Horse Tradin'

by Ben K. Green

  It generally didn’t start much conversation, except that everybody would say: “Yeah, but the older they git the whiter they git.” Which wasn’t news to me.

  I would just say: “Uh-huh,” and walk off.

  Hardly anybody knew about my mules because I had kept them at home and worked them, and I had got them home without anybody seeing them. Oh, maybe some of the neighbors had noticed they had whitened out on me, but it didn’t ever dawn on them how come it. One man did say something about them turning awful white. I said: “Yeah, the hair has got out on them long, and I guess they’ll blue back up when they shed in the spring.”

  I knew an Irish horse trader that was about a half-breed gypsy—been raised in a road camp. I kept laying for him, but it didn’t seem like he was ever going to come through the country again. I figured he would know how you manage to do a blue job on a mule.

  I took some saddle horses to Decatur one trades day, to trade maybe for something different. These horses weren’t good and they weren’t bad, it was just that once in a while you would want to change colors on your stock—or sizes, or ages, or something. Anyway, you needed to have a little variety among your livestock, some new experiences about what could be the matter or what could be good about some of them. So in Decatur, about the middle of the morning, I spied my old Irish horse trader friend.

  He and I had traded a few times in years past. It never had been anything big. We always hurrahed and tried to cheat each other if we could—but for a horse trader he was sort of on the honest side, and I was just a great big wild rough young boy and he kinda liked me. A time or two he had told me things I needed to know, so I propositioned him to let’s go up town and eat some dinner. He lived in a road camp and ate his own cooking, or camp cooking, so he said he believed he’d like a little change and he believed he’d just take me up on my proposition.

  We got some chile or some stew or something—I don’t know. We ate a pretty good little batch of dinner and visited and talked about how the country looked and where he had been since I saw him last. By this time we were about to order pie and wind up the dinner; so I decided I’d better ease up on these gray mules. I said: “It’s a pity that a nice dapple-gray mule or horse can’t stay that color all its life.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but we all get gray when we get old.”

  “I know,” I said, “You are getting a little gray, but I ain’t worried about you—and it’s a long way off for me—but I got some mules that got gray pretty soon.”

  He had a sharp black eye, and he glanced up at me real quick. A little twist came in the corner of his lip, and he said: “How do you mean?”

  Well, I hadn’t told anybody else, but I didn’t think he would tell on me; so I explained to him what had happened about my mules. He thought it was real funny, and we had a good laugh. Then he said: “Where did the mules come from?”

  I told him about this high-class horse and mule man from down around Hillsboro who had sent them to Fort Worth—that his name was on the ticket when I bought them.

  “Oh, you mean him! I remember when he was a road trader—till he married that rich woman that had a good farm. Then,” he said, “he got respectable. He’s not supposed to remember any old tricks like that—much less play ’em on people that are buyin’ work stock.”

  “What do you mean—old trick?”

  So he described how the dapples looked on the mules, and sure enough, he knew. He knew that they were darker and bigger around on the sides and down on the lower part of the belly. And he knew that they were smaller and lighter up around their necks and shoulders. He just knew exactly how these mules were colored—and he never had seen them.

  I said: “Damn, did this man from Hillsboro learn how to color them mules from you, or did you learn from him? Evidently you all are using the same color pattern.”

  He kinda laughed and said: “I’ll tell you—I’ll go down and look at your horses and see if there is anything I want to trade you out of that would be worth a little boot between mine and yours. Then, I’ll tell you how to recolor your mules—and call it boot.”

  We laughed, and I told him that would be sort of like blackmail, I reckoned, but it might not be anything new in the horse and mule business. We visited on—and I asked him where he was going from there. He said it didn’t make much difference, that he could drift down south. He would kinda like to be in Waco in about a month, so he believed he would come by and see my mules in a few days.

  I told him that sure would be fine, that I had a good little pasture he could camp in, and he wouldn’t have to stake out his stock. He could let them run loose for a few days and fill up before he went on down the road. He said he thought that was a good proposition—for me not to worry too much about the color on my mules because they just might gain it back.

  I said: “Well, I’ve heard of mules gaining weight back, growing out their manes and tails and things like that—but I’ve never heard of one gaining its color back.”

  “You boys,” he said, “that stay at home and feed cattle—there’s things you haven’t heard about. Let’s go on back down to the trade ground. If I don’t see you no more there, I’ll come by your place in two or three days.”

  He knew where I was ranching and how to get there. It wasn’t too much out of his way if he was going to go on down into central Texas.

  I traded a saddle horse or two that day—didn’t do anything too smart or too dumb, which was a fair average for me along about then. I started home along about the middle of the afternoon, rode by his wagon and waved at him, and told him I would be looking for him.

  He said: “That’s fine. Kill a yearling and get some fresh groceries and I’ll stay a few days.”

  That was a common remark, and we both waved and laughed and I rode off thinking that maybe I was going to be able to lead my mules back through the fountain of youth after all. It was getting to be up in the spring of the year, and it was nice to travel horseback and have my bunch of trading stock on the road. They could graze along the way, and there was water in the road ditches.

  Sure enough, in four or five days my Irish horse-trading friend pulled up to my ranch gate in the late afternoon. I saw him coming—I was out at the barn doing something—and I went and opened the gate and let his stock in and let him drive his wagon in. I waved to him to turn down toward the creek and some great big pecan trees to set up his camp. I walked alongside his wagon until he pulled up between two big trees where he would be in the shade all morning and afternoon both. I helped him unhitch and shuck the rigging off his team—untied the ones that were tied to his wagon and just turned them loose there in the small pasture.

  We got through and sat down on the wagon tongue and talked a few minutes. “I want to see your changeable mules,” he said.

  “I don’t know whether they are so changeable or not,” I said. “They just changed once since I’ve had them—and it wasn’t for the better.”

  We walked up to the barn where the mules were in the corral on the other side of the barn. Regardless of their color, they were still nice mules, and I had kept them fat and their feet were in good shape and their shoes weren’t too worn. They were just good mules. I had let their manes grow out—I hadn’t roached their manes or sheared their tails—and they looked a little ragged. But you couldn’t make mules like them look too bad regardless of what you neglected about them.

  This old Irish horse trader was, I guess, about sixty years old. He said: “Kid, you’ve sure got a pretty pair of mules, and it is a shame that they seem to have lost that youthful bloom so all of a sudden.”

  I started up again and I said: “Well, if there’s any way to color a mule—and there’s bound to be—then they had been colored. But I can’t understand how you could get the dapples so smooth and even—and small where they needed to be and large where they needed to be. It’s a mystery to me—it was just a work of art. I guess you might brush it on. But how would you get the mule to stand long enough?”
r />   He just died laughing. “It’s easy,” he said.

  We sat there a few minutes on the feed trough out in the lot—just looking at our stock. His horses and mules that he had brought in with his wagon—they had been to the creek and drunk and wallowed and had begun to graze. He said: “It’s going to help my tradin’ stock to get two or three days rest in here—in that good pasture.”

  I said: “Yeah, you needn’t be in any hurry gettin’ on down the road. Let ’em fill up.”

  “That might give me time to help the looks of your mules some, too.”

  I said: “Well, you know, the main reason I’d want the looks of these mules helped is—our friend down at Hillsboro must like this dapple-gray color of mules we are talking about, or else he wouldn’t have colored this pair. And I just felt like maybe he’d like to have another pair back—if they were the right color.”

  He laughed and he said: “I don’t believe that’ll work. He’s too sharp for that.” We sat in silence a few minutes and then he said: “But I’ll tell you what would work,” and his face brightened up like he had just seen the light.

  “What’s that?”

  He said, “He’s got a son-in-law that’s a-buyin’ mules at Cleburne and a-usin’ the old man’s checkbook. The son-in-law, he’s not too sharp a mule man, but his daddy-in-law has got to keep him up someway—so he lets him buy horses and mules for him and use his checkbook. He’s a-stakin’ him on the halves, hopin’ he’ll make half as much as it’s costin’ to keep him up.”

  I said: “Well, maybe we can make it be half-color and half-mules and have a little deal with the son-in-law—if you know how to put the blush back on them that they had when I got ’em.”

  “Kid, it’s easy—if you know how.”

  “Yeah, you said that before, but you cut me out ever time you add that if-you-know-how to it. Besides that, if you was to put that cloudy color on ’em here, I don’t know how I’d get ’em to Cleburne without it running on ’em.”

  He stayed around and we visited two or three days. His trading stock filled up, and he enjoyed resting under the big trees. He slept in his wagon and I slept at the house, but he ate with me and visited, and he told me a lot of things about trading that I never knew. He rode around the pasture with me, and he told me that when he was a young man he thought he would be a cow man. But, he said, he never could figure out how you would make any money just waiting for a cow to have a calf. He said if you went to trading in cattle you couldn’t cheat anybody—because about the time you thought you knew all there was to know about a steer or a cow, all they had to do was weigh her and make a fool out of you. So far as he was concerned, he had rather have swapping stock than beef stock.

  Along about now, that all made sense to me, too.

  The afternoon he was ready to go, he never yet had told me how he was going to color that pair of mules—or how for me to color them. It seemed like a deep, dark-gray secret. All he would ever tell me when I would bring it up was: “It’s easy, Kid. It’s easy.”

  Well, that “Kid” with me and “it’s easy” was about to drive me beyond the kid stage. I was aging fast from wondering how we would do it. He got all harnessed and hooked up one morning and pulled out in the road in front of the house and started to leave. I said: “You never have …”

  “Yeah, I know, I never have,” he said. “In about three nights from now I’ll camp down close to Godley. That won’t be far out of Cleburne. You bring your mules and spend the night at the wagon with me, and I’ll get ’em in shape that you can take ’em to Cleburne the next morning and show ’em to this promisin’ young mule buyer. The trip will be so short that I don’t think the dye job will run on ’em.”

  Well, I’d finished the winter, and I’d fed my cattle, and I was through with the mules, and they were a year older by the calendar but six years whiter. So on the appointed day I saddled up, tied my mules to the saddle horn, and started off to find my Irish gypsy friend’s wagon.

  I went through Granbury and on down through Cresson and on over to Godley. My old Irish friend was camped down below Godley two or three miles—out by the side of the road where there was a little pond of water and some fresh grass, a nice place to camp and not too far from Cleburne. The next morning was Monday, and it would be a Trading Monday, which would be an ideal day to be in Cleburne.

  I rode into camp and we had our “howdys” out, and I staked my mules over to one side where they wouldn’t mix up with his. He had a fire going, and it was sort of late. He was frying up some meat and stuff and had a Dutch oven full of sour dough biscuits; so we sat down and ate a big supper. It was the spring of the year and it got a little chilly, so we sat around the fire a little while before we unrolled the bedrolls and went to sleep. I still didn’t know about coloring these mules—but he knew I was there, so I wasn’t going to bring it up.

  The next morning was a bright, sunshiny morning and he said: “Well, this is a nice clear day for our little chore.”

  I said: “It don’t seem to me like it’s such a little chore.”

  “Oh,” he said, “it won’t take but just a little while. I got the fixin’s the last town I came through.”

  I said: “Well, I’d still like to know about these fixin’s.”

  “Oh,” he said, “Don’t let it bother you. It’s easy. These mules are gentle?”

  “Sure, they’re gentle!”

  Well, in the meantime I had roached their manes and sheared their tails up neat to their bodies, and they were looking good. I had trimmed a little of the long hair off around their fetlocks and under their chins. The mules were in good shape so far as dressing and brushing and currying were concerned. They just lacked that little tinting job.

  We finished breakfast, and my Irish horse-trading friend set the black kettle off the fire, over to one side, and said he was going to have to let that cool. “I still don’t know what you’re doing,” I said.

  “Kid, don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

  “I believe you,” I said. “I’m just waiting for the demonstration.”

  He reached back in the wagon into a little box and brought out some black Easter egg dye. I told him, “Now this ain’t Easter—and anybody knows that the bunny didn’t bring these mules—and I don’t see how that is gonna work.”

  He said: “Kid, don’t let it bother you.”

  Well, he made up that black Easter egg dye in that pot with me asking: “How in the world are you gonna get it on ’em?”

  “Oh,” he said, “that’s the simplest part about it.”

  He reached back in the cooking part of his old wagon and got three great big brown hen eggs. He didn’t cook them, and he didn’t crack them. He took those hen eggs and dipped them in that Easter egg dye. Where he wanted a little dapple, he would mash the small point of the egg into the hair and turn it around. That dye would come off the egg in a nice little round circle. Then where he wanted a big dapple, he would change ends and dip that egg in the dye and turn it around on the hair. The dye would come off the egg to where the hair would stay white in the middle. Then if he wanted a long, oblong kind of dapple along the bottom of the belly, he would use the egg the long way. I stood and watched him, and he worked just as nimble and fast as anybody can ever imagine. In about an hour’s time he had a nice pair of dapple-gray mules with the little dapples where they belonged, the big dapples where they belonged, the dark dapples where they belonged—and of course the lower parts of the legs were already black and didn’t need any touching up.

  When the sun got up higher and brighter and the dye dried on these mules, they were just simply beautiful. They were just as nice a pair of mules as I had bought before, and I thought about taking them back home with me. But I knew we might have another shower, or I might get them wet with sweat again. And too, the teeth hadn’t changed any. They were still too long, and too rough, and too wide. That corner that had been put there changed their ages in part of their mouths only.

  When he got th
em dappled out pretty he said: “Now, Kid, you’d better go back to the ranch and feed your cattle and see how much you can get ’em to weigh. This is a professional job, and I’d better wind it up for you.”

  I told him that I’d let him wind it up for me, but that I was going to go along to watch the show.

  We pulled in on the trades square in Cleburne, and it was the middle of the morning and lots of other traders were there. A good many mules were standing around, but it was still early enough in the spring that there was a good demand for mules, especially good stout heavy well-fed mules that could go to work. I sat around on my horse and watched. Didn’t anybody know me much. I’d mosey around horseback from one wagon to the next. I didn’t have any other trading stock with me.

  Sure enough, after a while here comes this overly dressed son-in-law with a big diamond horseshoe stickpin and a great big diamond ring and a great big white hat—and a bigger mouth. He came to buy some mules for his father-in-law, and he was carrying that long checkbook. He walked around the wagon and talked to my Irish friend a few minutes. He picked out a brown mare and he picked out a bay horse. Then he said: “I think I’ll have to have that pair of dapple-gray mules.” He looked in their mouths and asked: “How much for them?”

  My friend said: “$300.”

  “Aw—they’re a nice pair of mules and they’re ready, but they’re not worth quite $300.”

  My old horse-trading friend said: “I don’t get many mules with that quality, and I’m really not capable of knowin’ what they’re worth. What do you think you can give for ’em?”

  “Well, I could give you $250.”

  My friend said: “I couldn’t take that, but I’d take $275.”

  “Aw—that would be too much. I’ll give you $265.”