3stalwarts (104 page)

At the end of the line in the shed a puffy-looking man leaned against a hitch-post. He wore a long coat and high leather boots and had a dirty fawn-colored hat on his head. At sight of him, Brackett waved his arm.

“Hey there, Jed, how be you?”

Mr. Johnson uncrossed his legs, looked up, said “Hello” in a hoarse voice, and crossed his legs again. He was chewing tobacco, and Dan could see by the way he could spit through the hitching ring on the side of the shed that Mr. Johnson knew what was where.

“Jed, here’s Mr. Harrow come to buy a horse.”

Johnson ran his one eye over Dan, and then seemed to perk up a little. His heavy cheeks collapsed on the heels of a long spit and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“How big?” he asked hoarsely.

“Not over seventeen hundred, fourteen to fifteen and a half hand,” said Dan.

“Not notional in color, be you?”

“No,” said Dan. “But black would go best.”

Mr. Brackett thought it was time to put in a good word.

“Granting you could find the ideal horse,” he said in a confidential tone to Dan, “I bet your neck Jed will have it.”

“I’ll show you what I got, young man,” said Jed.

He stowed his quid behind his nigh back teeth and put two fingers on his tongue. His cheeks filled like a balloon and he whistled.

“That was for my man,” he said, when he had listened a moment. “He ain’t going to answer. He never does. He’s lazier’n a beef cake. Reckon he’s sleeping off some likker. God damn him, anyway.”

“Ain’t sleeping, ain’t drunk!” cried a high voice. “Ain’t a cow cake, neither. Go to hell.”

A skinny man with a grey beard and big hands drew himself out of the manger in front of the horses and looked them over owlishly.

“What’s the trouble, Jed?”

“Gent wants to see a horse.”

“Thar’s seven,” said the old man, pointing down a line of friendly snouts. “He can take his pick, can’t he?”

“Get up,” said Jed hoarsely. “Get up, will you?”

“Sure.”

He clambered out, clouted a horse’s shoulder for room, and joined them.

“What’ll the gent see first?”

“Wants seventeen hundred, fifteen hand,” said Johnson. “Black.”

“Why, bless his brisket, we’ve got the picture of it right here.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Johnson. “Lead her out, Jimmy.”

While Jimmy was getting a big black out of the string, Johnson said, “Five-year-old mare, kind and honest. Real pretty. I’d call her better than seventeen hundred now, but she’s in heavy flesh. She’ll train down. There she is. Good head and neck, well set on, not a scar on her feet, heavy quarters— a good hauling horse.”

Jimmy walked her round. The horse was loggy, Dan said to himself, stiff. Her size was right, but she was too long in the back. She wouldn’t keep up with the other horse for more than a mile. She lost motion every step.

“Nice horse,” he said. “How much is she?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Mr.-“

“Harrow,” said Brackett, putting his hands in his pocket and striking a critical pose as he watched the mare.

Johnson spat and began again in his hoarse voice, “It’s this way, Mr. Harrow. There’s a five-year-old mare, broke double or single, active worker, handsome shape, if I say it myself. None of your Southern horses, not her. Raised on my farm to Canandaigua. I’ll tell you about her. Her own sister was matched up with her, the neatest spitting picter they made. You couldn’t tell one from the other, I’ll swear it, except by the way they’d hold their tails in dropping. Fact, ain’t it?” He turned to Jimmy. Jimmy halted the mare, looked round her and under her, said you could match hairs on them. “Sure,” continued Johnson, “that’s how they was. I aimed to sell ‘em as a pair. But a gent came and offered me a hundred and fifty dollars for that other one. But I held out for two hundred and he was glad to pay. This one I’ll sell for one-fifty, seeing it’s late in the season and going single. I was to ask four hundred for the team. I was a fool to sell the other.”

Dan went over to her and looked at her neck. Her mane was trimmed cleverly, but he had been right at first. Her neck was set too low on her shoulders. A week of heavy hauling and she’d have sores.

Out of the tail of his eye he kept watching a brown. The horse was thin and out of condition, but he liked its set. It stood easily in the line and kept its head up. It looked clever. Dan turned back to the mare.

“Let’s see her trot.”

Johnson uncoiled the lash of his whip and cracked it. Jimmy yanked on the lead. The mare lumbered heavily. Then she stumbled.

“First time she ever done that,” said Jed.

“I ain’t sure I like her,” said Dan. “Got anything else?”

“There’s a grey roan. Not so slick an article. But good. All my horses are. Take him out, Jimmy.”

While the old man was bringing out the grey roan, Johnson ran through his catalogue of virtues, named one twenty-five for the price, and declared that the horse was seven years old. Dan decided that the horse was fourteen.

“You’re making a mistake to look at this one,” said Johnson. “That mare’s what you want. Still, for a steady horse, this one’d do a man proud.”

“First-rate horse,” said Jimmy, with a grin in his beard. “He’s a regular odacious clever one, he is. Name is Ponto.”

Dan went over him carefully.

“He looks pretty good to me,” he admitted. “What’s wrong with his left eye?”

“Wrong?” asked Johnson hoarsely.

“Eye?” asked Brackett.

Jimmy grinned again.

“I ain’t told Mr. Johnson,” he said. “That’s a most odacious clever horse. He’s got the moon-eye.”

“Moon-eye?” asked Dan.

“That speck you seen,” explained Jimmy. “It grows along with the moon. In a couple of weeks you’ll see it going down. It commences with the new moon. If it’s rainy when the moon commences, you can look at his eye and see what the weather’s going to be like. It shows like a new moon, wet or dry. You can make money betting on the new moon.”

Johnson spat a long squirt.

“I’ve heard tell of the moon-eye,” he said with hoarse frankness, “but I never seen one. Why didn’t you tell me, Jimmy? I’d have put the price up. Won’t now, though. Jed Johnson never put a price up’ard on any deal he makes to offer.”

“That’s honest gospel,” said Brackett. “I vouch for it.”

“What’s the good of the moon-eye?” Dan asked.

“Don’t you know that?” Jimmy asked. “Gol! And you out to buy a horse?”

“A horse with moon-eye don’t need no light for traveling,” Johnson explained, winding the whiplash round his thumb. “He can see in the dark.”

“Well, he looks good,” said Dan, “but I ain’t sure.”

“I don’t know as I’ve anything to offer that’d suit. You can look, though.”

Dan went down the line. He had a chance to see the lean brown, and the horse looked good to him. He guessed he was not over seven, and he saw that he was healthy.

“I tell you,” he said. “Let me go and get my other horse and see if the black or the grey goes best.”

“Sure,” said Johnson. He sat down on a bucket and took another chew, and began talking to Brackett.

“Well, Bill,” he said, “I guess I’ll owe you a commission for that one.”

“I think so myself,” said Brackett. “You’d ought to stick him high.”

“I aim to,” said Johnson.

Halfway back to the gypsy’s string, Dan saw Solomon and Berry and the womenfolks coming down the line towards him. It had begun to get colder again, and the northwest wind was bringing clouds over the valley. Once in a while a horse would snort and rear over a swooping shadow. Molly saw him first and waved her hand. When he reached them, she put her hand inside his arm and walked along beside him. The wind, which fingered her loose hair, had brought a color up in her cheeks.

“What luck?” Solomon asked.

Dan told them about the black horse he was about to buy from the gypsy. Then he spoke of trying to match it, and Mr. Brackett’s enthusiasm for Mr. Johnson’s horses.

“I think Brackett and Johnson has a deal on between them for trade,” Dan said. “They’re trying to get me to buy a black mare that shows she’s a cribber and broken-winded, and a fourteen-year-old grey with the moon-eye. I let on to like them. But they’ve got a brown horse in the string that’d match up with the black better’n any horse I’ve seen to-day. I didn’t let on I seen him. I figger Brackett must get a piece of all trade he brings. I think he’s foxy.”

Brackett’s small daughter pulled her freckled face out of the nest of spun violet sugar and wiped the stickiness off her lips. She smiled at them proudly.

“My pa’s slicker’n polish,” she said. “He says so himself.”

They all started to grin, and Mrs. Gurget swept up the child, sugar and all, for an enormous hug which made her squeak with terror and pleasure.

“I’ll bet he is,” said the fat woman.

“I was thinking,” Dan went on, “how it would be for Hector, maybe, to go down and buy that brown horse for himself. He’s awful poor and Hector’d ought to get him cheap. Then I’ll bring the black along to match with the grey.”

“How much’d you want to pay?” asked Hector.

“Not over a hundred and twenty, with the poor flesh he’s in.”

“I’ll pay for everything he costs over one hundred and ten,” Berry promised.

“Hector!” exclaimed Mrs. Berry. “Ain’t that betting?”

“Kind of.” Berry grinned.

“Well, you ain’t going to bet no money, see?”

“Why not?”

“I said so. You shouldn’t ought to go betting our money that way.”

“Well, I won’t lose.”

“Shut up. You heard what I said.”

“Quit your nagging, Nelly.”

“I won’t quit. I won’t have you betting our money. Why’d I ever marry a gambler,” she wailed rhetorically.

“Didn’t know no better. A sheltered honey like you wouldn’t,” soothed Mrs. Gurget.

“Quit nagging,” said Hector.

“I won’t.”

Hector gave a jubilant shout.

“She ain’t going to stop nagging! You all heard her say it. Then I might as well smoke.”

He poked a cigar between his lips, and the enlargement of his button mouth brought back a jolly good-humor to his face that had been lacking all morning.

“Now,” he said to Dan, “I’ll pay you every dollar that horse costs you over one hundred.”

He strode off with pompous quick steps of his tubby legs, spouting great clouds of smoke down the wind ahead of him.

“Hector’s a great hand to make a bargain,” Solomon chuckled. “He can find more things wrong in a horse than there is in a horse to be wrong. I’m going down to the back side of that shed to listen to him talk.”

“Come on,” said Mrs. Gurget.

“I’ll go with Dan,” said Molly.

They went slowly, to give Berry plenty of time to drive his bargain, and Molly kept close to Dan.

“Is he a nice horse?”

“He’s a dandy,” Dan said. “Him and the brown’ll look good on the towpath hauling the old Sal.”

She smiled and squeezed his arm. He looked down at her.

“What’s the matter, Molly?”

“Nothing, Dan. I’m kind of tired, I guess.”

“You oughtn’t to be tired. Wait’ll you see my team.”

They found the gypsy and Dan paid him the money. The man took the money and then lifted his languid eyes and looked from Molly to Dan.

“That Brackett’s slick,” he said. “He gets trade for Johnson. Better watch out.”

“Thanks,” said Dan.

The red-shirted man gave him the lead rope.

“You won’t have no bother with him. He stands easy. He’s a clever article.”

They went slowly back down the slope with the big black at their heels. When they came in sight of the end of the shed, they stopped in to see how Berry was coming on with his bargaining. They could see Jimmy trotting the horse round. Dan nodded.

“He looks as if he’d match up proper.”

“My, he’s big,” said Molly. “Look at his feet.”

Just then the black head with a white muzzle was pushed between their shoulders and the black horse snuffed at Molly’s bag for sugar. She started and looked up to see Dan grinning at her. “He’s took a notion to you,” Dan said. She smiled and put her hand on the horse’s crest. He pricked his ears and swung his head gently closer to her.

“He’s nice,” she said. “What’s his name?”

“You name him,” said Dan.

“Let’s call him Prince.”

“I’d thought of it myself,” Dan said admiringly.

Down ahead, they could see Berry running his hands over the legs of the big brown. At every joint he shook his head and counted on a finger. Brackett and Johnson were looking on gloomily, and Jimmy did not seem to take much interest in the proceeding. Then Berry started to walk off, his plump legs rigid with simulated disgust.

Johnson lifted his head and sent a long squirt ahead of him.

“Ninety dollars,” Dan heard him say.

Berry turned back, fished out his wallet and paid out the money like a shot.

Then Dan and Molly came up. Behind the dealer they saw Solomon waving his arms and grinning ecstatically at the corner of the shed.

“Here’s Mr. Harrow,” said Brackett.

Johnson looked up.

“That the horse?”

“Yeanh,” said Dan.

“Trot out the grey, Jimmy.”

“How about that brown?” Dan said, pointing to the horse Berry had just bought.

“Sold,” said Johnson.

“I’d like to try him with the black.”

“Go ahead,” Hector said affably. “Maybe there’s a deal somewhere in it for us.”

He slipped the lead rope through the halter ring of the black, and took both ropes in his hand. The horses walked off stride for stride. They were a good match.

“Trot ‘em,” said Dan.

Berry managed to run for a few yards and the team trotted without breaking stride, eyeing each other warily and keeping fairly well apart.

“If they make friends,” Dan said, “they’d ought to make a good pair.”

“Sure,” said Berry.

A premonition of evil had sobered the faces of the dealer and Brackett, but Johnson managed to swear.

“Say,” he said, “how about trying that grey?”

“I only want two horses,” Dan said. “Mr. Berry, here, bought the brown one for me.”

“Cheap, too,” said Hector, proudly. “Ninety dollars.”

“My God,” said Jimmy. “I’m going to get some sleep.”