead the opening act that would travel like they was about to run away.
Well, I wanted to show plenty of nerve, so I invited them to get in the buckboard with me. The old dressed-up man got in the seat with me and lit a fresh cigar and the horse trainer stood up behind the seat as I drove in under the tent. I told them to drop the flaps of the tent door down where the horses couldn’t see daylight, since they might try to leave.
It was a great big long show tent and you could get up a lot of speed before you would have to make a turn at the ends. As I brought them out of the first turn, the old gentleman was all smiles and had bit down on that cigar and said, “Son, turn them on!”
Most of the time I had been holding these horses instead of driving them and this was a new experience to have me squall at ’em. We made about the third round and had up lots of speed. I had took hold of the lines pretty hard and realized that they had cold-jawed and we was havin’ a runaway and nobody but me and them knew it. The old man hollered in my ear, “They’re just what we need. Stop ’em when we come around again.”
He didn’t know it, but I thought we might go around a lot of times before we got them stopped, but about that time somebody led a camel in the tent flap just as we were comin’ down that side of the tent. I felt the lines give and saw slack come in the tugs all at the same time just as the team smelled that camel. I thought this was my chance and I hollered, “Whoa,” real loud and they had loosened the bits enough that I jerked that balin’ wire through their tender mouths and they slid to a stop. I had to reach over and hold the old man to keep him from sliding out on the floor. He straightened up and as he stepped out on the ground, he said, “I understand that you want $1,000 for the whole outfit.”
I said, “Yes, sir, that’s my price.”
He turned to the horse trainer with a big smile on his face and said, “Scotty, take them back to the horse tent,” and he put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Let’s go to the office wagon and I’ll give you the money.”
As he counted out $1,000 in big bills, I wanted awful bad to tell him to keep that camel in the act, but then I decided they would find that out later anyway.
MR.
UNDERTAKER
AND THE
CLEVELAND
BAY
HORSE
About the time in my life that I had decided to my own satisfaction that I was bound to be the best cowboy, the best bronc rider, and the best all-round stock-hand in the world (this kind of personal opinion generally develops in a cowboy about nineteen years old), I was ranchin’ on Robinson Creek running a bunch of steers that were doin’ real good. It had been a mild winter, an early spring, and now we were in the middle of a lush summer and I didn’t have a whole lot to do at the ranch, so I was spending most of my time ridin’ my best saddle horses back and forth to town to spend my leisure time.
We had a very upstanding businessman in the community that was in the furniture and undertaking business, and I hadn’t developed too much taste for undertakers by this time in life. A wild, rough, young cowboy don’t worry a whole lot about dying, and I failed to feel the need for the friendship of the local undertaker, so me and him wasn’t on too brotherly terms. The only thing that interested me about this prominent citizen was a good blood bay horse that he used to drive to a delivery hack.
Autos had begun to infest the country pretty bad, but few people had anything that resembled a truck. Small-town businessmen still had delivery hacks that they drove one horse to or spring wagons that they usually drove small pony teams to that traveled easily in a trot.
Mr. Undertaker was one of those good charitable kind of people that would take a widow woman’s cookstove on account to help pay for her husband’s funeral. To say the least, I didn’t consider him one of God’s most noble chillun.
It caused me some unrest to see that good fat blood bay horse standing around in his lot, with so little to do, and then to be used in the kind of business that Mr. Undertaker put him to was not helping him any. I had heard rumors that this good horse wasn’t too content with his station in life, pulling that little hack with secondhand furniture and such on it. Recently he had run away three times in one week, and Mr. Undertaker had developed some fear, either of his horse or the thought of being one of his own customers.
I had just rode by the little pasture beside the road and saw this good horse grazin’ and thought, “What a waste of good horseflesh for t
hat horse to be grazin’ and standin’ under the shade of a tree instead of being a mount for a cowboy.”
I had tied my saddle mare to the chain around the courthouse square where everybody tied their horses, and had walked across the square to the drugstore. Mr. Undertaker happened to be coming out of the drugstore when he glanced up and saw me. Instead of looking off in the other direction, he smiled and stuck out his hand to shake hands with me.
He bragged on me a few minutes and told me what a fine horseman I was and if he had his life to do over, he’d try to make just as good a cowboy as everybody said that I’d made. Most people would have thanked him for that speech, but it put me on my guard. I said that I’d heard he had done very well at the business of waitin’ around for his friends to die. You could tell he didn’t think that remark was too funny, but he tried to force a smile that turned into a weak kind of grin. Since we had passed the pleasantries of the day, he said, “I think you should have my bay horse … to use as a saddle horse. He’s a fine horse, a six-year-old, and sound in every way. I have so little use for him that he has become too ‘spirited’ for me to use here in town to my conveyance.”
I said, “Yep, I done heard that he had run away a couple of times and splintered up one of them cane-bottom chairs that you probably took away from somebody and left settin’ on the porch.” He still didn’t think that was funny, but there wasn’t goin’ to be no way of insultin’ him when he had the business of lettin’ me have that bad horse on his mind.
He started out again by sayin’, “Everybody knows that that horse can’t run away with you, so what do you have that you would trade me for him that I would be proud to have hooked to my delivery hack?”