by Ben K. Green
I was holding my breath, and my Irish friend was a-pawing around on the ground like a horse that was tied to something he didn’t like, but directly he said: “I guess that’ll be all right. You can just pay me.”
The son-in-law whipped his big long checkbook out and made out a check for the bay horse and the brown mare and the gray mules. He hollered across the yard at a Negro to come and get them and lead them off for him. He wouldn’t have wanted to get his gloves off or get them dirty leading that stock around. After all, he wasn’t spending his own money.
So I waited until he got away with them, and I got down off my horse and leaned up against the wagon wheel and stood there and laughed a while.
My old Irish friend said: “You don’t want this check. I’ve got the money on me, so I’ll just pay you.”
He gave me my $265. I told him that I had $250 in those mules, but I had worked them all winter, so I would take $225. I gave him back $40 for his trouble.
He said that was getting a pretty good price for Easter egg dye that early in the season, and he thanked me. I told him to come by and camp any time he was in my part of the country.
He told me that I’d better go back to making cattle get fat—then when I got cheated, it would be by weight and not by color.
The Schoolmarm
and Ol’ Nothin’
Along in the early thirties, I had passed all winter in a two-room shack out on a ranch and wintered a string of big steers with intentions of sending them to northern feeders the following summer or fall. It had been a mild winter. The cattle had not been too much trouble to tend to, and I’d had lots of good horses to ride, with plenty of time on my hands to socialize.
There was a schoolmarm in the nearby village that I had been giving the rush act through the winter, and we had been having lots of fun. There was a bunch more young folks in and around the little ranch town, and we had parties, moonlight picnics, and wolf hunts for social entertainment through the winter, as well as eating hamburgers and going to the picture show on Saturday night.
I guess I had gotten farther away from the cow business, with this schoolmarm, than I realized. I had been keeping a special ordered blue serge suit in the pressing parlor in town, and I would ride in horseback, put my horse in a corral next to the feed mill, then go to the pressing parlor and the barbershop and get smoothed off and dressed up.
This schoolmarm had a new Model A Ford convertible coupé—the first Ford I ever saw with a standard shift and two pedals in it—and we would get in it and take on whatever social activities were going on.
So the winter had passed and had been very enjoyable. It was spring of the year and grass had put out. The mesquites were leafing out. Cows were licking themselves and having baby calves. Horses had all slicked off, would swell up when you cinched them and hump up when you tried to ride them. It was hard to get the big boys and girls to go to school, and it was still harder to keep the little ones in the schoolhouse after they got there. So it was the natural time of the year for a school-closing.
One Friday afternoon my schoolmarm picked me up to take me down about twenty-five miles to another town where her daddy was superintendent of the schools. She said that there was going to be a big weekend—a party Friday night and Saturday night and some kind of goings-on Sunday—and she wanted me to go home with her and stay at the house with her folks, and we could come back Sunday night or Monday morning.
Well, I wasn’t too well house-broke for such affairs, but it sounded like a lot of fun, so I went along.
Sure enough, the old folks were expecting me to come home with her, and they were all set. The old man was a fine old Southern gentleman, very light-complexioned and probably of Irish descent. His wife was a good-looking, black-headed woman, and this schoolmarm had gotten her features and his coloring—which sure did turn out to be a good cross. But on second glance at her mother, you could readily determine that the professor had kept school close to the Reservation when he was a young man; and my schoolmarm’s grandmother was probably the daintiest little creature that ever dusted out a wigwam with a wild-turkey-wing duster.
Sure enough, we went to parties, dinners, and feeds, and had a big time over the weekend. Sunday, after church, the old man and I were a-settin’ on the front porch waiting for the schoolmarm and her mother to get dinner ready. There was another little girl about nine years old, almost a tomboy, and cute as she could be. She came out and took me by the finger, wanting to lead me off to show me her pets. She had a black and white pet rabbit and a banty hen with some baby chicks. Well, I had raised lots of rabbits and banty chicks, so she and I had a big visit. She was a real sharp, likable little kid.
We had started back to the front porch with her leading me by the finger when she said: “It sure will be fun having you for my big brother. We can just do all kinds of things together.”
I tried not to booger from a little girl—but that double harness rattled in my face and spooked me just as bad as shaking a chain harness at a saddle horse.
We had a real good Sunday dinner. I minded my table manners and didn’t eat with both hands all the time. I bragged on the old woman’s cooking and laughed at the professor’s jokes.
We started back in the middle of the afternoon. This cute little schoolmarm was full of talk and plans, so I hardly opened my mouth—which was quite unusual for me. When she finally did slow up, she told me that her mother thought I was real nice and her father said I was just like an “own son.” There was that double harness shaking at me again.
We got into town about dark, drove around to the corral where my horse was, and she told me the coming Friday night was school-closing. There was going to be a big country play and an ice cream and cake supper after the play was over. She said she was going to be awfully busy with the details and arrangements, but that I could come over to the school horseback. I told her that suited me just fine.
There was an old camp house next to the corral where I had thrown my saddle and work clothes when I left my horse. I changed clothes in the moonlight and went over to the pressing parlor and stuffed my good suit in the back screen door. Of course the pressing parlor man would know what to do with it when he found it the next day.
My old horse was full and seemed to have enjoyed my being gone. I saddled him up and rode out of town. It normally was my habit after dark, riding home from town, to drop off to sleep and let my horse take me home. He would paw on the gate when we got there and wake me up. But tonight I wasn’t sleepy. I had left home when I was thirteen years old and wrangled horses on a chuck wagon. I had batched and ranched most of the time ever since and had ridden back and forth from the ranch to the school during my high school years. I was twenty-odd years old now, a lone wolf, and sure a-scared of that double harness!
I spent the rest of the week up and down the Brazos River, riding over my ranch and my neighbor’s, kinda dreading that school-closing Friday night. By Friday night I had lost my taste for such sweet stuff as ice cream, cake, and schoolmarms, and didn’t feel like the play would be too interesting. I rode up the creek into the back of the pasture, which was about three miles, carried a little grub sack with me, built a fire, cooked some meat on the end of a forked stick, unsaddled my horse, lay down on my saddle blanket, and took a nap. I knew that there wouldn’t anybody find me up there unless they came horseback, and I didn’t think that schoolmarm would come up the creek horseback hunting for me. When I woke up the moon was hanging over toward the west, and I thought it was late enough to go back to the shack.
I had some steers to change pastures with and left the shack early the next morning. I rode back in just a little before dinner time, and that Model A was parked out in front of my batching shack. As I rode up, that cute little schoolmarm came bouncing out of that shack, walking mad all over. She must have just had a visit with Emily Post. She told me all the un-nice things that I had done by not coming to the school-closing, and that she was fixin’ to straighten up and change a lot of my ways. She said she wou
ld be by late the next afternoon to take me home with her, as Mamma and Daddy were planning a party for us Sunday night—and for me to be dressed up and ready. Then, with this set of orders and instructions, she turned and got into that Model A and went over the hill in a cloud of dust. I just stood there holding my horse, and never had a chance to answer back a word.
I went into my shack, and it had an uncomfortable look to it. She had done made up the beds and straightened stuff up to where I couldn’t find my frying pan to fix dinner—and I knew that wasn’t going to suit me.
I didn’t leave the ranch the rest of the day, and that night I ate a big supper of bachelor’s grub—beans, beef, and potatoes. About this stage in my life, I could eat just about anything I got to that didn’t eat me first and sleep anywhere I got still.
The next morning I woke up a little before daylight. Ol’ Nothin’ had walked up out of the pasture and stuck his head over the back fence. I hadn’t ridden Ol’ Nothin’ much all winter, and he was feeling fit and looked like he needed to go on a long trip.
Ol’ Nothin’ probably had the best legs, the deepest chest, and the most powerful hind-end that was ever put on a horse. He was fifteen-one hands high and covered all the ground he stood on. But there was one bad thing about Ol’ Nothin’, his neck was poorly shaped and was away too long. There was about a foot, right behind his ears, that you wondered why it had been put there. This caused him to be limber-necked and high-headed, and he didn’t have much mouth. I hesitated to ride him in the brush or rough country because he ran with his head up and seldom saw where he was going. He was sound, gentle, a real good pack horse, and a brush race horse that wouldn’t quit.
I had just shod Beauty the day before. She was always my standby and favorite, and she hadn’t been ridden too hard lately. And when I got to thinking about that party the old woman and the professor had planned for me and the schoolmarm, and I looked at Ol’ Nothin’ and Beauty, I thought about what a good time it was to take a long pack trip and maybe buy up a few good bronc horses to break and sell that fall.
I let Ol’ Nothin’ in the yard gate and fed him some feed out on the front porch. I always kept a sack of feed in the house, in case a horse came up and wanted a bite to eat. I whistled at Beauty and let her in, then fed her off the other end of the porch.
While my horses were eating, I gathered up my personal belongings and riggin’ and fixed up a pack to put on Ol’ Nothin’. I saddled Beauty, put my bedroll and clothes, my frying pan, and a few other belongings in my pack, cinched and tied it down on Ol’ Nothin’, and put a halter on him. He led the best of any horse I ever took with me. He would lead right up beside the horse you were riding and never tighten the halter rope.
By late in the evening, I rode up to an old friend’s place and told him I was going on a little horse-buying trip, and I wished he would see that my steers had salt and would look about my batching outfit until I came back. He was an old bachelor and a sure-nuff cowboy. He busted out laughing and said: “Ben, is that schoolmarm crowding you?”
I didn’t admit it, but I told him I thought I would do better in some other country for a while.
In five or six days I rode into Abilene, Texas. I hadn’t hurried much; I had visited along the way, and my horses didn’t show much sign of the trip. Jenks McGee was an old-time horse and mule dealer in Abilene and had a barn not far from the main part of town. I rode into the barn in the late afternoon. There was nobody around. I found an empty corral and put my horses in it. I threw my pack saddle and my saddle in the harness room and fed my horses out of his grainery (graineries and barns and saddle rooms didn’t come equipped in those days with locks. Locks were something brought on later by the machine age).
After I had my horses well looked after, I thought I would mosey off up into the main part of Abilene, eat supper, and go to the picture show. I walked into the lobby of the hotel, next to the post office, and there was one of the gals that had taught school with my schoolmarm. She had already made it home after the school-closing. She was real glad to see me and was full of conversation. She didn’t try to pry into why I was in town or where I was going. While we were drinking a coke, some more gals came in. There were three or four of them gathering there to go to the picture show. She asked me to go along, but I flinched and got out of it. It had just begun to dawn on me that this country was overstocked with young female wimmin. I had supper and made my way back down to the mule barn. I undid my bedroll, spread it out on the saddle room floor, and went to sleep.
The next morning, about daylight, Jenks McGee kicked me to see who he had for a night guest. I got up, and we had a little visit while we were feeding my horses. He asked me what my business was, and I told him that I was going to buy some young horses to take home and break. He said I might not have any more sense than to give what a good horse was worth, and that might mess up his business; so he would rather I would move on farther west than to be buying horses in his territory. He had a truck going to Carlsbad, New Mexico, to pick up some polo horses, and he would send me to Carlsbad for nothing. He thought I could probably buy some broncs a little cheaper out there than I could around Abilene. It sounded like a good proposition, so I took him up.
I didn’t tarry around Carlsbad long. I saddled up and rode off into northwestern New Mexico, high up in the mountains, where I knew there were lots of good horses and mighty few buyers.
I drifted into Cloudcroft, then back into the Apache Reservation, and was camped one night near an Indian trading post about fifty miles up in the mountains, south of where the Ruidoso race track is now. There were lots of good horses in this country, and I had begun to put out the word among the natives and the Indians that I wanted to buy a few young horses. I stayed camped high up in the mountains, between Almogordo and Ruidoso, close to this Indian trading post.
About the third afternoon I was there, some Indian bucks rode over to the trading post—four or five of them, I don’t remember which. After they ate some cheese and crackers and drank red soda pop a while, they began to get rather friendly. They said they didn’t have any horses to sell, but they had a race horse they would like to match a race with. The man running the trading post was named Watson, and the Indians called him “Wat.” They said they would sure like to match a race against one of my horses for $10, and that Wat could hold the stakes.
These Indians had some store-bought duckin’, paleface britches on them, but their shirts were Apache colored and Apache made. They all wore hats but one. The oldest Indian among them had his head tied up with a headband, and instead of having on store-bought boots, he was wearing moccasins. He was much smaller than the rest, and real bowlegged.
After a little talk and discussion, we put up $10 apiece with Wat and went down to a mountain meadow, just below the trading post, where we marked off what the Indians said was about three hundred yards. I thought it was closer to a quarter of a mile, but it didn’t make any difference because Ol’ Nothin’ could outrun them anyway; and the farther he went, the better he got.
They stripped the saddle off a little brown Indian horse that they were riding, and this old Indian turned out to be the jockey. Ol’ Nothin’ was staked out to graze a little piece from my camp. I walked out and got him, took the halter off, slipped a limber-bit bridle on his head, and thought I would just ride him bareback. I probably weighed 160 pounds and was as hard as white men get, I guess.
The Indians got Wat to quit the trading post, and he walked off and left it open. He came down into the flat and was going to be the starter. We had marked off the place where the race was going to be over, and we broke down a bush to one side so there could be no argument about the end of the race.
The Indian and I got on our horses. We had scraped a line on the ground, and Wat was standing on the end of the line holding his hat in his hand. The Indian’s horse was a little fidgety, and Ol’ Nothin’ had savvied what was going to happen and had pertened-up some, too. We were standing on the line, and Wat dropped his hat
and hollered: “Go!”
Ol’ Nothin’ jumped past that Indian horse the first lick and outran him so far to the other end of the race that I had him turned around and looking at the Indian when he got to the end of the race. There was no argument about who won.
We went back to the store and got real well acquainted. The Indians told me they had another race horse that they wanted to bring the next day and run against Ol’ Nothin’. Wat asked them how much money they wanted to put up. They grunted and had a little meeting among themselves, then decided they would have to bet $20 to get even—if they won. I told them that would be fine and that I would be at the store waiting for them the next morning.
They rode off, and Wat and I got a little better acquainted. He had paid me my $20 and said tomorrow there would be a good many Indians come down to see the race; that if I wanted to bet a little money on the side, he would be glad to help me with it. I didn’t want to brag too much. I told him money might be a little short with me, but I would talk to him about it tomorrow.
It is plenty cold up in the mountains early in the morning, and it was about ten o’clock before the Indians showed up with their other race horse. This time there were about forty Indian bucks, all ages and all sizes. They were all mounted on good Indian ponies. These ponies were a little better than average Western horse size, even though some of them were paints. For the most part, they showed quite a lot more breeding than was commonly found in those days among Indian horses. The horse they had brought with them to race was a bigger than average Indian horse, a dark chesnut color, and was shod with light cowhorse shoes. I’d say this horse had been picked out of the bunch and was the best horse this particular band of Indians owned, more than likely.
We visited around the porch of the trading post and put up our $20 apiece with Wat. Then I slipped him $25 more to bet on the side. He didn’t seem to have any trouble getting it covered by the Indians. I began to think maybe Wat was on their side—that I was the only paleface there, and that I might be fixin’ to lose my money.