Horse Tradin'

by Ben K. Green

  The norther was blowing hard but the sky was clear, and it was getting colder with every gust of wind. This stranger came up to where I could begin to see his outline from the light made by the fire. I said: “Come on up to the fire.”

  He said: “I saw your fire from down on the river road, and I sure was glad to see that there was somebody around that had a camp.”

  Well, it was several miles in any direction to a ranch headquarters or a farm where anybody lived. I felt sort of lucky to be camped out there by myself. (It just shows how people’s thinking has changed and how times have changed.) Sure enough, this cowboy was the man that was driving that four-mule team to the wagon. He told me he was stuck down there in the bottom. He had left his team hitched to the wagon and come up to see what kind of camp this was—or what was afire. He said he didn’t have much hopes of getting out down there that night.

  He ranched off close to Double Mountain, and he was freighting his cottonseed cake for his cattle out from Hamlin Oil Mill. He was a little late getting out with some of it. The roads had gotten so bad they couldn’t get a Model T Ford or a Chewy through there, so he was having to bring some cake in a wagon. He said he had on a big load of cottonseed cake, and he was working some light-boned, half-Mexican kind of mules that weren’t heavy enough for the load. He said that he knew he was going to have a little trouble; this was the reason he was working four-up instead of a single team. He just didn’t have enough mules to get through that mudhole on the other side of the bridge.

  It was about a quarter of a mile down to where he was stuck, maybe a little farther. I said: “Well, let’s get on a couple of my saddle horses and go back down to the wagon and unhook your team. You can bring them up here and camp with me for the night. And,” I added, “I’ve got some other horses here that can probably get you out in the morning.”

  He said he sure would be much obliged for that kind of a proposition, and he was glad I had a camp made there. He didn’t have anything to camp with because he was intending to get home that night. If the roads hadn’t been so heavy, he would have made it.

  We saddled up—I didn’t see any use in walking a quarter of a mile in the mud and the cold and the wind a-blowing. So far as I was concerned, walking was all took up when I was born. Horses were made to carry people around in the weather, anyhow. We went down and unhooked his team and led them back up, unharnessed them, and threw the harness over by the wagon. I got some hay out of my wagon, and some oats. He tied his mules up away from my horses, fed them good, and we sat down by the fire. I stirred him up some hashbrown potatoes, bacon, and scrambled eggs. He sure got around a batch of it. He was cold and hungry.

  He was a sure-enough rancher and a sure-enough cowboy and a good fellow to visit with. We sat by the fire and listened to the wind howl and talked about handling stock. I told him I had been to Kansas and summered a bunch of steers. He said he went to Kansas once, but he hit a drouth and didn’t do so good. He said he had been ranching over there at the Double Mountains a while, and he guessed if he could make the winter and get into spring he would have a good calf crop. We finally ran out of conversation and began to get sleepy. I told him I guessed the best we could do was both of us get in that bedroll of mine in the wagon and try to make the night.

  He was agreeable to that, so I got the rest of the saddle blankets and stuff I had laid around. We piled it on top of us. Of course, men who have lived outdoors don’t bother to take off too many clothes in a blizzard. We just slipped our boots and our jackets off—and our hats—and kinda undone our belts and got comfortable. Before you know it, we were both sound asleep.

  The next morning when the sun came up, it was cold and clear. That sun didn’t change the temperature of the surroundings much, but I had rustled plenty of wood the night before, so we got a good fire going and fixed a good breakfast. Needless to say, I’d already decided last night that he was in bad need of nice stout work horses that could pull a load of cake out of the mud. He couldn’t see my horses in the cedar brake in the night—and he didn’t know what kind I had. I didn’t bother to tell him, and I had gone out and fed the horses while he was getting breakfast ready.

  After we ate a batch of hot grub, I said: “Well, let’s pick out a team of horses that can hook up and get your wagon out of the mud.”

  He walked out through the cedar brake with me and his eyes jumped out. He said: “Why I didn’t have any idea there was this kind of horses in the world—much less camped up here by the side of the river last night when I got stuck!”

  I just kinda laughed and told him that I fell in love with them up in the bluestem and had drifted down and brought them with me. I said I was started home where I thought I’d use them.

  The oldest pair of mares I had were big gray mares, nearly white from age. They weren’t but about ten years old, but gray horses get white by that time. They were sound and clean and well shod. I knew they would pull with all they had and until they give out. They were the kind of horses that helped take the West. I just knew when I hooked them to that load of cake, something was going to have to give. I was hoping the doubletree and singletrees were plenty stout, because I knew that pair of big mares would sure bring that rig out of the mud. While I was getting them harnessed, he harnessed up the mules and took them back down there with him. I jumped on my saddle horse and led my mares. I couldn’t help but hurrah him a little bit, and I asked him what he was taking those mules along for—did he figure they would want to ride on the wagon after they got a team that could pull it?

  We laughed a little bit, and he admitted they were awful small mules for the thing he was trying to do with them. But they were mules, and that was all the mules he had, so he was working what he had and doing the best he could. “But,” he said, “I shore would like to own a pair of those great big nice horses, iff’n you didn’t need all of them at home.”

  I said: “Well, we’ll wait and see if they can pull your wagon out. You might not want them at all.”

  By this time we were down close to his wagon. We had crossed the bridge and saw that nobody had come along in the night. Hadn’t anybody pushed him out of the road, and there wasn’t anybody behind him waiting. If anybody had come up, they had turned around and gone back before they got into the worst of it—or else they would have stopped and come to our camp for the night.

  Well, I got this good pair of gray mares hooked in to his wagon, and I told him I would use them for the wheelers. He hooked the heaviest team of his mules on in front of them for the lead. I told him if he didn’t want to get those mules’ feet muddy, he could wait until I got the wagon out. He knew that was kinda funny, but he said they might help that pair of horses some; he believed he would hook on—just in case.

  We got all rigged up, and I had the horses move up and just tighten their traces a little bit. Mud and ice had frozen around the wheels during the night, and I knew it would be a hard pull. He was driving his mules, so he stepped off to one side. I had stepped off to one side and held the line on the horses. I asked him if he was ready. He said: “Yeah.”

  I spoke to this good pair of gray mares and slapped them a little with the lines, and then I just pulled enough on the lines to steady them. A pair of good pulling horses, they go down in front with their heads and necks and lay their weight against the collars. If you just pull enough to steady them, they can do a lot better job of pulling and are not as likely to go to their knees.

  Those big mares laid in there and you could hear them grunt a little bit. They just kept laying and getting closer to the ground and closer to the ground, and directly that wagon began to move. I squalled and hollered and told him to get his mules out of the way—that I might have to run over them. Of course that was just a joke. The mules were pulling all they could, and they were live, active kind of mules, and they were ’way on out in front.

  We pulled the wagon across the bridge and out on dry ground. I started unhooking my mares, and he said: “Now wait a minute before you go unho
okin’ that team of mares. I’ve got a proposition I want to take up with you. I don’t know how many horses you’ve got up there in that cedar brake, but you’ve got enough you could spare me this pair of mares.”

  I said: “Well, I had plans for these horses and I kinda hate to split ’em up. This is one of the best pullin’ pairs I got.”

  “That’s why I want ’em,” he said. “I need ’em all this winter. I can freight this cake all up and down this road with ’em, and I can use my mules out in the pasture to pull my feed wagons—when I’m just putting out enough for a day’s feeding.”

  I didn’t want to seem too anxious about getting rid of this pair of good pulling mares, so I said: “Well, I don’t know whether a man ought to sell a pair of mares like this or not. With a mudhole like that, and the winter just startin’—I might just stay here and make the winter.”

  We both laughed pretty big. He knew I didn’t mean it, so he asked: “What would you have to have for this team of mares, and let me buy ’em from you?”

  I just thought I’d try him for size. I didn’t know whether he knew anything about the horse market or not, so I told him that the mares ought to be worth $300.

  He said he thought so, too, but he wasn’t able to give that much for them—but he sure would like to buy them. He said he had more mules at home of a smaller size and brand, but this pair of bay mare mules that he had and was using for leaders were nice little mules. They weren’t as heavy as his wheelers, but they were about seven or eight years old and clear of blemishes—a little snorty, like Western mules were—but clean-typey kind of little mules. He told me if I would take $150 difference, he would swap me that pair of lead mules and pay me the $150 boot, and that I ought to be able to get $150 out of the mules. That would make my $300, and he would have a team to do heavy work for the winter.

  I told him it looked to me like he was looking after his interests better than he was mine, but that I guessed it was a pretty good trade, and I believed I would swap with him. The harness on his mules was just as good as the harness on my mares, but of course the collars fit the mules and the collars fit the mares; so I suggested he let the collars go with the mules and I’d let the collars go with the mares.

  He hooked his heavy mules, that had been his wheelers, up in front of the mares. We visited and gave each other our addresses and shook hands. I told him if I was ever back I would come visit him. And he said if he ever got down in my country, he’d look me up. We’d made a good trade and had a good visit and parted friends.

  I had begun to think that maybe I wasn’t too unsmart when I bought that bunch of horses. I had an interest in a café, $150 boot, and a pair of mules clear. It looked like I might not have such a hard winter after all.

  I led my mules back to camp and tied them to the wagon wheel and sat around by the fire and stayed warm. The wind had died down in the night. It was still awful cold, but the sun was getting up higher and it had begun to warm up. I decided that I would rig up my horses and pull on out across the river and head for Anson, Texas. I didn’t know much about this pair of little mules; they might try to run off or break loose or something. I had put a pair of black horses to the wagon—real good horses that I knew could pull it all right—and I just thought: “Well, that pair of mules might give me as little trouble up there as leaders as they would tied to the wagons.”

  So I hooked them up for leaders and made me a four-up team, and in a few minutes I went across the bridge and hit the mudhole. I spoke to these horses a few times and held a tight line on the little lead mules. We got through the mudhole without much trouble, pulled out on the other side—it had been a pretty long pull—and I let them rest a few minutes to get their wind. Then we started on down the road.

  For the next several days the winter was coming on. At night it was cold and in the daytime it didn’t warm up too much. I went through a farming country where nobody wanted to buy any horses, it seemed, and you’d see those trade lots full of horses and mules around those tractor places. The trip was sorta uneventful for several days, and then I pulled into Albany, Texas.

  Down on the creek—out of town a piece after you came down the mountain from Fort Griffin, and before you got into town—there was a little glade that had always been a campground. I pulled out there and got my horses sort of fixed for the night. I watered them at the creek, gave them some feed, and got my camp laid out pretty good. It lacked a little while being dark, so I stepped on my saddle horse and rode on up to Albany.

  Albany was then and is now and always will be a nice kind of West Texas cowtown. I ate supper in a café for a change, loafed around the drugstore and drank a coke, and visited a little bit. I let it be known that I was camped out there in the edge of town with a bunch of horses, and that I was going back home from being up in Kansas with a bunch of steers. I ran onto two or three fellows that I knew either by reputation or personally; then I went on back out to my camp about dark so I’d be there around my stock. After a while I went to bed. Nothing much happened.

  Next morning I got up and thought: “Well, I’ll harness my horses up here and get hooked up and pull on up in the edge of town somewhere—stop and eat breakfast instead of building a fire and cooking.”

  I pulled up on the square where there was plenty of room and stopped my horses and my wagon and all, got out and went across the street to the old hotel about a block down. I was sitting there on a stool eating my breakfast when a great big rough fellow came in and said: “Wonder who that bunch of big horses belongs to up there on the square.”

  I raised my head up and looked at him—you could tell he was an oil-field man—and I told him they were mine.

  He asked: “You want to contract some dirt work?”

  I said: “No sir, I’m not a dirt work man. I’m started home with those teams.”

  “Where’s home?”

  I said: “Over by Weatherford.”

  “Well,” he said, “we need some slush pits dug out here around some oil wells, and the weather is bad and wet, and these boys haven’t been able to do it with machinery.”

  I told him that I understood his problem, but that I didn’t have any fresnos to dig holes with—or turning plows or nothing—and I wasn’t rigged up to do dirt work. And anyway it was getting winter and I was trying to get home. I’d rather just take my horses and go.

  He asked: “What business you got with so many big horses like that if you ain’t doing dirt work? Are they good for anything else?”

  That was sort of a compliment coming from a construction worker out of the oil fields, and I said: “I reckon those horses can do just about anything. It ain’t the horses you are having trouble with, it’s me. I don’t want to do any dirt work.”

  He said: “I know where there are some fresnos, turnin’ plows, and everything you’d need to do some dirt work—and you could do it in a week or ten days.”

  I said: “Yeah, that’s about the length of time it would take me to get home.”

  I knew that if he was hurting, he would buy a team of these horses—or two teams—or he would get somebody to buy them and contract his dirt work. I knew that I wasn’t a dirt work man and wouldn’t know how to figure it and would get cheated anyhow. By this time I had finished my breakfast; so I paid the cashier and went out on the sidewalk and started toward my wagon.

  He had gone out ahead of me, and when I looked up he was closer to the wagon than I was and just stepping right up and walking around my horses when I got there. I had the black horses hooked to the wagon, and they were the most stylish pair I had. They were good six- and seven-year-old horses, both geldings, and good true pulling horses with nice dispositions and good legs—the kind of horses that could go out and do a hard day’s work at a fresno or any other kind of work.

  I said: “I might sell you that pair.”

  He said he didn’t have any business with one pair of horses. If he had to do any fresno work, he had to have from three to five.

  I said: “Well, I
might sell you more than two, but the more of them you take, the higher they are going to come because I don’t want to get rid of these horses too bad.”

  He said: “What’ll you take for five head and me pick ’em?”

  I could tell by looking at him that he had been a mule-skinner in the oil fields. An old teamster would know what kind of horses he was going to pick. I knew that when he got through he’d get five as good horses as I had. Of course these were all good horses, and there wasn’t a whole lot of difference in the ones I had left since I’d sold the gray pair—they were the oldest—and I’d sold that other pair that went into the chile business. So he couldn’t hurt me much, whatever he picked out. I told him I would take $200 a round, and he could get five head.

  He said that he wouldn’t give it; that he would give $100 a round. So I said: “Well, I’ve just found out you don’t have much dirt work to do, and there ain’t no use in me and you taking up each other’s time. I just as well get on up the road.”

  He said: “I’ll give $125 a head for five of ’em.”

  “Well,” I told him, “you’re still talking like a cheapskate. I guess I gotta go. Good-bye.” And I clucked to my team and drove off.

  Going east out of Albany you go up and cross the railroad track and pass the schoolhouse. I was topping out on the hill at the edge of town when he overtook me, driving some kind of a red automobile.

  He stopped me and said: “I’m going to make one more pass at you. I’m going to give $150 a head for some of these horses if you’ve got harness to fit them.”

  He had decided that he could make do with four head instead of five; so after he walked around and walked through them and looked at their mouths and picked up their feet, and showed off and made you understand that he was sure enough a horse man—he picked out four good horses. He took the two black horses, and he took a pair of dark-gray young mares. Said he’d rather not have any mares, but he couldn’t do much about it. The two blacks were the only geldings I had left. He gave me a check for $600 for four head of horses and the harness that fit them. His check was on the Albany bank, and I just thought that would be a good place to get the money—where the check was written—so I just pulled my wagon out by the side of the road, fastened my horses up along the fence, and got on a saddle horse and rode back to town. It was early and I had to wait a little while, but the bank opened soon, and sure enough the man’s check was all right. I put the money in my pocket.