by Ben K. Green
Well, the schoolteacher picked out a brown horse and asked if we would saddle him up and ride him to show he was gentle. Choc caught and saddled him, and, of course, he rode gentle and stood still for you to get on and had a lot of good qualities to recommend him as a schoolteacher’s horse, including a few mossy grey hairs under his foretop and around his ears.
I rode over to his horse as he walked along by my horse to look at what he had to trade. His horse was a light dun in color and would be big and tall for a cowboy to mount and a heap taller than that for a schoolteacher to get on. He said that he was mean to rare up and that he had rather not try to ride him to show him to me.
This horse had a good six-year-old mouth and it looked like everything else was good about him but his disposition, so after a good deal of conversation I squeezed that schoolteacher from $15 boot and led the dun horse back to the wagon. The schoolteacher got the old brown horse and jumped on him bareback and rode home happy.
I turned the big horse loose with the rest of the herd and we began to push them toward Greenville. This herd of horses comin’ down Lee Street, which is the main street of town, caused a lot of farmers and town people to stop and look and run out the front doors of their businesses to see the sight. Of course, I knew lots of people since I had ridden away from here just four years before, and I had a lot of wavin’ and hollerin’ and braggin’ to do as we drove ’em on down and put ’em in the trade pens at the old Ingram Wagonyard.
The black-land natives gathered around these horses the next morning and we had some tradin’ business. We traded the odd mule that we had besides our team for a good-lookin’ high-headed saddle horse. I had a weakness for these high-headed saddle horses and I gave $25 boot. Old Friole said he was afraid the heat was affectin’ me because all this time he had never seen me pay anybody else boot in a horse trade. Choc thought this was funny and Friole got a big kick out of hurrahin’ me about “givin’ away” money.
I traded a pair of matched five-year-old stocking-legged, bald-faced chestnut horses to Al Eiland, who was an old-time friend of mine and a very fine horseman. He traded me a nice fox-trottin’ saddle mare even for the pair. She was “open in the corners,” which meant she was an eight-year-old, and I felt like I had graduated to a top horse trader anytime I could cheat Mr. Eiland, and I knew for sure that I had cheated him.
The next day we turned out of the wagonyard and drove out on Johnson Street and out by the fairgrounds to where we hit the Lone Oak Road. Then I left Choc and Friole to drive the herd of horses on to Emory, which was about twenty-live miles and told them to trade for whatever they saw that they thought they would like.
I took Beauty and Charlie and led a good grey horse and went to Cumby, fifteen miles, where I left Beauty and Charlie in the old home pasture where Beauty was born. I spent the night at the old home place and next morning I left early and rode south through Miller Grove.
Late that afternoon, I found the herd of horses grazin’ along the creek south of Emory. Friole had made horse trade. There was a farmhouse where a woman had some beautiful loud-colored bedspreads hanging on the line for sale. The one that Friole picked out had flowers and birds all colors of the rainbow woven into a bright red background. Friole picked it up off the wagon sheet and waved it in the air at me, laughin’ and hollerin’ “Muy bonita manta,” which meant “Very beautiful blanket.” He had traded the oldest one of the gentle saddle horses for the beautiful blanket, two dozen eggs, and a gallon of sweet milk and was tickled with his trade, and I couldn’t see how he hurt me much in the deal either.
Tied to the off front wheel of the wagon was a fat slick-haired young brush goat. When I noticed it, Friole began to laugh and Choc was tryin’ to think of something else to do or somewhere else to go and I asked, “Friole, is that yours too?”
He said, “No, Señor Choc may settle down somewhere and wants a goat.”
By this time Choc was kickin’ his toe down in the ground and lookin’ past my shoulder to explain the goat. He had asked a farmer $25 for another one of the old saddle horses that was gentle and the farmer offered him $15. Choc thought that was enough for the horse but he wanted to show his tradin’ rights, so he told him he would take the $15 and that goat. Evidently there hadn’t been much argument because there was the goat tied to the wagon wheel.
The next morning Choc said that he would like to ride the big dun horse that we got from the schoolteacher. I said, “Well name him Professor. Get on and well see if he’s got some smart.”
I had saddled this good grey horse I had ridden to Cumby and Friole had broke camp and loaded the wagon with the iron skillets and red blanket and the pet goat and we were about ready to move herd.
Choc caught the dun horse without much trouble and as he saddled him, the horse showed to be shy and didn’t want to stand to be saddled. Choc was havin’ a good deal of trouble tryin’ to get on him when I rode over and dropped a rope around the Professor’s neck and snubbed him to my saddle horn. Choc was a good, stout, long-legged cowboy and got a hold and stepped on him in a hurry.
The Professor tried to make several wild lunges and the grey horse hadn’t had enough schoolin’ and we let him get about four feet of slack in the rope. He was rarin’ up and looked like was goin’ to fall back when I spurred my horse and brought him back to earth in a pretty forceful manner. I looked at Choc and he showed a little surprise and I said, “What do you think?”
He said, “I think in about three days from now he’ll be a pretty gentle horse,” and I reached over and untied the rope and turned him loose.
The herd wasn’t much trouble to drive during the day and Choc and the dun Professor had one fight after another from balkin’ to buckin’ to runnin’ away. He was sure spoilt and didn’t intend to get over it fast.
We camped at Quitman the next night in an open glade on the bank of a creek near town. As long as we were in the black land, farmers thought of these light-boned West Texas horses only as saddle horses because they were not big enough to be used for power in the heavy black soil. However, we were gettin’ into deep East Texas, sandy-land country, where there was a better demand for smaller horses and the natives along the way were lookin’ at these West Texas horses as work horses as well as saddle horses and business was pickin’ up. We had a lot of visitors and talkers the afternoon that we camped but no sure ’nuff trades.
That night at camp I told Friole to stack everything out of the camp wagon on the ground next morning and take the wagon sheet and bows off because we were starting to use the camp wagon for a hitch wagon and sell some work horses.
I knew that we might have a few runaways and I wanted the wagon empty and our camp stacked all in one place. After breakfast we began to catch some of the horses that we had rode a few times because they would be sort of bridle-wise and we could hold them back or pull their heads around hooked to the wagon better than we could a raw bronc.
We hitched the gentlest and what we thought to be the stoutest mule on the right-hand side and after the battle of gettin’ the harness on a pretty good size bay horse, we worked and pushed him around and got him up by the mule and tied a lead rope from his bridle reins back to the mule’s hame. While I held him, Choc finished hookin’ the traces and the breast choke and picked up the lines and got in the wagon.
This range-bred horse wasn’t wearin’ that mule harness with a whole lot of pride and you could tell by the way he had his ear cocked and the music rollin’ out of his nose that he really wasn’t plannin’ on doing the right thing. I told Choc to stand real still and not breathe hard until I got on my grey horse that I was callin’ Concho. I figured if we had a big runaway, I could ride into that unbroke horse and help change his mind.
I rode up by the side of the wagon and Choc spoke to the work mule and he moved off pullin’ the wagon and the horse. When the horse set back and the wagon rolled up and hit him on the hocks and hindquarters he pulled that forward-lungin’ act that you plan on when you are breakin’ young ho
rses to work to a wagon. This old mule was pretty wise and with the horse’s head tied back to his hame, he just pulled to one side of the road and kept the wagon straight.
This bronc didn’t throw no kickin’ fits and we drove him out a country road about a mile and found a wide place to circle and turn around. By the time we got back to the camp, he was travelin’ in a walk and tryin’ to get along with all that harness afloppin’ and poppin’ around on him.
When a herd of horses is driven a few hundred miles, their feet wear off and break off and get just a little tender, and a tender-footed horse doesn’t have to make but a few hard jumps and landings on a gravel- or hard-surfaced road until he begins to take a little more sensible view of tryin’ to get along with his plight. This is one reason that I knew that it would only take two or three hitches on each one of these horses that we would offer to sell “gentle to work.”
We put in the morning harnessin’ and unharnessin’ broncs and workin’ them a little piece to the wagon. They actually put on a worse show and a bigger fit harnessin’ than they did workin’.
The word had got around that there was some fresh horse stock in the country and the native farmers ridin’ in a wagon or ridin a work horse bareback and wearin’ them bib overalls had started gatherin’ around the camp drinkin’ coffee and atalkin’ horses. Money must not have been too plentiful with them because they did a lot of feelin’ and talkin’ and lookin’ on a horse before they got around to tryin’ to buy him, but this was all right as long as there was more than one looking. As many horses as I had, I didn’t have to spend much time with any one of them and when they finally made up their minds, we started talkin’ trade.
When we worked these horses, we would drive them enough to break them into a sweat. Then we wouldn’t clean them off when we unharnessed them because we wanted the harness marks to show that they had been worked. We sold five horses that day for cash and rehooked each one to show that they would work.
What our hookin’ actually amounted to—it showed that you could harness and hook them to a wagon with a gentle mule. Actually, it was a poor test because we weren’t recommending that they would pull to a load or had been worked in the field, but, anyway, when these overall-clad natives wearin’ tennis shoes would see harness marks on one where the sweat had dried that was all it would take to get him interested.
The next day I traded two mares for two pairs of old mules that were small and fat with long manes and bushy tails that needed roachin’ and cleanin’ up, and in each trade I drew about as much money as I had paid for the horses, counting the expenses I had in ’em on the trip. When you are trading horses and you can draw about as much boot in a trade as your horse cost, you just do the farmer a favor by takin’ whatever else he wants to give you in the way of horse stock so he can feel like he cheated you bad because he got rid of something that he didn’t want.
I decided that we had had about all the quick horse business that we were going to have at Quitman, so Friole rerigged the camp wagon and early next morning we drove off from Lake Fork Creek where we were camped and started for Mineola. I thought this would be a good time for me to ride the nice fox-trottin’ bay saddle mare that I had gotten from my friend Al Eiland in Greenville.
Our horses drove good and the mules that we had traded for didn’t offer to turn back and this saddle mare was moving me around over the road in rockin’-chair fashion until we got to a little sandy-bottom creek that ran across the road and she stepped out into the water on her side and wallered like a dog, and me scufflin’ to get off of her. I didn’t seem to unnerve her a bit. Water ran into my boots and wet my little dry feet, and as it made me mad enough, I kicked her in the nose and belly and she seemed to be thoroughly enjoyin’ herself and payin’ me very little mind.
Choc looked back and saw the commotion and rode up on the bank on the Professor that he had straightened out into a pretty good horse. He thought that we were a pretty sight and he set there laughin’ at me, which didn’t help the situation any.
As the mare flounced a little bit with her head, I stumbled and fell over on her neck, which gave me a bright idea and I went up on her head and down in the water with it. I got one ear in my mouth and bit down on it hard and held her nostrils in that water until she went to blubberin’. As we started to come up, I turned loose of her ear and stepped back in the saddle as she rose out of the shallow water.
At noon we made camp long enough to cook and eat dinner by the side of the road and I tied this beautiful fox-trottin’ water-dog mare to a tree with the bridle reins. I didn’t much more than step away from her when she rared back, groaned, and broke the bridle reins. I hollered at Choc and he rode in and caught her by the head stall before she started back to Greenville.
I intended to tie her around her neck with a big hard rope that would sure enough hold her and then I decided I might not know all her bad habits yet. I didn’t want her to skin her head and neck up from her settin’ back atryin’ to break a tree down because those kind of flesh scars don’t improve the sales value of a horse, so I took a soft rope and wrapped it around her forelegs just above the angles and hobbled her and this sure was a shock to her sensitive high-tone nature. She wasn’t tied but she couldn’t leave and she spent the noontime workin’ herself into a lather over those hobbles.
I normally would have changed horses at dinner but I felt like me and that little darlin’ ought to get better acquainted, and I decided to ride her the rest of the day. Along about three o’clock in the afternoon because she was a soft, fat, town mare, she had gotten awfully tired and had begun to fight the bits and pull at the reins to go. I got a pretty firm hold on her and for some reason and she grabbed the bits between her teeth and cold-jawed and ran away with me.
I didn’t know whether I could stop her or whether she would run into something, so I kicked both feet out of the stirrups and put one hand on the swell of the saddle and instead of pullin’ on her I gave her slack. When she found out she wasn’t in a fight and she was just making herself tired, she slowed up and stopped still. I let her stand there and shake and quiver and be mad until the herd caught up with us. I knew then that I had a town-spoilt mare and my friend Al Eiland had a nice pair of matched stocking-legged chestnut horses that were probably makin’ a beautiful driving team, and I was the one that got cheated.
We camped in a grove of trees by the side of the road in the edge of Mineola that night and didn’t do anything smart with our horses. Friole had begun to get used to some of the luxuries of farming country and had learned to stop along the way at farmhouses and buy fresh eggs and milk and the better kind of grub that was luxurious to a native from south of the border. I smelled something good cookin’ for breakfast while I was feedin’ my high-headed saddle horse that I was going to ride that day, and when I walked up to the campfire, Friole was all smiles. The day before he had bargained for some Dominicker chickens and we were havin’ fried chicken for breakfast. It seemed to me that horse traders was livin’ better than anybody.
Friole was a good cook even though his grub sometimes was pretty rank for bland-mouthed people—I’m sure that if he had made a pie, he would have had to put a little pepper and a pod of garlic in it.
I saddled my high-headed saddle horse that I had traded for at Greenville and just wondered if he was goin’ to be any kin to the saddle mare. I thought I would go to town and loaf around a little bit and get a haircut and put out the word about havin’ a herd of horses to sell and trade.
This nice high-headed horse was the right one to ride to town because when I passed down the street everyone stopped to look at him. He carried you without any loss of motion, and the arch in his neck and the bow in his tail showed that he was real proud of himself. The town barbershop wasn’t too excitin’ and I didn’t run into any real good horse conversation there or at the drugstore, and I decided I would ride around through the back of town where there ought to be some horse and mule barns and then go back to camp.
I
was ridin’ down the back street south of the business district and lookin’ off awatchin’ that horse’s image travel in the plate glass windows he passed, which was a cowboy’s way of showin’ off. While I was settin’ up straight and watchin’ this nice horse in the windows, he rode right into a wagon that had its hind wheels stickin’ out in the street, stumbled, and fell to his knees. While I was scufflin’ to get his head back up, he was headed square dab into a wide post at the railroad crossing. I spoke to him and reined him up and got him stopped and I could tell that he was ashamed of himself and knew that he had done something wrong and was quiverin’ all over but not offerin’ to fight. There was an old man smokin’ a pipe and strokin’ his beard watchin’ me and as I moved the horse off and passed by him, he said, “That’s sure a nice horse to be moon-blind.”
I let on like I didn’t hear him but that word “moon blind” reverberated through my mind in a weird ghostlike voice. I didn’t tell Choc nor Friole, and as I unsaddled him I brushed the dirt and loose hair off his knees the best I could with my bare hand.
That afternoon a dressed-up man and a little sissy fancy-dressed boy about fifteen years old drove up to camp in some kind of a long automobile and got out and started a conversation about wanting a saddle horse for the summer. As we talked on, the man went to telling the boy that they just might buy two horses and he might ride with him some and show him the finer points of horsemanship. This fellow seemed to be some kind of a railroad executive and early in his conversation went to telling me about being raised on fine horses back in Tennessee and for me not to bother with him until he had walked around through them and picked out what he wanted. He said, “I know horse traders always pick out what they want to sell, but I had rather pick out what I want to buy.”
