Some More Horse Tradin'

by Ben K. Green

  I didn’t see what went on that day, but sometime during the afternoon Cindy was out in her backyard where she could hold on to an ornamental iron fence and walk and Pocahontas nickered at her. Cindy held on to the iron fence and made her way back to the alley between the corral that Pocahontas was in and the iron fence of her backyard. When I rode in late that afternoon Cindy came down that iron fence pretty fast and said in a straight forward manner, “That sweet little horse has been nickerin’ all afternoon, and I think it’s because she doesn’t have any water.”

  I said, “Well, Miss Cindy, I have to lead Pocahontas.”

  She laughed real quick and thought that the name Pocahontas was cute. I explained to her that she was an Indian pony and said, “I’ll lead her to the creek and water her now.”

  Cindy started a little argument that I should bring Pocahontas water because the horse’s feet were crippled just like hers. As I started leading the little mare to the creek, I said in a very casual way, “Well, walking on them might do her some good.”

  Cindy had coal-black hair about shoulder length and big dark eyes that made her bleached skin from the lack of sunshine look even whiter than it was. I looked back and Cindy had come across the alley and was trying to follow me and Pocahontas but she didn’t have her crutches with her and it was easy to see that walking was difficult no matter what. I stopped and waited for her to catch up with us. As she rubbed the little mare’s neck and ran her hands through her mane, I handed her the lead rope and said, “Miss Cindy, why don’t you take Pocahontas to water.”

  As she took the rope in one hand, there was a pleased expression on her face that I had seldom seen before. Well, they were pretty well gaited together since neither of them could walk very fast, and Miss Cindy, without knowing it, was holding to Pocahontas’s neck as they braced each other and started on to the water.

  I turned and unsaddled the horse I was riding and put her in the corral and watched and waited for the two to come back up the hill. They were a long time because Pocahontas would graze and Cindy wouldn’t make her move except when Pocahontas wanted to, but after a while they made it back to the barn. Cindy seemed to be walking without being so conscious of her own crippled feet.

  I kept the water cut off at the corral and Cindy was taking Pocahontas to the creek two or three times a day without her folks knowing about it, so nobody was scolding her for walking too much. I noticed in a week’s time that she had rubbed all the rough spots of hair on Pocahontas down to a fine gloss and that Cindy’s pale little face had begun to show some color.

  I decided I had better tell Dr. Chandler what I had done, so I went by his office right after dinner. He was rared back against his rolltop desk in an old high-back swivel chair sound asleep. I didn’t disturb him and sat down to wait. Finally he raised up and asked how long I had been there. I told him that I had a confession to make and he said he was a doctor not a preacher, but he would listen to whatever sins I had committed.

  I went into detail about my mare, Pocahontas, and his patient, Cindy. The old doctor thought the story was real good and he laughed heartily about it and commented that Cindy and Pocahontas were putting something over on her parents. He said he would find some excuse to drop by and visit and take a look at Cindy’s feet and for me to come back tomorrow.

  The next day about the same time I came in and roused him from his nap and he sat there, looked at me and smiled and said, “Ben, I don’t know whether I want to take you in as a partner or just trade for that Indian pony, but I sure need her in my practice. Cindy’s better in several ways. She’s eating better, sleeping better, and her ankles and feet show a little bit of improvement and I would say that she is much lighter hearted from being in the company of one Indian pony than she had been with her family and all the help around the house. I sure hope nothing can happen that would fix that water line in your corral.”

  In a little while Cindy was getting too proud of Pocahontas to be sneakin’ over in my pasture and she began to take her over in her yard to graze and play. Her grandfather and father both came to me to ask if it was all right for her to have the pony for her own as company and to tell me how much care they would give the pony. I told them right quick to leave Cindy and the pony alone—that she could keep her and play with her as much as she saw fit, but that the pony had been foundered and I didn’t want them buying any feed to feed her to make her worse or taking too good of care of her as they had Cindy.

  I decided I ought to work on Pocahontas’s feet and straighten them up as much as I could, so with Cindy watchin’, I sawed the dead long ends of her feet off with a saw and pared around inside of the hooves to where the frog of the hoof would get a little pressure from the ground when Pocahontas walked. Cindy watched all this and talked about it and patted Pocahontas and told her that we were doing it to help her and it would make her feet better.

  Dr. Chandler told me in a few days that Cindy had asked him if he couldn’t straighten her feet the way I had fixed Pocahontas’s and he had given Cindy some special shoes to wear. The old family doctor hadn’t missed a trick; he had had the local bootmaker fix Cindy some little sandals that would support her big toes and the insides of her feet in such a way that she would get more even weight on her instep of her foot and wouldn’t walk so much on the sides and on her little toes. They were just sandals and were light and comfortable to wear in the hot weather.

  Pocahontas never had a bridle on and rarely ever a lead rope. I had fixed a strong leather strap with a buckle on it that Cindy had Pocahontas wear loosely around her neck and when you saw them out for a stroll, they were always walking side by side with Cindy holding on to Pocahontas’s neck. Cindy and Pocahontas became a familiar sight up and down the street from her house to the community grocery store and people would ask her why she didn’t ride her pony. I don’t know what her standard answer was, but they walked side by side as she held on to Pocahontas and as Pocahontas leaned some toward her.

  By late fall, Dr. Chandler had changed Cindy’s sandals to shoes several times and they were doing her far more good. Cindy had grown up and out and gained weight and her color was good and her dark eyes flashed as she smiled and talked about Pocahontas. Of course, the little mare had fallen in love with Cindy and nickered to her every time she went to the house and whenever she heard her voice. I had no real use for Pocahontas that would have justified taking her away from Cindy, and as winter came on, Cindy’s folks built a little shed behind the garage at their house so Pocahontas could be in the warm and dry during the winter.

  That fall Cindy started to public school for the first time. After school she and Pocahontas would walk together either to town or just around the neighborhood and everybody had learned to pat and brag on Pocahontas, which made Cindy beam. Cindy outgrew the physical need for Pocahontas by another summer, but she never outgrew her love for the little mare. She was constantly having a horseshoer or a veterinarian see what they could do for Pocahontas’s feet and kept her until she passed away about the same time that Cindy was a teenage young lady taking dancing lessons.

  BRETHREN

  HORSE

  TRADERS

  Early one fall I had a lot of cattle in the feed lot that I intended to feed until the following spring, which would be at least five or six months. I was mixin’ feed on the floor of the feed barn with a scoop and seed fork and then loadin’ it onto a one-horse wagon and working my saddle mare, Beauty, to the wagon to put the feed out in the troughs. She wasn’t likin’ pullin’ that wagon and I wasn’t likin’ for her to have to.

  It was first Monday and I decided I’d buy a work team for this winter feeding job. There were plenty of teams around on the trade square either harnessed and hitched to wagons or standin’ tied to traders’ wagons waitin’ for somebody to want to see ’em hooked. There was a pair of well-matched bay horses about the right size, six and seven years old, full brothers, that a well-dressed old man was drivin’ around hitched to an empty wagon. He was puttin’ on right
smart of a spiel about how good a team they were.

  There was another fellow that had about as good a pair of horses but had a little better-lookin’ harness on ’em. He had been tryin’ to sell his team at about the same price as the old gentleman, and there was little or no difference in the manner and appearance of these two horse owners and teams. I guess the reason that I had looked at these two teams the most was that they were already hitched to wagons and were being driven around, where most of the other traders’ stock were tied to wagons and you had to pick out what you wanted and get ’em hooked up. It was early in the day and I thought as the sun got lower that the price might go down, so I didn’t hurry to give either of these old gentlemen $165 for their team of horses.

  I rode uptown to a chili joint and ate dinner and stopped back by at the wagonyard and was tellin’ three or four fellows about needin’ a team and about the two teams I had found and how little difference there seemed to be between them. Mr. Nix spoke up to say if one team suited me as well as the other, he believed he would buy the team that the best man had because more dependence could be put on his word about their pullin’ quality and disposition. Then, Cat Medford said he had looked at both teams and felt like he ought to tell me that the lighter-colored pair was owned by an old retired preacher and the other team was owned by a sin gin’ school teacher and he didn’t believe he’d put any store by either of ’em’s word.

  Mr. Nix shamed him for such a remark and said in that case either team would probably be all right. Clint Hardin spoke up and said that if he was goin’ to have to listen very much to either one of them, he’d rather listen to the singin’ school teacher than the preacher and we all had a big laugh about that.

  I wasn’t offerin’ nothing in trade and I wasn’t buyin’ these horses for tradin’ purposes, so I was being a little more careful than I normally would have been just swappin’ and sellin’. I rode back down to the trade square and looked around at some of the other horses but didn’t find any matched teams that looked as good in harness as these that I had in mind. I rode around and made loose conversation till past the middle of the afternoon. That’s when more people begin to tend to business and there was a chance that these two teams might both get away, so I decided I’d better make up my mind.

  I offered the preacher $150 for his team and he gave me a little talkin’ to about honesty; he said he hadn’t put a false price on his horses and he didn’t intend to take off anything. Well, that kind of a speech didn’t sound good to a young horse trader, so I rode over to the wagonyard.

  The singin’ school teacher looked like he had a prospect and I didn’t say anything until this would-be buyer walked off. I offered him $150 for his team and he hemmed and hawed and changed feet and talked about what a good team they were. He said he thought they were worth more than he had ’em priced at and he hesitated to take less. I asked him about sellin’ me the harness with ’em (I didn’t really need the harness), and I put in a little conversation that it looked to me like the harness was pretty small and tight for horses of this size. He said that he wanted to keep his harness because it just fit a pair of mules he was workin’ and that it was awful tight on these good big horses.

  One horse seemed to be a little uncomfortable. His britchin’ was taken up real short to the tongue and you could tell by lookin’ at the ground where he stood that he had moved his hind feet around a lot. Well, I had watched this music man drive this team during the day and they drove nice and were well matched and walked good with each other. After a little more light conversation I walked off, but not off so far that he couldn’t come hunt me up on the other side of the trade square.

  About an hour before sundown, he found me and said he hadn’t had a better bid and if I would split the difference with him, he would sell me the horses. Well, I thought the daylight was in my favor and I’d just outstay him for that other $7.50 and told him I had bid all I wanted to give for ’em. He said, “Well, pay me, and I’ll unharness them and you can have them.”

  I counted out $150 in bills, and it seemed to me that he was awfully anxious to get that money jobbed down in his pocket before he started unhookin’ the team.

  When you unhook a team from a wagon, you usually unhitch the traces from one horse and step behind him and reach over the tongue and unhook the traces on the other horse. But this wasn’t the way he did it. He completely unhooked and unharnessed one horse and put my halter on him. I was sittin’ horseback and he handed me the halter rope. I thought this was odd, but I just said to myself, “That’s just another man’s way of unhookin’ horses.” He took the bridle off the other horse and put my halter on him and handed me the halter rope with the horse still hooked to the wagon. He had a hard time pullin’ the britchin’ straps off and gettin’ enough slack from the rein. Then he unhooked the breast yoke and slipped the harness and collar off the horse and slapped him on the rump so he would move up and I could lead them off. When he did, this last horse walked straight with his front end but his hind end kind of trailed off sideways, so much so that it was very noticeable, and directly his hind end changed sides and bumped into the other horse, then I knew for sure I was in real trouble. I thought to myself, “That old boy’s probably hittin’ High C for the cheatin’ he’s given me.”

  I started to the wagonyard with ’em and the right-hand horse with the loose rear end had to brace himself against the other horse to walk since he didn’t have all that tight harness and wasn’t strapped to the wagon tongue. As my luck would have it, I met John Barber as I started toward the wagonyard gate and he laughed in his best voice and said, “Benny, what are you goin’ to do with that ‘bobby’?”

  I had heard of “bobbies” but I’d never seen one. A horse that has been injured in the coupling in the hindquarters and the loin and doesn’t have good control of his hindquarters is referred to as a “bobby,” and he is worthless unless you want to drive him in a tight harness to an empty wagon. About this time I remembered what Cat Medford had said about buyin’ horses from a singin’ school teacher.

  Jess Manus had a pen of horses and mules in the wagonyard next to where I put my team and later in the afternoon he bought the preacher’s horses. The preacher had backslid a little bit on that speech about price and had sold ’em to Jess for $140. The next morning I came down to the wagonyard before Jess got there, I heard an awful noise and glanced over in his pen. There was the explanation for the preacher changin’ his mind about the price: the best lookin’ of the two horses—if there was any difference in ’em—was standin’ over the water trough tryin’ to suck a little water and was roarin’ with an awful case of the heaves. There was a faint smell of turpentine that the old preacher had used to shut the heaves down for a few hours.

  Cat Medford walked up and looked over the fence at ’em and had a good laughin’ spell. He put a fresh dip of snuff in his mouth and turned like he was leavin’ in a hurry, so I asked, “Cat, where you goin’?”

  As he blew a little cloud of dry snuff, he said, “I’m goin’ to hunt Mr. Nix and find out who’s the best man in this case.”

  TEXAS

  COW HORSES

  AND THE

  VERMONT

  MAID

  The Texas Cowboys’ Reunion at Stamford, Texas, when it was first begun was a real western, enjoyable holiday. Cowboys gathered from far and near—working cowboys along with old-timers that had been good cowboys—all gathered at Stamford and had a two- or three-day rodeo. The chuck wagons from Swenson’s, SMS, the Four Sixes, the Pitchfork—and I don’t know who-all—would come in and feed all the visitin’ cowboys. It was an unorganized kind of free-for-all rodeo held strictly for working cowboys before there were too many professionals in the business. The only rules that these rodeos were governed by were the unwritten rules of fair play that range cowboys of that day had worked by all their lives. Of course, the area boss, Scandalous John Selman, an old-time ranch foreman, had the final say if there was a tie in any of the contests.

&n
bsp; Well, I was standin’ out a way from the SMS chuck wagon—oh, just a little distance under the lacy shade of a mesquite tree by my horse—eatin’ dinner. And when I say dinner, I mean it was high noon and I was eatin’ barbecued beef and beans and potatoes and sourdough biscuits—the stuff that cowboys could do a day’s work on—and it was sure good. Behind me was a pair of big dun chuck-wagon mules that would attract anybody’s attention. I looked up, and Will Rogers was walkin’ over toward me and these mules.

  He looked at the mules, then he turned and started by me and ’course stopped and said “Howdy.” He said, “You’re ridin’ a good horse.”

  I said, “Yessir, I’ve got some good horses. I’ve had some horses that you wound up with in years past.”

  He stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Will Rogers. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Ben Green. You bought some polo horses from some Texas shippers out in California a few years back that I trained.”

  He turned all smiles, and we went to talkin’. Sure enough, he’d had a Rollie Bred horse that Rollie White from Brady, Texas, had bred, called Big Enough. I’d put the schoolin’ on ’im. He had liked Big Enough and remembered all about him and how good he had handled, so we were big friends in just a few minutes. I didn’t waste any time in tellin’ him that my ranch was covered with good young horses that were sound and clean and ready to do anything that you wanted to do on horseback—and that the market was awful bad—and what did he think about me shippin’ a load of them out to California?

  “Well, Ben,” he said, “don’t do that. The West Coast is covered with good horses. There’s a whole lot of people out there in show business that ain’t eatin too regular. Their horses suffer ‘fore they do. You know them manicured cowboys that we got around these show places, the first thing they can do without when times gits hard is a horse. To begin with, they just wanted him ’cause somebody else had one. If you was to give me another horse, I don’t know what I’d do with him. I’m gonna have to bob the tails on the ones I got now to make room to shut the corral gate.”