Horse Tradin' (31 page)

Well, I had that color all over me, and I hadn't decided yet what kind it was. Anyway, I kinda washed my hands in a little puddle on the ground by the side of the barn where it dripped, and I opened one of these mule's mouths. She had a cup in the corner tooth like an eight-year-old ought to have; but her tooth was too long for an eight-year-old, it was too wide across the top, and it was too ridged up and down the side. My mules were a good thirteen or fourteen years old. Somebody had worked
their mouths and made them an eight-year-old corner, and evidently somebody had given them a dye job. I didn't know what they were dyed with or how anybody did it. The dapples were so natural and so purple and so well shaped—nobody in the world could ever have guessed that they didn't belong to these mules.

Then it kinda began to dawn on me about that whispering and looking that those people did when I was bidding on this pair of mules. And I got to thinking how that barn foreman smiled when he said he would help me take care of them—that he knew I wouldn't want anything to happen to them. I don't know whether women had beauty parlors by then or not—but there was bound to have been a mule beauty parlor somewhere, because that pair had as nice a hair job done as could be done on any kind of animal.

They were a real nice work pair, and I was busy wintering a bunch of cattle, and the weather was bad. I kinda hibernated and stayed at home and fed steers and worked my mules. There was just no fault in their working qualities or their dispositions. They stayed fat, and they were easy to shoe—never offered to kick or do anything wrong. There was just nothing wrong with them except that dye job. The color had made it pretty deceiving about how old they were. The dapple-gray color went with an eight-year-old tooth, but the white color they had now went with a mouth that looked about fourteen years old when you got to looking at it close. When Parker Jamison called the age on them, I don't know whether he knew the difference or not. I imagine he did, but he was trying to match the mouth up with the color.

I got to hunting through my vest pocket, and I found
the ticket that showed who owned the mules when they were consigned to the sale. Of course, I never bothered about who bought that green-broke pair of horses—that was their trouble. What I was bothered about was that dye job on this pair of mules. I saw that the name on the ticket was that of a very prominent horse and mule man who lived off down about Hillsboro somewhere.

I went to two or three First-Monday trades around over the country, and I'd get into conversation with a bunch of road traders or old-time horse and mule men. I would just sort of bring up casual-like about: “Wouldn't it be nice if a dapple-gray mule could just keep its color like that all its life.”

It generally didn't start much conversation, except that everybody would say: “Yeah, but the older they git the whiter they git.” Which wasn't news to me.

I would just say: “Uh-huh,” and walk off.

Hardly anybody knew about my mules because I had kept them at home and worked them, and I had got them home without anybody seeing them. Oh, maybe some of the neighbors had noticed they had whitened out on me, but it didn't ever dawn on them how come it. One man did say something about them turning awful white. I said: “Yeah, the hair has got out on them long, and I guess they'll blue back up when they shed in the spring.”

I knew an Irish horse trader that was about a half-breed gypsy—been raised in a road camp. I kept laying for him, but it didn't seem like he was ever going to come through the country again. I figured he would know how you manage to do a blue job on a mule.

I took some saddle horses to Decatur one trades day, to trade maybe for something different. These horses
weren't good and they weren't bad, it was just that once in a while you would want to change colors on your stock—or sizes, or ages, or something. Anyway, you needed to have a little variety among your livestock, some new experiences about what could be the matter or what could be good about some of them. So in Decatur, about the middle of the morning, I spied my old Irish horse trader friend.

He and I had traded a few times in years past. It never had been anything big. We always hurrahed and tried to cheat each other if we could—but for a horse trader he was sort of on the honest side, and I was just a great big wild rough young boy and he kinda liked me. A time or two he had told me things I needed to know, so I propositioned him to let's go up town and eat some dinner. He lived in a road camp and ate his own cooking, or camp cooking, so he said he believed he'd like a little change and he believed he'd just take me up on my proposition.

We got some chile or some stew or something—I don't know. We ate a pretty good little batch of dinner and visited and talked about how the country looked and where he had been since I saw him last. By this time we were about to order pie and wind up the dinner; so I decided I'd better ease up on these gray mules. I said: “It's a pity that a nice dapple-gray mule or horse can't stay that color all its life.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but we all get gray when we get old.”

“I know,” I said, “You are getting a little gray, but I ain't worried about you—and it's a long way off for me—but I got some mules that got gray pretty soon.”

He had a sharp black eye, and he glanced up at me
real quick. A little twist came in the corner of his lip, and he said: “How do you mean?”

Well, I hadn't told anybody else, but I didn't think he would tell on me; so I explained to him what had happened about my mules. He thought it was real funny, and we had a good laugh. Then he said: “Where did the mules come from?”

I told him about this high-class horse and mule man from down around Hillsboro who had sent them to Fort Worth—that his name was on the ticket when I bought them.

“Oh, you mean him! I remember when he was a road trader—till he married that rich woman that had a good farm. Then,” he said, “he got respectable. He's not supposed to remember any old tricks like that—much less play 'em on people that are buyin' work stock.”

“What do you mean—old trick?”

So he described how the dapples looked on the mules, and sure enough, he knew. He knew that they were darker and bigger around on the sides and down on the lower part of the belly. And he knew that they were smaller and lighter up around their necks and shoulders. He just knew exactly how these mules were colored—and he never had seen them.

I said: “Damn, did this man from Hillsboro learn how to color them mules from you, or did you learn from him? Evidently you all are using the same color pattern.”

He kinda laughed and said: “I'll tell you—I'll go down and look at your horses and see if there is anything I want to trade you out of that would be worth a little boot between mine and yours. Then, I'll tell you how to recolor your mules—and call it boot.”

We laughed, and I told him that would be sort of like blackmail, I reckoned, but it might not be anything new in the horse and mule business. We visited on—and I asked him where he was going from there. He said it didn't make much difference, that he could drift down south. He would kinda like to be in Waco in about a month, so he believed he would come by and see my mules in a few days.

I told him that sure would be fine, that I had a good little pasture he could camp in, and he wouldn't have to stake out his stock. He could let them run loose for a few days and fill up before he went on down the road. He said he thought that was a good proposition—for me not to worry too much about the color on my mules because they just might gain it back.

I said: “Well, I've heard of mules gaining weight back, growing out their manes and tails and things like that—but I've never heard of one gaining its color back.”

“You boys,” he said, “that stay at home and feed cattle—there's things you haven't heard about. Let's go on back down to the trade ground. If I don't see you no more there, I'll come by your place in two or three days.”

He knew where I was ranching and how to get there. It wasn't too much out of his way if he was going to go on down into central Texas.

I traded a saddle horse or two that day—didn't do anything too smart or too dumb, which was a fair average for me along about then. I started home along about the middle of the afternoon, rode by his wagon and waved at him, and told him I would be looking for him.

He said: “That's fine. Kill a yearling and get some fresh groceries and I'll stay a few days.”

That was a common remark, and we both waved and laughed and I rode off thinking that maybe I was going to be able to lead my mules back through the fountain of youth after all. It was getting to be up in the spring of the year, and it was nice to travel horseback and have my bunch of trading stock on the road. They could graze along the way, and there was water in the road ditches.

Sure enough, in four or five days my Irish horse-trading friend pulled up to my ranch gate in the late afternoon. I saw him coming—I was out at the barn doing something—and I went and opened the gate and let his stock in and let him drive his wagon in. I waved to him to turn down toward the creek and some great big pecan trees to set up his camp. I walked alongside his wagon until he pulled up between two big trees where he would be in the shade all morning and afternoon both. I helped him unhitch and shuck the rigging off his team—untied the ones that were tied to his wagon and just turned them loose there in the small pasture.

We got through and sat down on the wagon tongue and talked a few minutes. “I want to see your changeable mules,” he said.

“I don't know whether they are so changeable or not,” I said. “They just changed once since I've had them—and it wasn't for the better.”

We walked up to the barn where the mules were in the corral on the other side of the barn. Regardless of their color, they were still nice mules, and I had kept them fat and their feet were in good shape and their shoes weren't too worn. They were just good mules. I had let their manes grow out—I hadn't roached their manes or sheared their tails—and they looked a little ragged. But
you couldn't make mules like them look too bad regardless of what you neglected about them.

This old Irish horse trader was, I guess, about sixty years old. He said: “Kid, you've sure got a pretty pair of mules, and it is a shame that they seem to have lost that youthful bloom so all of a sudden.”

I started up again and I said: “Well, if there's any way to color a mule—and there's bound to be—then they had been colored. But I can't understand how you could get the dapples so smooth and even—and small where they needed to be and large where they needed to be. It's a mystery to me—it was just a work of art. I guess you might brush it on. But how would you get the mule to stand long enough?”

He just died laughing. “It's easy,” he said.

We sat there a few minutes on the feed trough out in the lot—just looking at our stock. His horses and mules that he had brought in with his wagon—they had been to the creek and drunk and wallowed and had begun to graze. He said: “It's going to help my tradin' stock to get two or three days rest in here—in that good pasture.”

I said: “Yeah, you needn't be in any hurry gettin' on down the road. Let 'em fill up.”

“That might give me time to help the looks of your mules some, too.”

I said: “Well, you know, the main reason I'd want the looks of these mules helped is—our friend down at Hillsboro must like this dapple-gray color of mules we are talking about, or else he wouldn't have colored this pair. And I just felt like maybe he'd like to have another pair back—if they were the right color.”

He laughed and he said: “I don't believe that'll work.
He's too sharp for that.” We sat in silence a few minutes and then he said: “But I'll tell you what would work,” and his face brightened up like he had just seen the light.

“What's that?”

He said, “He's got a son-in-law that's a-buyin' mules at Cleburne and a-usin' the old man's checkbook. The son-in-law, he's not too sharp a mule man, but his daddy-in-law has got to keep him up someway—so he lets him buy horses and mules for him and use his checkbook. He's a-stakin' him on the halves, hopin' he'll make half as much as it's costin' to keep him up.”

I said: “Well, maybe we can make it be half-color and half-mules and have a little deal with the son-in-law—if you know how to put the blush back on them that they had when I got 'em.”

“Kid, it's easy—if you know how.”

“Yeah, you said that before, but you cut me out ever time you add that if-you-know-how to it. Besides that, if you was to put that cloudy color on 'em here, I don't know how I'd get 'em to Cleburne without it running on 'em.”

He stayed around and we visited two or three days. His trading stock filled up, and he enjoyed resting under the big trees. He slept in his wagon and I slept at the house, but he ate with me and visited, and he told me a lot of things about trading that I never knew. He rode around the pasture with me, and he told me that when he was a young man he thought he would be a cow man. But, he said, he never could figure out how you would make any money just waiting for a cow to have a calf. He said if you went to trading in cattle you couldn't cheat anybody—because about the time you thought you knew all
there was to know about a steer or a cow, all they had to do was weigh her and make a fool out of you. So far as he was concerned, he had rather have swapping stock than beef stock.

Along about now, that all made sense to me, too.

The afternoon he was ready to go, he never yet had told me how he was going to color that pair of mules—or how for me to color them. It seemed like a deep, dark-gray secret. All he would ever tell me when I would bring it up was: “It's easy, Kid. It's easy.”