Some More Horse Tradin'

by Ben K. Green

  That fall the government put out another order for some horses, the cavalry inspection to be at the remount station at San Angelo, Texas. I had six horses that I knew were sound, typy, and well schooled and that the remount officers would love at first sight. I thought that they were so good that they might wind up as officers’ mounts, so I was on hand early the morning of inspection. Colonel Voorhies came down the line looking at horses and when he saw me he stopped in his tracks. He went into the damnedest fit that I ever saw a military individual have. He wanted to know how I got saddle marks on twenty-four head of horses that had never been rode. He said they crippled half of his sergeants and stable hands and that six of them never were broken and were disposed of in order to keep from killing off the rest of the soldiers in the remount station.

  He got this off his chest with an abundance of profanity very expertly blended into the declaration, and I was at a loss to know what was the matter because all the horses we rode had been exceptionally well mannered. When I said, “I’ve got six horses to show you here now,” he ordered me off the grounds with my horses and said he hoped that from then on I would sell horses to the enemy. He said I would be performing a great patriotic service for my country and there was no doubt that if I furnished the enemy all their horses, we would win the war without a battle.

  This was a pretty bad blow to a horse trader that thought he had a good reputation with the remount buyers and I was at a complete loss to know what the problem was. I saw him again at dinner and he threw another fit and called across the dining room. An old gray-headed crippled-up sergeant came hobbling across to where we were and the colonel introduced me as the man that broke up the remount station last summer.

  This didn’t make me feel any better but this old sergeant had lived with more bad horses than the colonel had and wanted to visit with me about the horses because he knew, the same as I, that he might face another bunch like them sometime. So we sat down in the corner of the lobby. He told me how rank those horses were with a man on them and how gentle they handled around the post. He said he couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t shed any light on this deal by telling them that I got these horses in Old Mexico, but for at least a while my government horse business had balked.

  Early that fall while it was still hot and dry and dusty, I had an order from some fellows in Kansas for some big, big steers. By reason of the type and quality of cattle that the order called for and due to the difference in price, I again crossed the border at Del Rio to try to buy some big Mexican steers. I was driving along that same road and as I passed that Mexican headquarters where I bought the bad horses, I still wondered what they did to me but I didn’t intend to stop and ask.

  A few miles down the road I saw a bunch of horses wearing old-timey, big-horned Mexican saddles and some had as many as three heavy woven saddle blankets on and all the saddles were double-cinched and the horses were just wearin’ hackamores without any lead rope on them. There was a small Mexican kid, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, driving this bunch of horses down the fence line in a long lope. They were wringing wet with sweat and lather working out from under the cinches and saddles, and I drove along the road behind real slow to see what was going on. As these horses came to a big earthen pool, they stopped and lined up around the pool to drink. As they left the water, they shaded up in some mesquite trees and some of ’em started to roll with their saddles on. Then I noticed that some of these saddles didn’t even have stirrups on ’em. This Mexican kid watered his horse and rode up in the shade.

  I stopped my car and crawled through the fence but before I got far I turned back to the car and got a big jug full of ice water. Well, I talked to the Mexican kid awhile. We made signs and he talked some English and that ice water made a big hit with him and we got real friendly. I told him about how it was north of the border and he listened.

  It was awful hot in that Mexican sunlight and before my ice water ran out, I asked him where he was taking the horses and he said “Nowhere” in Mexican and waved his hands and finally explained to me that he was just taking them around and around that pasture. I said, “Why have you got saddles on ’em.” And in broken English with a big grin on his face and waving both hands, he said that he run the horses and get them real hot to where the blankets and the saddles will make white spots come on their backs and on their sides and some damn silly gringo will come by and buy them for broke.

  FENCE

  TROUBLE

  As early as I can remember, Joe D. Hughes of Houston was the biggest contractor in Texas or maybe in the world that moved dirt to build railroad beds, whether it be dirt fills or excavation. Then he moved on into building the early-day roadbeds and highways when teams and horse-drawn equipment was still used. As the oil industry developed, Joe D. Hughes moved into the oil fields with his teams to do the dirt excavation for slush pits, the building of roads and the movement of oil well machinery, and later on to build pipelines. This was at a time when almost all dirt movement was with teams. Joe D. Hughes would buy a carload of big, stout, sound mules anytime, and it was said that he once had fifteen hundred teams working at dirt movement in Texas at one time.

  At breakfast one morning before daylight in the old Stockyards Hotel at Fort Worth, he told me that he especially needed some great big mules—sixteen hands and over and as heavy as he could get ’em—and if I knew where there was even one team, he would be back the following Monday and take time to look at ’em.

  Mules seldom got this big and I knew they would be hard to find. I wasn’t much more than a kid in the horse and mule business and it was pretty big of Old Man Hughes to take time to trade with me on what few head I usually had. However, he had always been a good buyer and was always encouragin’ me, I guess because I was a kid. I told him I would have one pair for him to look at when he came back next week.

  I knew a man on the Clear Fork of the Trinity River about twenty miles west of Fort Worth that had a pair of seal-brown horse mules as big as Joe D. Hughes had described or would ever want, so I saddled up early next morning and rode into this fellow’s feed lot a little after dinnertime.

  This pair of mules could jump any kind of a fence, but he didn’t know that I knew it. He fed steers and also kept a bunch of young mules on feed, but this pair of big mules that he worked to the feed wagon could be in any lot they wanted to. They might be together or they might be separated because they could stand flat-footed and jump any fence he had. This, of course, he intended to keep a secret from me.

  He was in the feed barn mixin’ feed to be put out that afternoon. After we visited a little while, he knew I hadn’t rode twenty miles to ask about his health and asked, “Ben, what didya come after?”

  I described the pair of horse mules I wanted just like I didn’t know he had any, and he said, “I’ve got the very team for ya.”

  Well, he didn’t know which fence they had jumped last, and he said, “Well, I don’t know where the boys turned ’em when they unhitched ’em at dinner, but they’re in one of the pens here in the feed yard.”

  I left my horse standin’ tied outside and we walked through the alley until he spotted them in one of the corrals eatin’ out of a trough with the cattle. He hastened to explain that he had rather turn a work team in with a pen of cattle because they were so much easier to catch than turn them in with the other mules.

  We walked into the feed yard and I held the gate open while he drove the mules into the alley. Oddly enough, they let him walk up to ’em and put halters on ’em without tryin’ to jump another fence. They were six or seven years old, full brothers, and, of course, perfectly matched, no scars or blemishes, with just a little white hair in the manes where their collars worked, which proved that they were sure enough work mules.

  He didn’t price ’em too high because there weren’t a lot of buyers for that kind of mule, and I knew by the grapevine that he was tired of wonderin’ where they were because of their jumpin’ habits, so I decided to contest him about the pri
ce. He had asked $350 for the team and, of course, I immediately took off $50 and offered $300. All the while I was askin’ various questions about the mules’ habits and disposition, and finally I asked him, “Ed, will these mules stay in a fence of any kind or do they have to be in high fences like you’ve got here in the feed yard?”

  He assured me in firm tones that I need not have any fear, that a one-wire fence would hold ’em just as good as a fence five wires high. I took him at his word and he finally took $325 for the mules and in the deal furnished me halters and rope to put on ’em. By middle of the afternoon I had started back to Fort Worth leadin’ the fine big pair of sure-’nuff-Joe-D.-Hughes-kind-of-mules.

  I knew what I had, so I took them to the Burnett-Yount Horse and Mule Barn in Fort Worth and put the two in a big double stall where there would be no possibility of them gettin’ away. I didn’t enter this pair in Monday’s auction and sure enough, Mr. Hughes came by and gave me $400 for the pair. This was late fall and the mule business was good all season.

  In the late spring I was drivin’ a herd of horses and mules up the Clear Fork Road toward Weatherford when I met the man that had sold me the big mules. He had started to Aledo but said he would have time to turn around and go back to his place, which was only three or four miles, if I wanted to sell him a pair of little, hard-twisted, sandy-land-type mules that he had picked out while we held them in the road.

  We talked a good deal about the price of this pair of smooth-mouthed mules, but they weren’t worth a lot of money. He said he needed a light team for that summer to build fence with, and after enough horse traders’ conversation to where neither one of us felt we had been too easy to do business with, he gave me $175 for this pair of little mules.

  Several times in our conversation he had asked me, “Will these little mules jump fence?”

  Of course, I knew he had a guilty conscious about that pair of big mules he had sold me, but their bad habit hadn’t cost me any trouble at all. I had never let on that I knew they were a jumpin’ pair of mules, and each time I answered him, I told him I would guarantee ’em not to jump a fence. He was about to write out a check when we came even with the lane that turned up to his place, and he asked me again in dead earnest, “Ben, you know these little mules won’t jump?”

  I said, “Ed, all mules have some kind of bad habit and I’m not sure whatever else might be the matter with ’em, but if they jump a fence, I’ll give ’em to you.”

  That seemed to settle the argument and he took his little mules on up to his house and I drifted my herd on toward Weatherford.

  He sent this pair of little mules to the back side of the ranch where there was a barn and some wire-fence corrals, and a man to start work buildin’ fence. The next morning they found the little mules out in a big pasture and had considerable trouble gettin’ ’em back in the corral. Three or four days later, they were in a neighbor’s pasture and Ed had to send two men to catch ’em and bring ’em home. They were out and gone again the next week and Ed came to town after his money.

  I said, “Ed, this is goin’ to disappoint you, but I don’t believe the little mules jumped the fence.”

  He went into a fair tantrum and told me that when mules got out three or four times in a week they’d have to be fence-jumpers. I asked him where they were then, and he said that best he knew they were in the corral at the fencer’s camp, but he didn’t know how long they’d be there. He wanted me to go out with him, so he could prove to me that they were jumpin’ fence. I hesitated to go with him, but he said he would bring me straight back to town.

  As we got in sight of the wire corral, it was late afternoon and the little mules had just finished eatin’ their oats for supper. As we drove up, one of them stuck his head under the wire fence where one wire was loose at the bottom, dropped down on his knees, and crawled through to the outside where the grass was greener. He turned around and made a little mule conversation and the other little mule came to the same spot and dropped down on his knees, stuck his head under the loose bottom wire, and crawled out.

  Ed nearly swallowed his teeth and started to turn red in the face and cuss and I said, “The agreement was if they jumped the fence, I’d give you your money back. It’s gettin’ late, so take me back to town. You know you don’t want me to spend the night with you in the humor that you’re in.”

  FOREIGN

  TRADE

  It was late spring and the horse and mule business was about to taper off for the summer. The farmers had already bought whatever fresh teams they needed to start their year’s work of making a crop and it was a natural thing for the major portion of the horse and mule business to slack off until fall. However, a trader would have some business all summer on riding horses of various kinds. It was too early in the year for the cattle in the country to be fat enough to be slicked off, and, being a trader, I was goin’ to have trouble stayin’ in business the next thirty or forty days until the summer cow business started.

  I had brought my last little bunch of work mules in to the Fort Worth Horse and Mule Market on Sunday and went over to the Texas Hotel in the main part of Fort Worth and spent the night.

  The next morning when I got on the elevator to come down to the lobby, there were two handsome young men dressed in foreign military uniforms and I could tell at a glance by their hard-top boots, their little legged britches, and knob spurs that they belonged to some country’s cavalry. As I gave ’em the once-over, the blond, light-complexioned one smiled and said in a foreign brogue, “You look the part of a cowboy.”

  I said, “Well, I hope so. If I didn’t, I’d be counterfeit because I’m sure not anything else.”

  It was early in the morning and I felt good and thought I would be nice to foreigners and said, “You look the part of a general.”

  They both laughed about the “general” part, and, of course, I knew so little about military uniforms that so far as I was concerned, they may have been generals.

  When we left the elevator and started across the lobby toward the dining room, I said, “You generals just as well have breakfast with me. It’s not often that I get to associate with such military personalities.”

  We went in and picked out a table, and as we were about to sit down, they introduced themselves. One was a captain and the other a colonel in the Italian cavalry. As the morning breakfast progressed, they told me they were in America to buy pack mules for the Italian army. Well, my conversation brightened up considerably because of that little bunch of mules that I had in that morning’s sale.

  We had a big visit and they asked me quite a bit about the Texas mule market. Of course, I didn’t run it down none and asked if they would care to see my mules before the auction started. They thought that that would be fine, and since they didn’t know their way around much and neither of us had cars, I turned guide for them and took ’em on the right streetcar to get us to North Fort Worth.

  We went to Ross Bros. Horse and Mule Barn where the sale was to be held that particular Monday and Tuesday. Wad Ross and C. B. Teems and other horse and mule dealers rushed out to greet the “Generals” and tell them they were expectin’ them and all that stuff, and these military gentlemen gently brushed them off and followed me on down to look at my mules.

  Denny, the barn foreman, came up and offered to help show my mules and we turned them out one at a time on the plank alley for the Italians to inspect. By now we had gotten real friendly and I was callin’ them Capitan and Colonel and they were callin’ me by my first name or sometimes Cowboy. They told me that twelve of my twenty mules would sure pass their inspection and they would bid on them.

  I asked how long they were goin’ to be in the mule market in Texas and the Colonel spoke up and said it might take several weeks to fill their needs. They just didn’t know how many of the right kind of mules would be coming to the Fort Worth market. I explained to them that since I knew now the type of mules they wanted I probably could bring in as many as a carload or more of the right
kind the next week. They encouraged me to go buy whatever mules I thought would pass their inspection—but the mules had to be halter-broke to lead and handle, but they didn’t have to be broke to work or ride.

  They were rather busy during the auction, and, of course, all the mule dealers around were tryin’ to get to them one way or another. Wad Ross and Parker Jamison had taken them in hand so that nobody else could talk to them. They were good bidders on my mules and the ones they didn’t bid on sold way too cheap.

  Late that afternoon I got a chance to tell them that I would be back next week with some mules for them to send to Italy. I saddled old Charlie and rode out about dark. Charlie was a good road horse with a long, head-noddin’, swingin’ fox trot, and after I crossed the Clear Fork of the Trinity on the Old White Settlement Road where there was very little traffic, I dozed off to sleep. Charlie pawed on the barn gate at home about midnight to wake me up.

  I knew where there were some mules up about Graham and Graford northwest of home so I saddled old Beauty the next morning and led Charlie. You nearly always needed two horses on these long rides if you bought any stock to handle.

  It took me several days to ride up to the country around Graham where I knew there had been some good young mules—and I was hopin’ they were still there. Graham Stewart, who was a good rancher and especially a steer operator, had thirty-four head of mules on his ranch that in his terms were gettin’ in his way, and he wanted to sell ’em. I think he had gathered these mules up as payment on some paper and maybe had bought a few of ’em. but I don’t believe he had raised any of ’em. In spite of this, they were a pretty uniform set of mules.