Some More Horse Tradin'

by Ben K. Green

  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.

  As I took the lines off the harness and changed them on one mule to the other and hooked them up like they should be, I couldn’t help but mention to Professor Know-It-All the value of havin’ more common knowledge than a mule. When I had ’em rigged like they should be, I told him to go ahead and drive ’em to the barn and he might just as well plow a row back and I’d meet him at the barn.

  By now, he had grown very silent and the sweat popping out on his brow wasn’t exactly caused by the heat. I handed him the lines and he got on the seat of his cultivator and started the team. The nice little sorrel mare mules stepped over in each furrow that they belonged in and you could tell they were walkin’ much relieved and relaxed from what they had been and were pullin’ that cultivator and plowin’ a beautiful straight row.

  I struck a lope and turned in at the gate that led to the barn and watched him. When he got to the end of the row and should have turned to come to the barn, he turned back down another row. The little mules turned nicely at the turn row at the fence, and after about three more turns like this with me watchin’ across the field from the barn, he finally drove up to the barn. He got up off his cultivator and laid the lines off to one side on the ground and said, “Ben, you have robbed me.”

  I said, “I hardly think so, Professor. However, I’m rather proud of my morning’s work in buyin’ that team of mules and harness.”

  He said, “I have seen what you did.”

  I said, “Yeah, I think it’s got somethin’ to do with the law of physics but I ain’t smart enough to know.”

  By now, he was mad at himself and sick at the deal and said, “I’m going to give you your money back.”

  “No, Professor, that ain’t my money but them mules and that harness do belong to me, and we just as well unhitch ’em from your cultivator so I can take ’em home.”

  He said, “Now let’s talk this over. I originally gave $150 for this pair of mules and I see now that they are still worth it, so I’ll give you $150 for them back.”

  “Well, Professor, I guess that will be all right, but you know education is time-consumin’ and expensive and there ain’t many of us have the advantage and opportunity to get smartened up and I believe I’ll have to charge you $15 for teachin’ you how to rig up the lines on that pair of mules.”

  Well, he slobbered and stomped considerably and gave me another lecture about neighborliness and takin’ advantage of other people and I told him I understood all that but I thought he ought to consider the $15 tuition.

  After he stood for a few minutes, he unwrapped the money so he could mop his sweat with that handkerchief. After he stood for a few more minutes and looked at the team and rubbed them on the head and straightened a wrinkle out of one of the lines, he said, “I’m going to pay you if you won’t tell about this transaction and cause me further embarrassment.”

  I said, “Professor, I won’t exactly make that promise. I’ll just keep this in store until you begin to take advantage of a gatherin’ of friends that just want to visit and that ain’t interested in furtherin’ their education every time you join the crowd.”

  He wrote a check for $50 and put it with the money and handed it to me without any of the nice comments like “Thank you” or “Come back to see me” that you would expect from an educated man, and I in my ignorant way said, “Much obliged,” and stepped on my horse and rode on.

  SADDLE

  MARKS

  The cavalry was buying some remount horses and had put out the word as to the dates when cavalry officers would be in certain Southwest Texas towns to inspect and buy horses. In the years past I had at different times sold the cavalry lots of horses, but it had been a good while since the government had actually been active in the horse market. Most horses of the type and quality that they wanted had been selling to polo buyers and to be used in rodeo sports that were beginning to be popular. Rodeo itself had started to be a profession rather than a holiday pastime for real working cowboys and ranch hands.

  This recent cavalry demand was of course welcomed by horsemen. The cavalry officers had been to Abilene and had spent a couple of days inspecting and buying horses. News had traveled fast back through the cactus and mesquite that the cavalry officers were being extremely choosy, weren’t overlooking any blemishes, and were being very hard about height, size, mouths, soundness, and colors, which to most horse traders meant that this was just a small fill-in or replacement order and a horse would have to be extra good to pass inspection, and the going price
was $165 a head.

  The next closest date that had been announced was an inspection at Brownwood, Texas, the next month. I made a fast trip down through Southwest Texas and talked to a good many local horsemen. Most of them knew about the cavalry order and in those days most horsemen knew whether or not they had a cavalry horse. There were a lot of half thoroughbred horses out of the native mares scattered through the ranch country that were good usin’ horses, but very few of them would pass a rugged military inspection. There was not much slack in the price they would cost and the price they would bring if you had to move ’em very far and if you had one rejected on you, then it would be hard to make any money.

  I spent the night in Del Rio, Texas, and talked horses in the lobby of the hotel with a few ranchers. Some of them said they had horses that would pass inspection but they couldn’t stand to take the price. The next morning I crossed over into Old Mexico and was driving along about twenty-five miles from the border when I noticed a fair-sized band of what appeared at a glance to be top-quality horses that would do for the cavalry, so I turned down a rocky road to a prosperous-looking ranch headquarters and was met at the gate by a well-kept Mexican that spoke good English. He spread the usual amount of Mexican hospitality shown to a stranger from across the border that might be carrying United States money.

  He invited me into a nicely kept patio and pretty soon some of the womenfolk spread the little table with some Mexican-corn-made snacks and brought out some cold water for our enjoyment, all of course with the intention of stimulating conversation. After a while I worked around to the subject of the horses in the trap pasture between the headquarters and the road. In the conversation I learned that there was a rich Mexican who owned the ranch and lived in San Antonio, Texas, and that my fat-faced, talkative entertainer was the ranch manager and he had the authority to sell the horses.

  When he saw I was interested in buying some horses, he loosened up both ends of his tongue considerably and in good Mexican and fair English rattled off of both ends of it. He stood up and called loud to somebody back behind the house. A slender teen-age Mexican kid came running at his call. He was wearing a pair of spoke rowel spurs that weighed as much as his boots and made lots of noise on the Mexican tile. After a quick batch of palaver and hand waving, the young Mexican disappeared toward the corrals and my host turned to tell me that he would have those horses in the corral for me too look at muy pronto.

  I watched as two young Mexicans rode around the horses and bunched them together and started them to the corrals. These were horses that had been brought in regularly and they bunched and headed for the corrals as though they were used every day. This was a band of good solid-colored horses with very few natural white markings and they had the nicest mouths that ever belonged to a bunch of horses. They were all five and six years old and when they were roped out as broncs none of their teeth had been broken or injured and the bars and gums were not damaged. From the front teeth and to the back teeth their mouths were soft and sensitive and had not been cut nor caloused with harsh bits, which was another unusual thing about five- and six-year-old Mexican horses. All the horses had white saddle marks on both sides of their backs that showed very plainly that they had had saddles on for long hours and hard rides. A few had white hairs behind the forelegs on their bodies where the cinch fits, not uncommon in a hot country where horses sweat and lather from the heat.

  I walked around and walked up to a good many of these nicely broke horses and I asked if they rode and handled as good as they behaved when you were around them afoot. Of course, all this time the Mexican foreman had been explaining to me how good these horses were and how great the thoroughbred stallion was that was their papa and how much care had been given these fine horses. While he was telling me all this, I had the young cowboy saddle up a good brown horse. I noticed the cowboy stepped up in the saddle without untracking the horse, which is proof positive that a horse is well-broke to ride or else the cowboy is reckless. The horse galloped off good, changed leads, and made a figure eight just like he was in review at Fort Bliss.

  While we were lookin’ and talkin’, the young cowboy rode six horses and all of them did as well as the first. It was in the hot afternoon and I thought it foolish to ride the rest of these gentle, saddle-marked, cinch-marked good horses. We had been talkin’ about price in a casual sort of way, and as we had moved over to shade under a shed that was roofed with sotol and other cactus stalks, my not-too-dumb Mexican foreman was trying to bring out how much I could pay for the horses instead of how little he could take but neither of us was givin’ out any hard dollar information. By late afternoon I decided that if I was going to buy the horses I had better do so because I wanted to cross back over the border before night and he had already agreed to deliver the horses at the border in about three days at whatever price we settled on.

  The export and import duty at that time was $15 per head and I was figurin’ that into the price of the horses. Then the transporation cost from the border to Brownwood would be something like $5 a head. I thought it would be nice if I could make a real killing on this bunch of horses and not have to be hunting single horses all over the Southwest and buying one at a time. Since this Mexican horse salesman wasn’t too dumb, he pointed out that these horses would be worth more to me in a bunch than buying them one at a time.

  When we had about run out of conversation and he saw I was going to leave and he would finally have to set the price on the horses, he told me he would take $100 a head and deliver the horses to the border and I would pay the money to the owner in San Antonio. Well, I had been involved in arrangements like these before and they weren’t too hard to handle; the purpose of this kind of deal was to get the money out of Mexico without too much difficulty, and if I paid the money in the United States, it would be still a better deal for the San Antonio Mexican rancher.

  When I started my car about an hour and half later, he hadn’t decided to take the $75 that I had offered per head but suddenly he decided to take $80 per head and I made the trade with him. I said that I would call his boss in San Antonio and tell him of the trade and then his boss could send him word to deliver the horses to me at the border on whatever date we set in our final discussions.

  I spent the night in Del Rio and called the ranch owner; he said he would meet me by noon the next day in Del Rio. He turned out to be a very smart Mexican ranch operator who had both American and Mexican citizenship and must have been past seventy years old and a horseman for a lifetime. The trade as I had discussed it with his foreman on thirty-two head of horses was agreeable with him and we sent word by a man—who I guess may have been considered a chauffeur or flunky—to the ranch foreman to have the horses at the border in three days.

  The horses were the ones I had looked at and were in good condition. Several of them had been ridden on the trip. I went through the red tape and paid the duty and brought the horses across the bridge and penned them on this side at the railroad stock pens. We went back to the St. Regis Hotel, where I paid the old gentleman, and then he started back to San Antonio. Late that afternoon I loaded the horses out to be shipped to Brownwood. The railroad connections weren’t direct and the horses were switched around on different tracks and got to Brownwood two days later in fair condition.

  The next day was the day set for horse inspection and I had gotten to Brownwood in time to hire some cowboys to help me show these horses. The old Brownwood Horse and Mule Barns were crowded with prospective cavalry horses from all over the surrounding country, and since the receiving Army officers had only set one day for Brownwood, it was going to be a day of hard, fast inspections and since they had so many horses to pick from, they weren’t gonna take anything that didn’t suit them.

  The next morning it didn’t take long to get rid of the three- and four-year-old horses, which were actually a little young. Then it didn’t take very much eyeballin’ inspection to cut out the coarser and heavier horses that were too big and the ones that were too
small, and by noon they were looking hard at what they would buy. Cowboys were saddling and unsaddling and riding horses between two colonels that were standing about three hundred yards apart. As you rode toward one of them, he caught the horse’s way of travel and as you rode back away from him, he looked for blemishes, the same as the colonel at the other end of the line was doing. They called for walking, trotting, galloping, and reining, and especially figure eights. A horse with a hard mouth or too light a mouth was waved out pretty fast. Almost sundown it dawned on the colonels that they didn’t have as many horses as they were intending to buy and coming up next were my thirty-two head.

  The two young cowboys that I had hired to help show my horses were naturally catchin’ out those that showed a little dried saddle sweat; these were the ones that had been ridden to deliver the herd. I rode two and each one of them rode two and we showed them one right after another and the colonels took all six of these horses in a row. It was nearly sundown and these horses had shown so perfectly that they looked at the rest of ’em at the halter. We led and trotted ’em with the horses we had shown and they gave me a voucher, which was the way they paid you, for thirty head of horses; they rejected two on size.

  I stayed in town that night and the talk around the Brownwood Hotel lobby among the cowboys and horsemen was of me gettin’ thirty head sold and only two rejected, and they wondered how I ever found that many good, sound, uniform horses five and six years old. John Yantis at the bank, whom I knew well, cashed my government voucher the next morning and then I left town.