Some More Horse Tradin'

by Ben K. Green

  I thought I had baited him enough that he might tell me something about himself or about his horse—but he didn’t. We sat down in the shade of the shed where our saddles and beds were. I leaned back against my saddle and looked out across the desert toward the mountains in Mexico. Finally he broke the silence by saying, “You said you bought some broodmares.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m going to take them to my ranch up close to Fort Worth.”

  “From whom did you purchase these mares?”

  Well, he had begun to ask questions. I thought I’d tell him something and maybe he would tell me something. I said, “I bought the mares from the Shield Ranch.”

  His eyes narrowed and his mouth dropped open a bit, and he said, “You, too, have bought those mares.”

  I pondered a bit to analyze his statement, and then I asked, “Who else has bought them?”

  “My young friend, these mares have been sold many times, but a purchaser has never been able to get them off the ranch.”

  I said, “I bought them to be delivered in the corrals of the canyon pasture.”

  “Alas, that is the way they have been sold to many other men.”

  I had left three hundred and fifty dollars at the Shield Ranch and that, all of a sudden, bothered me. I knew this man had no humor about him; he wasn’t fixing to pull a joke on me. I asked, “Would you explain the meaning of your statement? It puzzles me. I have bought the mares and paid half the purchase price.”

  “I assumed so,” he said. “That is the usual arrangement.”

  “Well, what’s wrong? They are, I thought, exceptionally good mares.”

  “They truly are exceptionally good mares,” he agreed.

  “Then you know the horses?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I know the horses, and I know the horses from which they were bred. My young friend—your hospitality, your kindness, and your company cause me to call you friend”—I could tell by the way he used the word that it was significant to him, that he didn’t pitch it around lightly, and that he had finally decided to be my friend—“my young friend, the young Collin is a rascal. He has used these mares to gain money from others. It is true that your judgment of a horse is good. The Shield mares are the best along the Rio Grande for hundreds of miles. It is also true that they will deliver them into the corrals to you, but only a hired hand will be there, or perhaps the cook. You will pay the balance of your money and turn the mares out of the corrals into a big pasture to drive them to the public road a distance of about five miles. You will pass through a canyon and some very rough country, heavily wooded country with catclaw, greasewood, mesquite brush, and huge cactus plants. It is through this rough country that the mares will lose you. They will scatter and run. They know the range. They know the trails. They know how to get away; therefore, a buyer never gets to the public road with these mares. For three years, this has been the story of the sales of these mares.

  “While you are trying to gather your wild mares, the young Collin will be in Del Rio or San Antonio spending the part payment you have made on these horses. Perhaps, after many months, he will return half of your money to buy the mares back from you. Then again, he may say that since you have not taken the mares, you no longer own them.”

  I didn’t doubt a word this gentleman said. I listened carefully. He could tell that I was worried, and I could tell that he was concerned. He offered no sudden advice, and he offered no criticism. He did say, “You are not well enough mounted to outcourse the Shield mares, to hold them in herd or to drive them to the outside gate. How much money did you leave with young Collin?”

  “I paid him three hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “That is much more than others have paid him. However, the mares are worth more than twice this amount if you can get them off the Shield Ranch and to the public road.”

  I said, “I’ll need to hire some other riders. Would you go with me and help gather the mares? We’ll get some more cowboys.”

  “I doubt that you can hire local men. They know of this trade. They will not risk offending the young Collin by driving these mares.”

  I realized that this old gentleman knew much about the customs of the country and the men that inhabited it, but I didn’t yet care to question him as to how come he knew all these things.

  I heard a noise over toward the mercantile. The old merchant was opening up for a while on Sunday afternoon. When he opened up the back door I said, “I’ll go to the store and buy some more feed and water for our horses.”

  My friend—we’d gotten that far, he’d called me friend—didn’t comment or make any sort of answer, and I walked on over to the store to pay for some more alfalfa hay and another tubful of water. From the back door, I went over to the corral and pulled down the drawbars for my friend’s horse to drink. He got up and stepped with considerable haste over to take care of his horse. He made no comment about my turning his horse out to drink, but you could tell he appreciated it and didn’t want the horse to be any bother to me. He stepped between my horse and his and stood there by his horse’s neck while they drank. The water was still gushing out of the pipe. It was cool even though it wasn’t the best of water, but it was the best that could be had around there for horses.

  Both horses seemed to enjoy their fill. He patted his on the shoulder, and the horse walked back into the corral. I led my horse back and took his bridle off. Both went to munching what little hay they had left. I know I must have been wearing a worried look on my face because my friend turned to me and said, “I have decided that this time the Shield mares will be delivered to the purchaser.”

  “Do you mean that you are gonna help me?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many more men will we need?” I asked.

  “None. You and I shall receive them.”

  This was the first time he had phrased me into a sentence with himself, and I took note of that. He said, “We shall need several hundred feet of small rope. You should purchase it now in order that I may fashion it to our purpose.”

  I didn’t question him. I said, “Well, let’s go into the mercantile store and you pick out the rope that we’ll need.”

  In those days, rope was laid out in coils under the counter. The end of the rope ran through a hole bored in the front of the counter; so you pulled the rope through the hole and unwound whatever amount that you wanted from those big coils. And there were many sizes and kinds of rope; so you walked along the front side of the counter and looked at these rope ends that were sticking out of the holes in the front of the counter. He picked out a very small, tightly woven, quarter-inch rope. He said, “This will be ideal.”

  “How much of it will we need?”

  “How many mares are there?”

  I told him twenty-eight, and he said, “Ten feet—two hundred and eighty feet—perhaps three hundred feet.”

  The old man was standing behind the counter watching and listening to us, but he hadn’t made any comment. I said to him, “We need three hundred feet of this quarter-inch rope.”

  All old counters in those days had some tacks hammered in the counter to mark off three-feet, six-feet, and ten-feet measures of rope. The storekeeper came around to the front side of the counter and went to measuring off the rope. He got to three hundred feet and, as the custom was, he jerked three or four more feet to be sure you were getting good measure.

  I asked, “How much money?”

  “Three cents a foot, señor.”

  So I paid him nine dollars out of my pocket, and by this time my friend had the coil of rope over his arm and was started out the back door. As we approached the shed where we were camping, he asked, “Who else knows that you have purchased the Shield mares?”

  “Nobody else. Nobody has asked, and there’s been nobody around to tell, anyhow.”

  He said, “Be sure that you speak no more of this transaction.” And he sat down and went to cutting the rope into ten-foot lengths.

  I said, “That’s awful small rope t
o hold a horse.”

  “Have no fear, my friend.” And after he had the rope all cut, he began to plat beautiful little square knots in the ends of the rope—one knot in each end of each ten-foot length.

  I said, “This is going to take lots of time. Why don’t you just tie these knots in here?”

  “We have the time. How else might I spend the afternoon?”

  It was a small rebuke, for which I said, “I’m sorry.”

  “It is nothing. You may watch me.” And I watched him. With those long, slender, effective fingers, he platted square knots into that quarter-inch rope about as fast as I could have tied them using a common knot. “Common knots,” he said, “will come undone and permit the rope to ravel. A square knot platted will stay secure and will be more to our purpose. It affords an easy grasp.”

  I just grinned and said, “I’m glad you know what you’re doing. I don’t.”

  He made no reply, but by now it was middle-afternoon, and I thought if the café was open that I would get him some coffee. I said, “I think I’ll mosey around a bit.”

  “Yes. You have some walking to do in order that you may rest tonight.” This was the first suggestion of humor that I had ever heard in his speech.

  I walked up to the café and had a cold drink that wasn’t very cold. It was iced sparingly because ice came once a week on the train. I took some coffee back to my friend in a fruit jar, and he sipped on it and finished the rope a little before dark.

  Next morning we had a quick breakfast, saddled our horses, and set out in a nice, flat walk. We didn’t hurry our horses, and we got there about the right time of day. We rode up to the corrals and, sure enough, the mares were in the corrals. Nobody was around. He stopped and surveyed the situation and told me to ride on up to heaquarters and take my time, but it would be best if I could transact my business and not let anybody come back to the corrals with me. He said that of course they wouldn’t want to—other than they might enjoy seeing the mares break and go back into the wilds of the pasture. But outside of that, they’d have no cause to want to watch me try to move the horses.

  I rode up to the headquarters, and there was no sign of life anywhere until the cook stepped out on the porch and spoke to me. He said that Señor Collin and all the cowboys were at another part of the ranch, but that he had been given instructions to take the money for the rest of the payment on the horses. I got down off my horse and counted it out to him standing on the porch. He asked if I would come in and have a bit to eat, but I told him that I had brought a little grub with me rolled up in a sack behind the saddle, and that I’d go on back and get ready to drive my horses to town.

  He said, “Oh, that’ll be fine,” but you could tell he was a little amused. “Did you bring anyone to help you?”

  I said, “I guess there’s nobody here at the ranch to help me to the road with these mares.” I didn’t really answer his questions, but it sounded to him like I was alone.

  “I suppose there should be,” he said, “but all the boys left early this morning.”

  As I stepped on my horse and turned him back down toward the corrals, I noticed a cowboy’s shadow on the window of the bunkhouse—but I didn’t turn to look. I just rode on. The corrals were between the main headquarters and the public road and off to one side from the regular road maybe half a mile. As I rode up, I saw about half of the mares wearing a little rope tied around their necks right at the throat latch—up close behind their ears and just under their jaws—just as close as a throat latch would fit if it were coming off a bridle. These little ropes were drawn up tight, not enough to choke, but there was a fold of skin drawn up under the rope—no slack and no air at all between the rope and the mare’s neck, not even room to pass your finger.

  My distinguished friend was catching these mares—they were gentle to catch—and putting these little ropes on them with a slip knot that had a little knot tied under it. He explained to me that these little ropes were just exactly as tight as a horse could breathe at a walk, but when the horse started to run and had to expand her nostrils and windpipe, then these ropes would choke. And while the mare was choked, she couldn’t run. She would gasp for breath and stagger. This would make it possible for us to ride around these mares and herd them back in a bunch to drive to the road.

  I had never heard of this trick, but it made sense. He explained to me that it was an old trick that he had learned in Mexico, and that for once the Shield mares were not going to scatter like a covey of quail when they hit the greasewood, mesquite, and cactus. When these mares tried to run, the extra breath they needed would cause them to choke down. We would have no difficulty driving them to the road.

  He said that when we got them to the road that he could give them relief. This didn’t make sense to me—this relief—but all the rest of his plan sounded foolproof, even though I had never seen it tried or heard of it before. Anyway they showed very little fright when he would rope them or walk up and catch them. At the last there were three or four that we had to crowd in behind a gate—push against the fence and turn the gate back against them—in order to reach through the cracks of the fence and tie the little rope on them.

  When we had the last rope on the twenty-eighth mare, he had two ropes left over. He said he didn’t know why he needed an extra, but that it had always been his custom to have an extra rope or two at anything he might undertake in handling horses, which would make sense in anybody’s language. He led his horse into the corral, drove the mares up close to the gate, and told me to open the gate and ride out in front of them—in the hope that they would follow my horse if they didn’t choose to run. Well, I opened the gate and held my horse up to just a modest trot, and he waved his hands and spoke to the mares. As they came out at the gate, there was a little flat in front of the corrals—oh, maybe a quarter to a half mile long—and it was in this little flat that you could drive them a little piece. It was when they hit the brush on the other side that they would break and get away from you.

  We were about halfway across this little flat when the Shield mares all decided to go to the hills. And when they did, they ran past me. He hollered at me in a loud tone of voice to run the mares. He was running all that he could, and he had one of those little ropes in his hand. He would ride up and slap a mare with this rope. Of course it had no sting to it—it was so light and all—but mares that had been on the range, it would cause them to try to run away. In less time than it takes me to tell this, we had the mares strangled and choked and staggering around on the flat, and they were scattered over no more than three or four acres.

  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.