Horse Tradin'

by Ben K. Green

  He said: “That’s beside the point.”

  “Well, might be,” I said, “but this labor of love that you’ve been engaged in—not for the money but for the sheer pleasure—selling the Easter Lily could be the way you’ve been helping pay the feed bills on them horses you stand around there with their manes sheared and their tails pulled, looking like a cross between a jackass and a bull because society thinks they ought to look different than a natural horse. For the sake of society you wouldn’t mind messing up a good horse.”

  “Oh,” he said, “those are things you don’t understand. I’d be willing to take the mare back and pay you a reasonable price for the trouble you’ve been to; and of course, you’d take the horse back in the trade.”

  I said: “Mr. Wise, that’s a nice big old dun horse, and he looks good, and he’s gentle. Society idiots and small children can ride him—and old men like you. He won’t hurt you, I don’t think. But he’s not a good active horse. He’s a little slow on the uptake and a little slow heading a yearling. He can do a lot of things it takes stout horses for. Could be—no better than you’re getting along in the horse business—you’re going to have to make a crop, and you ought to keep him. He’d work, I think, if you put a collar on him; and I don’t want him back.”

  This seemed to be some sort of a shock to him, and he said: “In that case, I’ll pay the $500 that I priced the mare to you, and keep the horse.”

  I said: “Well, that’s nice of you, but I’m thinking about that summer price. You said she was worth about $1,000.”

  He said: “I doubt there would be anybody with money enough to afford a thousand-dollar mare in this area, but there are places she might be worth that.”

  I said: “Well, you can’t tell. That might be my barn.”

  “Oh,” he said, “I don’t think you can ever get $1,000 for her.”

  “I don’t think so either,” I said, “but it’s going to be fun to ride her after I get her over being barn crazy.”

  He asked: “How do you break a mare from being barn crazy?”

  And I asked back: “Didn’t they learn you that in the cavalry, or in the East, wherever that is? If they did,” I added, “it looks like you didn’t do so well, so I’m going to try my hand at it, Texas style.”

  By that time I’d finished eating my pie, and I went back into the café and got a drink of water and reset my hat and shook myself a little bit, and said: “Well, Mr. Cush, I believe I’ll rig up and leave.”

  He stepped back away from my horses—didn’t open his mouth. His lip was quivering a little bit and he was sort of pale around the corners of his mouth.

  I said: “You look sick. I don’t know what’s the matter with you, but maybe you can take a pill for it.”

  Then I tied the Easter Lily back to Beauty’s saddle horn and stepped on her. I really intended to ride Beauty and lead the Easter Lily the rest of the way, but for his benefit I thought I’d better ride her. I untied Beauty and took her bridle off and put it back on her saddle horn, so the bridle reins wouldn’t get in her way, and spoke to her; she started moving. The Easter Lily started to move, but all of a sudden she had a lapse of memory. She started to whirl and pull on the rope. I squalled at Beauty and she pulled the rope tight. The Easter Lily flopped on the ground and started to sulk. In the meantime I managed to get off. By that time the twelve or fifteen people that were in Milsap had gathered around. The Easter Lily was lying on the ground moaning and groaning. Beauty had the halter rope pulled so tight that her neck was stretched hard.

  Mr. Wise rushed up to the Easter Lily. He was reaching over to Beauty’s saddle horn, and he said: “I’m going to untie that halter rope before she hurts herself.”

  In his hurry he tripped (maybe over my boot toe) and fell in the dirt about halfway across the Easter Lily’s neck. This brought her out of her sulking and made her fight her head enough to keep Mr. Wise off balance, and he couldn’t get off the ground. I didn’t think he was going to hurt my mare any more, and I didn’t try to get him up. Two men rushed up and got hold of him and dragged him out of the way and helped him to his feet. He had dirt and scare all over him.

  All the time I was trying to buy the Easter Lily, I never had looked at Mr. Wise very close. I was always looking at the horse. If you want to get a real picture of a man or a horse, get him in a tight and see what he does under the stress and strain. This was the first time I had taken a hard look at Mr. Wise. He had the starch knocked out of him, and his face was about the color of an eggshell. His eyes had sunk into his head and he was real ghostly looking. This was the first time I had noticed that he was so narrow-eyed you could punch both of them out with a hairpin without spreading the pin. Without that fancy shoulder-padded coat, he would be about half as long as a wagon tongue and not as thick. As I stepped between him and the Easter Lily, I thought to myself: “The cavalry was bound to have heaps better men than Mr. Cush Wise, or we would have lost the war.”

  This time the Easter Lily rode off like she was supposed to. I got home late in the afternoon and fed my other horses and unsaddled Beauty and kind of rubbed her around a little bit and fed her good. She hadn’t had a very hard day’s work, as far as she was concerned. She could drag two or three mares that far. I didn’t feel like I had mistreated her any, and she didn’t either.

  My barn had four stalls in it, a feed room, and a saddle room. I took the Easter Lily and started to put her in a stall, and she almost tried to run over me to get into the stall. All of a sudden it dawned on me that that might be a mistake.

  I led her into the back lot and gave her a drink of water and about half a block of alfalfa hay. I didn’t give her a bite of grain. The next morning I saddled her up and started to ride away. She threw a fit and tried to go back to the barn. I let her go, then led her into the back lot again and left her where she could get water. That night I gave her a little hay.

  By morning she looked pretty drawed. She was hungry, and she nickered when I was feeding the other horses. When I led her through the barn she tried to smell at the feed troughs, but I led her on like I thought she had been in the land of plenty all the night before. I rode her off, and she got in the middle of the road and started to throw that fit. I jabbed her about twice with my spurs, and she hit that fox trot and rode on away—but she showed the signs of no feed and hard riding.

  I rode her out into the edge of town, where I had a little pasture with some more horses and a little doghouse-looking place where I kept some feed. I got out about a half gallon of oats and poured them out onto a slab of concrete, took the bits out of her mouth, and let her eat that feed. It wasn’t much, and she was hungry; but when I rode her back to town, she did have the nicest fox trot anybody has ever ridden on a horse. I put her in the back lot with a little bit of alfalfa hay, but not very much, after I had rubbed her back and tousled her ears with my bare hands—this was my way of telling a spoilt mare when I was ready to make peace if she was.

  Next morning I had some horse work to do, and I saddled one of my other horses and went to move some mules eight or ten miles out in the country for a horse trader friend of mine. He was putting them out in an oat field—the oats were green this time of year. I got back to town late in the afternoon. It was a pretty winter day, and I saddled the gray mare. This time I took time to brush and curry and clean her up pretty good, and then I saddled her and led her out in front of the barn and stepped on her. I had put about a gallon of oats in a towsack and rolled it up and tied it on the back of my saddle.

  When we hit the middle of the road, she didn’t offer to fly back or look back at the barn or do anything nasty. She stuck her ears up and started off to ride on down the road. When we got close to the little pasture in the edge of town, she looked up and started to turn in the gate, and nickered a little bit. I reined her past the gate and rode her on down the road. It was about thirty minutes before dark, I guess. I stopped beside the road and scratched a place in the grass; I took the oats off the back of the saddle a
nd poured them on the ground. I took the bits out of her mouth so she could eat oats. This time she was getting about a gallon of oats, which was the most feed she’d had now in three days. She finished the feed and ate the grass down. You could tell she was sure hungry, and she’d gotten a new lease on life and a change of disposition.

  I rebridled her and rode her back to town. This time I went downtown with her for the first time. I rode her across the square and tied her to a big telephone post down by Hudson’s drugstore. I got off her and walked up and down the street and went to a picture show and came back late, about ten o’clock. Then I got on her and rode home and put her in the back of the lot, and this time I gave her a whole block of alfalfa hay. And of course she could get plenty of water.

  The next morning it was a bad cold morning; I didn’t much want to get out in the weather, but along about that time I did need to keep schooling my mare. So I fixed me up some feed and tied it on my saddle and rode out another direction from town. I found a windbreak behind a little hill in the curve of the road and stopped there and poured the feed out on the grass for the Easter Lily.

  I kept up this kind of practice for about thirty days. I got the mare to where she was getting all the feed she needed and had begun to mend, and the skinned places on her were getting real well and the hair was coming back. Her disposition and outlook on life had changed considerably. Her hair was a little rougher and a little longer, because I hadn’t been stabling her. The Easter Lily had always associated that nice big stall with feed, water, and hay, and with brushing and currying and petting; a barn was a place where you were looked after and cared for, bragged about and admired. The little ride she’d been used to in the small pasture behind the barn never had been for very long and never had kept her out in the sunshine too long, or away from feed and water, so she hadn’t objected to that. Well, I brought her to realize that a barn didn’t mean much; it just meant she’d stand outside with a little hay. I had made her realize that any time she was being ridden, somewhere down the road she’d get fed. And that had made her decide that traveling wasn’t such a bad thing after all, because the feed was at the end of the road and not back at the barn.

  I rode the mare most of the winter, a little off and on, and sometimes made long, hard rides. Her disposition had changed entirely. Her body and legs had hardened, and she was even better looking than she’d been when she was so soft. I’d fed her just most anywhere by then, and in the wagonyard, but I had never made a practice of giving her an undue amount of attention at home. I let her discover that home or barn wasn’t just the haven of rest she’d thought it was when she was in Cush Wise’s stable at Mineral Wells.

  Occasionally, I would learn that Mr. Wise had been inquiring about my mare, and once in a while I’d see somebody from Mineral Wells, and they’d ask me how I was getting along with the Easter Lily. She was a delightful mare to ride, but she didn’t have much stock sense. She didn’t know how to drag a mule or catch a wild calf, and the fact that she was a gaited mare kept her from having any speed at the run. I really didn’t have any great use for her when I was working stock, and sometimes she would go for several days without being ridden.

  The winter broke and spring followed, and the grass got green and the mesquite leafed out. It was a nice balmy time of year, not yet quite hot weather. I rode the Easter Lily on special occasions, and everybody did think she was a beautiful mare. She created a lot of comment. People would stop on the sidewalk when we passed and look around and watch her. She had a beautiful way of going. I’d gotten her mane and tail combed and all the dapples back, and she was looking like she did when I first traded for her.

  One afternoon I’d been out in the country moving some stock, and was riding Beauty. I came into town late in the afternoon, and when I stopped at the drugstore they told me there had been a lady in there looking for me. That was rather unusual; the ladies, young or old, didn’t look for me much. I asked what she looked like, and they told me she was a nice-looking lady with a chauffeur driving her around. They said she had spent some time there that afternoon, but they didn’t know whether she’d gone or not. Well, that aroused my curiosity, but it didn’t dawn on me that it was the elegant horsewoman from Kentucky. I thought maybe it was somebody who owned some land around there and wanted some stock moved, or wanted to sell some horses or steers or something of the sort. I dismissed it from my mind and started on down to the wagonyard. And sure enough, I met a long black automobile with a beautiful woman in the back seat.

  The car stopped, and the woman stuck her head out of the door and asked: “Are you Ben Green?”

  I said: “Yes, ma’am.”

  She said: “I understand that you have my mare.”

  I said: “No, I don’t guess so. I haven’t stole any mares lately.”

  She had a nice bubbling-spring kind of a laugh, and she thought that was funny, and she said: “No, the mare that Mr. Wise sold you.”

  I said: “Oh, the Easter Lily!” Of course, I’d already figured that out in my mind.

  She said: “Yes. I’m told that you have cured her of her bad habits.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said, “I think I have, and I’d like to know how she got such a habit.”

  She said that she hadn’t ridden the mare much while she had her in Mineral Wells, the year before, but she’d left her there at the stable and thought possibly Mr. Wise might have spoiled the mare some. And she probably spoiled her too, because she didn’t ride her out in the countryside or around town. She’d usually go down and just ride her for a few minutes in that little pasture. Possibly, she said, everybody had contributed to the mare’s being ruined, by not realizing that they were doing it.

  I said: “Well, I guess she’s realized she’s cured.”

  She laughed about that and asked: “Where is she? I’d like to see her.”

  I told her where my barn was and that I’d come on horseback and she could drive on down there. When I got there she was waiting for me at the front of the barn. I brought the Easter Lily out of the lot at the back and brushed and curried her a little and petted and rubbed and talked to her.

  The lady said: “You know, this is a very well-bred mare. I still have her papers.”

  Along about then I didn’t know papers came with horses, and I had never thought to ask about her papers when I bought her.

  “I think,” the lady said, “that whether you sell her to me or keep her, the mare’s papers should be with her. I want you to know in the beginning that I’d like to buy the mare back, but if you don’t choose to sell, I’ll give you the registration papers; then she may be kept as saddle or broodmare, or be shown in her own right. After all, her breeding does belong to her, and her papers aren’t any good to me without the mare. I just felt you should know, in all fairness, that I have come to buy her if you care to sell her, or give you the registration papers if you don’t. She was born on Easter morning—that’s why I named her Easter Lily.”

  I didn’t let on that I hardly knew what registration papers were, but I thanked her and told her that was nice of her. And I told her that Easter Lily would be better off with her than she would with me. I said that I didn’t really need her; I’d enjoyed riding her as a road horse, but other than making a long trip straight down the road I didn’t have a whole lot of use for the mare. Since she had been so fair in telling me that she wanted to buy her back, and since I felt the mare would do her more good than she would me, I’d try to sell her to her.

  I asked her if she was in Mineral Wells for the summer, and she said she was. I told her that if she’d promise me she’d stable the Easter Lily somewhere besides Mr. Military Oversmart Cush Wise’s barn, I’d consider selling the mare back. She thought that was rather funny, but she said she supposed there was some other barn in a place that size where she could keep her mare; and if that would give me any personal satisfaction, and if it was one of the conditions on which she could get the Easter Lily back, she would agree to it.

  By
this time I had the Easter Lily saddled. The lady had riding clothes on, and she mounted the Easter Lily with the greatest of ease, sat beautifully in the saddle, held the reins in her left hand, and rode off on the Kentucky-bred mare. You could tell that the pair of them belonged together. She was gone maybe thirty minutes and came back in a walk. The mare was just warm, and there was just a little bit of moist hair up and down her neck, but she hadn’t broken into a sweat. I had her good and hard, and she wouldn’t be subject to sweating and fretting and getting nervous, as she would have when she was soft and fat.

  The lady was aware of that too, and she said: “You have her in excellent condition. She’d be a pleasure to ride, since she has so much more stamina than she used to have when I kept her in Mineral Wells last year.”

  Everything she said was in the vein of fairness and complete understanding of the fact that I owned the mare. Finally, she approached the subject of purchasing her and asked me how much money I felt I was entitled to for having rehabilitated the Easter Lily. That was a new word to me, but I had an idea what it meant because of the way she used it.

  So I said: “Well, if you think I’ve done a good enough job on her, I think I should have $750 for the mare.”

  She stroked the mare on the neck and walked around her and smiled at me and said: “That wouldn’t be too much for the Easter Lily, if you’ll deliver her to Mineral Wells.”

  I thought it best then to tell her how I’d managed to change the mare’s mind. I explained the strategy I’d used, feeding the mare somewhere besides the barn, brushing and currying her on the outside, not giving her the idea that a barn was a lap of luxury for fine useless horses to spend a life of idleness in. She thought this was all very odd and unique, and she had never heard of such a thing before. She didn’t know that horses thought or realized what their surroundings were, and she appreciated my telling her and giving her these details. She assured me that the Easter Lily wouldn’t have the opportunity to take up bad habits again. She gave me her check and thanked me very much and climbed in that long car and drove away.