Horse Tradin' (3 page)

Up to now I hadn't hit or whipped the Sleeping Beauty, but I reached over and kind of kicked her in the belly for their benefit. All three of them walked off a piece, then the one I had traded with came back and said he would give me all my money and my paint horse, too, if I would untie the Sleeping Beauty and trade her back to him. I told him no, I wanted to break her of that habit she had, and I believed I should keep her. As they left the wagonyard they were waving six or seven or eight hands and talking to themselves and to each other.

In no more than about half of a little bit, here came a wrinkled old gypsy woman moving swiftly as a ballet
dancer. These modern gals think they invented petticoats—they ought to have seen that old woman. She was wearing lots of them, and all were of a different color. She had gold earrings dangling to both shoulders, and the gold bracelets on her arm sounded like chain harness when she waved her hand. As soon as she got within smelling distance and rattling distance, the Sleeping Beauty raised her head off the ground and nickered in a moan that was nothing short of a pitiful, whipped cry, and began straining her legs against the ropes she was tied down with.

That old gypsy woman went down on her knees in that manure lot with all those petticoats and kissed the mare on her face, rubbed her, talked to her, and fed her some sugar. The mare had shown no sign of emotion when the men and kids came around, but she sure did take on when that old gypsy woman got there. The woman turned to me with soulful eyes and in a very expressive, deep voice said that I had a heart of stone to have tied the little mare to where she couldn't get up. You never heard such begging and beseeching from a human being. She reached over to put her hand on the ropes I had tied all the mare's four feet together with, and with those nimble old fingers she was about to undo my tying knots. I had a buggy whip in my hand, and I just tapped her a little stinging lick across her wrist and said: “Gypsy, get away from my mare.”

She made a bunch of crosses on the ground and a lot of loud noises and gave me the most awful lecture that anybody ever got about being brutal to the Sleeping Beauty. She told me that she had put in many years training that mare since she was a wee bambino, and now I was ruining her. I told her no, I wasn't ruining her, I was just
untraining her to where she could stand a saddle on her while she stood up.

This old gypsy then stood up and hollered right loud, and here came the whole tribe through the gate. By this time it was getting rather late in the afternoon, and it didn't look to them like they had a chance to get their Sleeping Beauty back before night, so finally they asked me what did they have that I wanted. All the time they kept insisting they would give me the paint horse back and more money than I had given them.

We had a whole wagonyard full of cotton farmers looking and listening, and I was leaning against the back side of the fence with my buggy whip facing that tribe of gypsies. There wasn't any giggling going on in that bunch of cotton farmers standing behind them. I had remarked that my paint horse was too tenderfooted to ride, and that I didn't want him back at all. The spokesman for the gypsies said: “We'll go to camp and shoe the paint horse, then give you him and all your money back.”

I kind of flipped my whip over against some corn cobs in the corner of the lot, like I was doing some deep thinking, then looked up and asked the spokesman of the tribe how long it took a gypsy to shoe a horse. He said in a very hopeful voice that he would be shod in an hour. I thought a minute and told him to bring that paint horse, well shod, and all my money in an hour—or to bring the dappled gray gelding that I had wanted in the first place.

They scattered to their camp like a covey of quail, but I knew there wasn't enough gypsies west of the Mississippi River to shoe that paint horse. The only time he had been shod, it took six good cowboys and he crippled some of them—which was just another one of the bad faults
which I had failed to mention. So I crawled up on the fence and sat down.

The farmers all went to asking me questions. I wasn't in too good a mood with them because they had snickered at me when I left the trade ground leading my saddle; so I didn't have too friendly a conversation to offer the waiting onlookers.

Just at dark the old gypsy woman came rushing back to the wagonyard, down to the pen, and said: “They bringin' your horse. I untie my little baby.”

I kicked a little dry manure on that pile of petticoats and said: “Gypsy, get away from my mare.”

She wheeled and ran out of the wagonyard, and again the Sleeping Beauty nickered and cried at the sound of that old woman's voice.

In a few minutes, here came the Irish-looking gypsy who had traded with me to start with, leading the dappled gray horse. I untied the Sleeping Beauty, took my saddle off her, and let her up.

I rode by Mr. Eiland's and put the gray horse in his lot, left my saddle, and walked on the short distance to where I was staying. The next morning Uncle Barney admitted that I
had
made a horse trader. Mr. Eiland paid me a good price for the gray horse on behalf of his friend who wanted him back, and I saddled my good horse and started back to West Texas.

Along about August
of one year in the middle thirties it seemed to me that we were about to have an early fall in the farming country. I had a nice set of three- and four-year-old mules that I had kept over from the spring mule business, had summered them on good pasture, and they were fat, ready to be hooked up and worked. Of course a trader looks to see if mules are ready to be hooked up and start to work because that's when they bring the most money. I thought these mules ought to bring a bigger profit for me than they would ordinarily make at the Fort Worth horse and mule market. or even at the Memphis, Tennessee, mule market, which at that time was the biggest mule market in the world.

I began to inquire around among horse and mule men about where the earliest cotton crop would be picked. I felt that if I got into a territory early, when the fall harvest began, I would probably sell some mules before the rest of the mule men got their barns and pens stocked and were ready to do business.

The more I inquired around the less I found out. Then one day I picked up a copy of the
Farmer-Stockman
while I was sitting in a barbershop waiting to get a haircut. This was a brand new issue, and I saw where they had a big cotton crop along the Mississippi River. The harvest had begun, and some farmers had been getting prizes for bringing the first bales of cotton into the various little towns. I sat there with my mind way off while the barber cut my hair, and I made up my mind then that I'd just as well see about that cotton crop in Mississippi. After all, money would be flowing there as soon as they started ginning and baling cotton—and I hoped I'd be the first on the ground with a set of fresh, fat young mules.

I got out of the barbershop and went around the corner of the square and down the side street where I had a saddle horse tied. I got on my saddle horse and started out to the edge of town to an old friend of mine to tell him what I had on my mind. I wanted him to wait until I got down in Mississippi somewhere, and then when I wired or called I wanted him to load my mules on the train and ship them to me. I felt I'd better get there first and make some arrangements for some kind of a pasture or barn or trading ground—some place to hold these mules while I traded on them. I would need a few days to do this before I got the mules in, since I was shipping to a strange country
and didn't know anybody I could call to have me something ready when I got there.

My old friend was agreeable to this arrangement and said that he would look after whatever livestock I had around until I got back from selling my mules. I didn't know much about Mississippi. I picked out a spot on the map that showed to have a great big, wide, fertile valley and a good railroad running through it. It looked to me like that was all I needed for a future mule market. That evening I went home, turned out my best saddle horses—I never wanted anybody else to ride my own saddle horses when I was out of the country—and packed my rigging in my car.

I was driving a little six-cylinder, two-toned Buick coupé with a jump seat in the back—which in that time was a sure enough fancy rig for a young man to have for transportation. Of course this fancy automobile was just for special occasions. I didn't run around town and squeal the wheels on it like I see these flat-top, hot-rod kids doing this day and time. Instead of that, my rig stayed in the barn with a wagon sheet pulled over it until I had some reason to need it. The rest of the time I rode horseback and looked after my cattle, horses, and mules—and did on horseback whatever other business I had to do that didn't call for a long, fast trip.

Next morning way before daylight I was up and mounted on this little two-toned, fancy Buick automobile with its spare tires mounted on the sides of the front fenders. It sure was a fancy rig, and I felt like a big operator. I could drive just about as far as the road was cut out in a day, or in a day and night, or from the time I started until the time I stopped. I was young and tough,
and sleeping and eating were just something I did on the side when it was convenient and I didn't have anything else to tend to.

The next morning about nine o'clock I drove into Dixon, Mississippi, which was a real nice little town. The stores were opening up and the gins were humming and there was a whole lot of activity up and down the streets. There were lots of teams and wagons and Negroes going to and from the gins. There were cotton pickers with sacks on their backs—I'd been meeting them since daylight. It sure looked like everybody was fixing to have a big fall.

This was a heavy-land country, and it would take good big heavy stout mules to work in this sure-enough black delta land—and that was just the kind of mules I had. The more I looked at the country, the more I thought it was the place to bring my mules. I pulled up in Dixon and parked this fancy rig of mine and got out and walked up and down the street like I was a big operator from way out West—just as though I was looking the country over to see if I wanted to buy all of it or part of it. I stomped around a while and found the town drugstore. It was sure a nice old-timey country drugstore—great long black mahogany shelves with glass doors on them, nice marble-covered soda fountain, pretty little square-topped fountain tables with the chairs hung on each corner leg, and when you got up these little chairs slipped back under the glass-case tabletop that had merchandise in it. This drugstore was the sociable spot of the town. It was where the people gathered and drank cokes and drank coffee and talked about what had happened the night before and what was going to go on from here out.

I didn't strike up acquaintance with anybody much that morning. I saw a lot of natives in and out, and you could tell the ladies that clerked in the stores and the men that came in from the bank. The village druggist was one of those good-natured, smiling, kind of half bald-headed fellows about fifty years old that knew everybody and knew what was going on. If you want to find a man that knows about the community, when you go to a new place, a country druggist knows a heap more about affairs of state than the banker or the lawyer or the sheriff or anybody else in town.

In those days the druggist was the one that opened his store first in the morning, and the drugstore was the last place that closed at night. If you were going to the farm or to the field or leaving town, the first place you would come by was the drugstore. When you went to the picture show or had a date with your girl or for any reason—shipping stock or something—were up late, the drugstore was the place in town you would go by before you went home at night. These modern drive-ins with their juke-boxes and their automatic coke machines will never see the day that they have the hospitality and the congenial atmosphere of friendliness that the old country drugstore didn't have to boast about—everybody knew it.

Well, this was a typical drugstore in the Old South. Everybody spoke with a long, slow drawl and was in no particular hurry. They were in no hurry to wait on you and in no hurry to see you leave. They would like for you to loaf around so they could find out about your business and maybe they could brag a little about their own. Strangers weren't too plentiful in this little town, and you could tell right off that people were looking at me, but of
course I didn't scare. I had on high heeled boots that were shop-made, a 3x beaver Stetson hat, and I wasn't wearing any common britches, either. They could tell at a glance that I was from way out West, and whether they noticed it or not I was proud of it.

I started to walk out the door and the druggist said: “Needn't hurry.”

I said: “No hurry, I'll be back to see you later in the day.” I smiled and said it in a light tone of voice and waved as I went out the door.

I drove up and down the streets of the nice little town. The houses were well kept, the lawns were pretty, and there was moss hanging from the trees that grew around. Some of those nice, old-timey white panel fences had gates swinging in and out over concrete sidewalks up and down the residential part of town.