Horse Tradin'

by Ben K. Green

  When the elegant lady from Kentucky said: “That wouldn’t be too much,” she meant what she said. I have sold her and her friends and family horses through the years. And now, more than thirty-five years after the episode of the Easter Lily, I have an order for a pony from the elegant lady’s granddaughter.

  Mule Colts

  One early fall in the thirties there was a good demand for mule colts, yearlings, and two-year-olds. Most of the fellows that wanted to buy these mules intended to feed them through the winter, and in those days we had a class of mules that was spoken of as “feeder” mules. Farmers would buy these mules, run them on oat fields through the winter, feed them a little grain, and sell them as two-and three-year-olds, depending on the age of the mules, in the coming spring or following fall.

  I was in Fort Worth one night, sitting in a café at the Cattleman’s Hotel on Exchange Avenue, and got into a conversation with some fellows sitting close to me about young mules being so high compared to some other classes of horse stock.

  There was a half-Indian looking character sitting on a stool next to me, that followed me out of the café onto the sidewalk to give me a “real good” piece of information. He said he knew where there was sixty good young mares, and every one of them had a great big mule colt following her, and he knowed I could “shore buy ’em cheap ’cause the fellow was in a tight over some gamblin’ debts and needed the money.”

  After a considerable visit with this character, he sold me on the idea that I ought to go see these mares with mule colts. They were located away out West, on the Pecos. My hook-nosed, high-cheeked, newly made friend said he was busy and couldn’t go with me but that he knowed they was there ’cause he was “rite fresh from the Pecos.”

  The next morning I saddled up a brand new four-cylinder Chevrolet and headed for the Pecos, because it sounded like I could “steal” these mares and their mule colts. I bedded down somewhere on the way for part of the night, but I was driving hard because I was afraid someone else would find them first. I drove into Pecos, stopped at the Bell Garage, and inquired about the man that supposedly owned the mares with mule colts. They told me he lived about forty-five miles northwest of town, on the Carlsbad Road.

  I didn’t have too much trouble finding the place, and the man was home. I drove up, got out of the car, shook myself, and asked for a drink of water. I will tell you now that water wasn’t very good—it was a little salty, a little gippy, and a little sulphury—but if you was dry enough and tough enough you could drink it. I swallowed it without making a face; I knew better than to make fun of a man’s country.

  We passed the time of day, talked about the weather, and he asked me where I was from. I told him I was a horse and mule buyer from Fort Worth. To this remark the old man brightened up a little and said: “What kind of horses and mules you buy?”

  By then I was a pretty smart young trader and replied: “You generally buy the kind of horses and mules the people have got for sale. They don’t sell you their good ones.”

  He smiled and said: “That’s pretty good thinking, but I’ll tell you a little different case from that. I’ll sell you all I’ve got ‘ceptin’ two saddle horses.”

  Then he described his mares and mule colts to me and told how good they were and how young the mares were. He told me frankly that they were all unbroke, which was common in that day. Most everybody could break a mare or mule to ride or work, and that didn’t depreciate the price as it does today in this world of softies.

  He had a cowboy and a half-grown Mexican boy saddle up the two saddle horses that he didn’t want to sell, and go out into a big greasewood pasture and round up these mares and mule colts and throw them up in a corner of the fence. He explained to me that he didn’t have a corral that would hold them and that unless I was sure I wanted to buy the bunch of mares and colts there wouldn’t be any use driving them to the stock pen, which would be about forty-five miles. We drove out into this big pasture, to a windmill that was down near the only draw running through the pasture. This draw was covered with mesquite trees about as tall as a horse’s back and was the only break in the scenery from a greasewood desert.

  In about two hours we saw a trail of dust boiling up across the pasture, and here came the mares and their mule colts—sixty head of mares with sixty head of mule colts. The mares were all fat, and he hastened to explain that there had been a good mesquite bean crop and that all the horses in the country were fat, and that the colts were old enough so the mares had about weaned them. These mares were of fair size and good dark colors. The mule colts were almost as big as the mares, with shaggy manes and foretops falling down over their eyes, and, of course, long mule tails that had never been sheared. They were a very uniform bunch of young mules. I could just see how good they would look cut off the mares, with their manes roached and tails sheared.

  The mares were snorty and so were the colts, and they kept trying to break out of the corner of the fence. As I tried to walk up closer to them, they made a break for that mesquite thicket and I got a glimpse of them as they ran into the brush.

  The owner said that he needed the money for some urgent business, and if I would take them all, he would sell them for $65 a pair, meaning $65 for a mare and a mule colt. Well, I knew that the colts were worth from $60 to $80 and that the mares would be clear profit. We discussed how to get them shipped, and I made a fast trade with him before he backed out. Realizing that it would take two or three days to round them up again and get them out in the public road to drive them to the stock pens, he assured me that he would ship them for me and I could go on back to Fort Worth. Being a trusting young horse trader, that sounded good to me. I paid him and headed my four-cylinder Chevrolet back East.

  I had made the trip so fast that I had hardly been missed around the mule barns, but I had made such a good trade that I couldn’t help but tell some of my close friends about my mule colts that would be in town in a few days.

  One morning I went down to the horse and mule barn, and my mares and mule colts had been unloaded. My friend in the West had separated them and shipped them, and in those good, high, close pens, I got a real good look at my mares. They were just about as they had appeared in the corner of the fence, weighing from nine hundred to a thousand pounds, and of decent quality. However, I couldn’t help but notice that none of the mares were suffering from the colts not having sucked, and I didn’t hear from the next pen any colts braying for their mammies.

  As I looked over the fence at my mules I had to face the sad realization that these mule colts had been colts about three to six years before this, far south of the Rio Grande River, and were the smallest sort of little fat Mexican mules. The rancher west of the Pecos River had done a real good job of keeping them mixed up with those mares, and had let them break loose and get away into that mesquite thicket just before I could get close enough to them to realize their true age and identity.

  These cute little Mexican mules were next to worthless on the market, and the mares sold for a little more than half of what they all cost. I learned in later years that the “friend” in Fort Worth who gave me that “real good piece of information” also had an interest in the mares and mules!

  Mine Mules

  That same winter I was staying in town more than common, and the main reason for it was that I had my hook hung on that bunch of cute little fat Mexican mules.

  These nice little, fat, young, hard-twisted, ill-tempered, unbroke Mexican mules were getting in bed with me, so to speak, because they were worth about $17 a head; I had been feeding them about two months, and I had a little more money than that in them to start with, not counting the feed bill. I had tried all the tricks that I knew to get these little mules sold, and I had gone to my old mule-trading friends, and none of them knew where you could ship these little five-hundred-pound mules and get them sold for anything or something, much less a profit. I had given up on the idea of a profit, but I thought my banker would have greater esteem for me as a horse t
rader if I could get the money back out of them, and I was trying awfully hard.

  I had taken so much hurrahing about my little mules, and about them being sold to me for colts, that it was almost unpleasant to live over on the north side of Fort Worth around the mule barns and stockyards. It had ceased to be too funny since those little mules ate grain twice a day and hay all night, and were working hard to run up the overhead. I was staying over at the Texas Hotel in big town Fort Worth, where there were fewer mule men, and I was enjoying a reasonable amount of relief from being hurrahed. However, I was more or less ill at ease and out of place in that great big hotel.

  I was sitting in the lobby, bogged down in one of those big plush chairs with my big hat pulled way down over my face to where I was just peeping out from under the brim, and had my boot crossed over my knee so everybody could for sure tell I was from way out West. I was sitting there watching the people, when here came an unmistakable old Southern gentleman. He was wearing an old Kentucky black hat, raw-edged with a wide band on it and pushed back off of his face, which was proof to me that he hadn’t faced much sunshine and was living in the shade or he would have had that hat pulled down over his eyes. He was wearing a double-breasted blue serge suit that had been his Sunday suit for a good fifteen years, and he had on a soft-toed pair of black shoes. He walked up in the lobby and stood looking into the dining room; then he’d look back across the lobby and I could tell for sure that he was off of his home range and wasn’t too sure about where to feed and water. Having a fair idea how he felt, I got up and stretched and moseyed up close to him to get acquainted, because I knew I looked country enough that he would ask me whatever it was that he was trying to find out. He turned around and looked at me a few minutes, and I turned just enough to catch him out of the corner of my eye and said: “Howdy.”

  In a soft, lonesome Southern drawl he replied: “How do yuh do, suh,” and moved over a step closer.

  We talked a minute or two about the weather and Fort Worth, and he mentioned that he would like to have something to eat, that he had just come in off a long trip and got a room in the hotel, but he didn’t know whether that dining room was the proper place to eat or not. Well, it suddenly occurred to me that the old man might not want to spend as much money as it cost to wipe your chin on the fine linen napkins in that dining room, so I told him I hadn’t had a chance to eat either and that I knew a good place to get lots of grub and not too many frills for a fair price. He said: “Well suh, I’d be obliged if yuh’d show me around some, ’cause I ‘spec I’m goin’ to be here for several days, and I needs to know where to get somethin’ to eat.” I told my Southern friend that it wasn’t far and we could just step out the side door here and walk and get a bit of supper.

  I knew of a family-style eating place where you just sat down to the table and “pitch ’til you win” that was run by some good old women. That night they had everything on the table that looked like it was good to eat, and my Southern colonel (I was by that time calling him Colonel) made himself right at home and ate way more than my money’s worth. When he got up and left the table, and I had paid the boardinghouse woman, you could tell that he was well pleased with the feed ground and was liking my company pretty good.

  When we stepped out on the street it was good dark, and a norther had struck which made it a little uncomfortable; so the Colonel and I hit a decent sort of a fox trot back to the hotel lobby. I looked around, and there wasn’t many people in the lobby, and it was going to be a long black night, so I suggested to the Colonel that we set a spell before going to bed, and that was the master stroke. The conversation led off to his business and mine, and he confided to me that he had come to Fort Worth to buy some small mining mules to ship back to his native West Virginia. I tried not to show any excitement or pleasure in his statement, but I said to myself that those cute little fat Mexican mules were about to get introduced to the hardships of the life of a mining mule. The Colonel told me that he hesitated to buy mules at the auction and that he had gotten to town two or three days ahead of the auction day, hoping that he could buy mules without having to go into that crooked old auction and bid against them “professional” horse traders. Well I didn’t want to booger the old man, so I worked up slow and easy to telling him that I had some little mules. I first asked him how many of these little mules he needed, and he said that they actually needed about a hundred in West Virginia but that he had no hopes of buying that many in one place. I finally told him that I had sixty of these little mules that were fat and young and not too big, as he had cautioned me that he had to have a small mule. I told him that these little mules were unbroke but sound and in good flesh and would stand shipping a long way. I explained to him that I didn’t like auctions either, and I had these little mules in some pens way back behind the auction barn, and I had been dreading the thought of letting them professional horse and mule traders steal them from me.

  The Colonel was right interested in the mules and wanted to see them first thing the next morning. I told him that I’d meet him for breakfast, and he said that he got up early and would see me about daylight. He stretched and moved around the edge of his chair and finally got off toward the elevator, and I told him good night and that I’d see him in the morning.

  He didn’t know how bad off I was to sell these little mules, nor how little I slept that night, and how easy it was for me to be up at daylight. I was standing in the hotel lobby when he got off the elevator the next morning, about 5:30. It wasn’t nearly daylight, but I was afraid that he might get down to the lobby or even to the stockyards, and that he might get caught by one of those “professional” mule dealers.

  We stopped on the way out to the stockyards and ate breakfast. Then we were on the old streetcar going out to the stockyards, and I reached up and rang the bell, and we got off about three blocks before we reached Exchange Avenue. I told him I knew a short cut over to the pens and we wouldn’t have to go through the auction barn, and he and I could look at the little mules without anybody being any the wiser.

  We walked down a back alley and across the creek and crawled over the fence into the mule pen. The Colonel walked around among the mules a few minutes, and kind of waved the tail of his overcoat at them and made them jump and shy. It was still pretty cold and just daylight, and the mules were blowing a little fog out of their noses, and he turned to me and said: “Ben muh boy, these are just what I want. Now how much will yuh have to have fo’ ’em?”

  It had developed in our conversation that he was buying these mules for himself and some other mine operators, so I thought I should play it real honest with him. So I said: “Colonel, there’s no use in me trying to rob you and your other miner friends, and I don’t believe that you’d try to steal these mules from me. So why don’t you tell me all that you can give for them per head, and represent your own interest and be fair to the other fellows at home that you’re buying these mules for. If I can stand it at all I’ll sell them to you, and you and I won’t have any hard feelings if I can’t take the price. That way there won’t be any bidding and dickering and hard words among friends.”

  He told me he thought that was the fairest way to trade and that he was going to give me every dollar that those little mules were worth in “West Virginy,” less what the freight would be; and he asked me if I knew what the freight would be per head by carload on these mules. I told him that the freight would be about $25 per head and if it was more than that I’d pay the difference.

  He studied a few minutes, walked around the mules, and I was insisting that he cut out anything that didn’t suit him, and he told me they all suited him. He looked at them a few more times, and I was about to lose my breath thinking he might not ever tell me what they were worth in “West Virginy.” He finally turned, spit off into the ground, and said: “Ben muh boy, these mules are worth $100 apiece in West Virginy, and that’d amount to $75 apiece here, and that’s all I can give yuh for ’em. If yuh can take it, we’ll go call the folks ba
ck home and see if the deal is all right with ’em, befo’ I give yuh a draft fo’ the mules.”

  I stood real quiet a few minutes trying to keep from shouting, and when I finally had control of myself I said: “I guess it’s worth something to sell them all in one bunch, and I feel like you’re being fair, so I’m going to sell them to you.”

  For fear that somebody else might see him, we walked back up the alley to North Main Street and I hailed a cab instead of waiting for the streetcar. We went up into my room at the hotel, and in those days it took a long time to get a long-distance call back to West Virginia, and it seemed like an awfully long time. He finally talked, and he painted a glowing picture of these little mules and what a good man had them and he wasn’t having to buy them through the auction, and they decided to close the deal.

  He hung up the phone and we went to his room, and he got out a long checkbook and wrote me a check for the mules. Then I called the railroad office and ordered a forty-foot car to ship the mules in that day (the trick in shipping mules was that there were very few forty-foot cars and the railroad would have to furnish you two thirty-six-foot cars at the same price). I found that the mules couldn’t be loaded until the next morning, and I was dying to get over to the bank with that check; so I told him I would go out and see about the car and what time we could load them, and that he could stay around the hotel and rest up a little. I said I would be back in time for us to go to dinner, and that suited him fine. He immediately pulled off his soft black shoes, took off his coat and necktie, and was lying down on the bed when I left.

  I hurried over to the bank, and they wired on the check, and it was good as gold. I warned my banker not to tell a soul about my Colonel from West Virginia until I got those little mules loaded.