Horse Tradin' (25 page)

I said: “That sure smells good. You must have got your training as a camp cook.”

He kinda laughed and said: “Well, it'll do to fill up a hungry man.”

I told him I'd like to have a batch of that stuff. Up to now he never had said: “What's it for you?” or “Can I help you?” or “Did you want to buy something?” You wouldn't have known it was a commercial place of business from the way he was acting. He got a tin plate out from under the counter, went over to this barbeque pit, raised the iron lid off it, and took out a big chunk of meat. He chopped it up, and it filled up the plate. He slid it over
to me, reached in a bread wrapper and pulled out a loaf of bread, and started to cut me a chunk of bread. That was before bakeries had learned how to slice bread and then wrap it—bread all came in one chunk.

I said: “I like the tailgate.”

He just cut off both ends of the loaf of bread and said: “There's you two tailgates.”

I started in on this barbecue, and it sure was fittin'. I began to brag on it, and he said: “Reach over in that box behind you and get you an onion and peel it.”

Well, I thought that would help, too; so I reached over and got an onion and sliced it and peeled it and started out eating again. That made everything better. I was mighty hungry.

We were talking, and he looked up and saw all these horses standing on the courthouse square and wondered who owned them. “They're mine,” I told him. I said I had been up in Kansas and I was going to Weatherford to winter. I never let on but what I had been working these horses all summer. I didn't tell him I was trading on them. Then I added: “I'll swear, this is good barbecue.”

He said: “Look around there in front of that glass counter and reach in that barrel and get you a pickle to go with it.”

Well, that set it off some more, and I just kept eating and visiting and talking. Nobody came in for a while—but directly here came a fellow. He came up and said his wife was washing and he thought he'd better take some barbecue home for dinner. They had small talk while he got fixed up with some barbecue in a little cardboard box with some gravy in it, and he went out.

The storekeeper turned around to me and said:
“There'll be four or five of them kind of fellers by here. There's several different reasons besides washing, but that's just the one they tell you about.”

“One reason is,” I said right quick, “that their wives can't make barbecue like this.”

Well, you could tell that didn't make him mad. He said: “Yeah, and another reason is, some of these fellows don't take no meat home for their wives to cook nohow.”

While I was sitting there eating, I was looking around this store. Back behind me—it was a kind of L-shaped building—on the back part of it he had some feed and some seed, some farm tools and some chain harness and collars were hanging on the wall. Up around on one side of the meat market there were some cases of canned goods, and stuff that wasn't too common in just everybody's store. You could look up the other side, toward the front, and there were about three big aisles going up through there. You could plainly tell which aisles belonged to the women's kind of merchandise; the floor was swept, and there were bolts of goods up and down the counter and in the shelves. There were some fancy kinds of women's shoes, some of them laced and some of them had bows on them. And there were even two or three pairs of right fancy ones with bows on them—sitting right out on top of the boxes.

Then on the men's side there were good ducking britches, jackets, and work clothes—and Stetson hats. Any direction you looked there was something else that had to do with living in a ranch or farm country. You could just tell right off that this was a good general store. If anybody wanted something this store didn't have, he sure was looking for luxuries, because the necessities were
all here. I mentioned this to the proprietor—about how much stock of stuff he had in his store.

“Yeah,” he said, “I sure am proud. I try to keep everything that people need, but ever now and then I hear of somebody going off fifty or sixty miles to Fort Worth and buying something.”

I told him there would always be people hunting things that came from Paris, or something that didn't have any practical use, but he had a right to be proud of a store like this—and this wasn't any country store, the way I saw it. It was an up-to-date store.

He began to appreciate me pretty good by then. He reached over and got my tin plate and said: “Heah, young fellow like you—been a-drivin' that bunch of horses a long way—can eat more beef that you've had.” So he loaded up my plate again.

I didn't fight him any over it. I figured I could eat a bunch more of it, too. And besides that, I was going to have to make a camp supper somewhere down the road. It just might be I wouldn't want much supper, the way he was feeding me.

In a minute he spoke up and said: “Surely you don't need all those horses at home. You mighta needed 'em in the summer, but you ain't gonna be doin' anything this winter to take that many horses, are you?”

I said: “Well, I might be. I have the horses, and I pretty near have to do something if I keep them.”

He said: “There was somebody in here a few days back a-talkin' about needin' some big horses—some teams to dig dirt tanks with. I didn't pay much mind to who it was. You don't reckon you'd want to sell 'em, do you? I might try to think of who that was.”

I told him: “Oh, I'd keep my saddle horses and sell some of my work horses, if it would help a man out—but I'm not hankering too much.”

He didn't know that was a piece of information I was waiting for—the name of somebody around there that might be needing work horses. I tried not to show much interest, and after all I was pretty much busy with that second plate of barbecue he had cut for me. About that time somebody else came in. I had finished eating, and he said: “Well, don't run off. Come back 'fore you leave and I'll try to think who that was that wanted some horses to work.”

I walked out on the sidewalk and kinda stretched and yawned and started over toward my wagon and horses. I saw a fellow coming out of the courthouse astepping pretty nice. It looked like he was either after something or running from something, and about that time I noticed he had a big star on the side of his chest. I decided he was probably the high sheriff. He got to my teams about the time, or a little before, I did. He was looking around, and he said: “Nice bunch of horses you got, kid. Who do they belong to?”

I said: “They belong to that kid you're talking to.”

He kinda laughed and said: “Well, I guess they could. I just figured there was a grown man around somewhere.”

I kinda took that like it was an insult, but I thought since he was the high sheriff maybe I'd best not cuss him out—and he kinda laughed when he said it, anyhow. We got pretty well acquainted, and he was a good kind of a fellow. He was an old-time stocker, had been a cowboy and a teamster and a mule-skinner; then he got into politics. He was right likable, and his name was Abernathy
if I remember right. And I thought it was a shame that a good fellow like that would take off to devious means of making a living—like being a sheriff—when he was a good stockman.

He brought up the matter of whether the horses were for sale. I told him that I guessed I'd sell some of them, but I wouldn't want to run myself short. Of course he didn't realize how many I could do without and still not be short. He said: “There's a fellow down here in the south part of our county that runs a big land company: the T and P Land Company. There's a lot of that old ranch country that they can't get windmill water on, and they're having to build some dirt pools in some of the pastures. It's been a dry fall, and the manager down there has been wanting to get some dirt work contracted. I imagine you could get a job building some dirt pools and tanks through the winter.”

I let him on the fact that I didn't think that would be a pleasant way to spend the winter—camped off there digging a bunch of dirt tanks. And that I'd started home and wouldn't be interested in a job.

He said: “Well, in a case like that, would you sell some of these big, heavy, dirt-working kind of horses to my friend if he wanted to buy them?”

I could tell then I was sure about to have some more business. I said: “Well, I don't know. It depends on what your friend knows about what good horses are worth.”

He said: “It's Mr. Cox, and he runs that T and P Land Company out there. He'll know more about horses than you or me either one.”

It's always nice to do business with a fellow who knows, or thinks he knows, so I told this high sheriff that
I would be interested in talking about selling some of my horses if Mr. Cox was really interested in paying what horses like mine were worth.

He said: “Mr. Cox has a phone. I'll go over to the office and see if I can ring him. It's about dinnertime and he ought to be at the house. If he lets on like he could use these horses, I'll come back and tell you.”

I said: “That would be just fine. I'll appreciate it. Maybe we'll have some business, and you'll be doing us both a favor. It doesn't hurt a man in politics to be doing people favors, even if they are strangers.”

He kinda smiled and said: “That's a fact.” And I learned later that's how he had been in office pretty near all of his life.

He came back out of the courthouse after a while and said sure enough that Mr. Cox would be here in a little while. If I could stay around, he just knew that we would have some business. I told him it was an awful nice time of day for me to be getting on down the road, but I appreciated his trying to help, and I would wait a while on Mr. Cox.

In about thirty or forty minutes, here came this man Cox, and he was another nice gentleman—well spoken, wasn't insulting, knew a lot about horses and a lot about people. He and this Sheriff Abernathy sure were big friends. We visited, and they talked about the size of the teams and how good they could work and what all they could do, and how it might be smarter to buy them and do the dirt work than to contract and have it done. I thought that was a lot of favorable conversation, and I just felt like I was going to have some business with this Mr. Cox.

He finally got around to asking what I would take for a team, but before I answered him he said: “No, I mean two teams.”

I asked him $300 a pair for them. He said that was a little high, but that he would try to buy them if I would try to sell them. I thought that was a pretty good attitude, and I said: “Well, it seems like you know more about the horse business than I do. What do you reckon you'd give for them?”

He decided that he would give $250 a pair for two pairs, but I told him I couldn't quite take that. So he said: “Well, supposin' I bought them all?”

“Then I'd be out of teams!” I said it just like I'd be ruined, but he didn't have any idea how well that would have suited me. “I don't know. If you bought the eight head, I might take off a little.”

“How much is a little?”

I said: “$25 a pair.”

“You're trying to split the difference with me. I offered $250 and you wanted $300—but I just got to thinking, what am I going to hook these big horses up with? If you had some harness, I'd try to buy them.”

I said: “That wagon is full of harness, but I can't put that in at no such price.”

About that time the high sheriff raised the wagon sheet and saw that, sure enough, there was a lot of heavy harness in there. Then this Mr. Cox, he stuck his head in there. You could hear them talking low to each other about how good that harness was. Then Mr. Cox asked me what I was doing with my ponies along. He didn't know it, but these were my cow horses and I wouldn't have given them for all these big horses at any time.

I told him I needed them—that I had been up in Kansas handling a bunch of steers through the summer, and I would probably handle mules through the winter, and that I'd need my riding horses. None of them were for sale.

But when I said I would handle mules, you could see his eyes light up considerably. He asked: “What kind of mules?”

I said: “Just mules—any kind of mules.”

“How would you like to trade these horses for some mules?”

I said: “Well, I wouldn't want to trade all my horses for mules. I need to get some money out of 'em if I'm going to let them go.”

“We've got some mules. There's just a little small matter about catching them. They're in a big pasture on Pinto Creek, and if you'd trade for them range-delivery, we'd sure try to have some business.”

“How many mules you got in this wild bunch?”

He said there were five three-year-olds that never had been broke, and one six-year-old mule that had got out and got so wild they couldn't catch her—which made six head in all. I asked him about the colors of the mules, and the sizes, and so on.

He was a pretty fair kind of a fellow, and this high sheriff was a-vouching that he was telling me the truth all the time. He said there were brown and bay mules, the six-year-old was a sorrel mule, and they were all fat. Some cowboys had run them a few times, but nobody had been able to catch them.

I asked him if there were any corrals anywhere that they could be put in, and he said: “Oh yeah, there's a
good set of pens out there in the pasture on Pinto Creek—made out of rock—if I ever could get them in there. But those mules—seems like they got a little something against goin' in a corral.”

Well, by now he sure had tapped my number. I was getting interested fast. I asked him if I could keep the wagon to camp in and maybe a span of the mares at the wagon until I caught the mules—if we had some kind of a mule trade. He said the wagon wasn't going to be much good to him, that he was going to need scrapes and plows and slips and fresnos. I could camp in the wagon to catch the mules, provided I caught them before they got too smooth-mouthed; that he didn't want the wagon sitting out there seven or eight years. Of course he and Sheriff Abernathy, they had a great big laugh about that.