Horse Tradin' (9 page)

I still hadn't quite placed him until he went to telling me about “Angel.” He related that he had ridden her through grade school, high school, and college. He said: “I wanted to tell you that she was never hungry, she was never tired, and I was never lonely. She passed away in a box stall at my home in Pennsylvania a few years ago, with her head in my lap.”

He added further that he would have given away several ponies to children if it hadn't been for parents who objected and didn't understand how much a pony could mean to a child who couldn't run and play.

Then I began to remember the details about his father trading for Nubbin'.

On a rather cold, dismal day in December, not long
before Christmas, I had my regular horses pretty well ridden down for some reason, and I was riding Nubbin'. I was coming through the edge of town, which was not considered the “best” part of town but consisted of the homes of good, honest working people who earned their living by manual labor. Claude, who was Ted's father, waved me over to the side of the yard fence and said: “Benny, I want to trade you out of that filly. She's too little for you to make long, hard rides on, but she's just right for Ted, and I want to get him a pony for Christmas. You see, he needs a pony because he had the fever and it settled in his legs.”

I looked down from my horse, and there was Ted hanging from his crutches by his shoulders. He reached out a long, bony, overgrown, callused hand and patted Nubbin' on the shoulder and said: “If I had her, I would never be late to school.”

Well, I had been on crutches a time or two for a few weeks in my life by then, and I knew they weren't much fun, and I knew it was a mile to the schoolhouse from where Ted lived. At fifteen years old I couldn't imagine why anybody wanted to go to school, and I thought a boy eight or nine years old who didn't want to be late to school was a rare exception. I did have plenty of other horses that were big enough to carry me and my riggin' on long, hard rides better than Nubbin' could, so I asked Claude what he had to trade.

“I've got that milk-pen heifer that I'll give you for that pony,” he replied.

I didn't think that was a very good trade, but when I looked down at Ted a-hangin' on those crutches, I decided that heifer might grow out—and even though I had
made a horse trader, I still might have a soft spot left in my make-up—so we had a trade.

We put a halter on the heifer, tied her to Nubbin's saddle horn, and Ted and his daddy followed and drove the heifer until we got to the wagonyard. We turned the heifer in a lot, and I took the saddle and bridle off Nubbin' and put a rope around her neck. Ted handed his daddy his crutches, grabbed Nubbin' by the mane, and crawled up her foreleg. She was a real pet and very safe.

I may have seen Ted and Nubbin' sometime during the following year or so, but I don't remember much about it, and I had changed ranges many times since then and forgotten all about the pony.

While all this raced back through my mind, Ted was telling the other young men at the table about how he rode Angel all through school, and rode her to deliver papers and sell insurance policies after he got up a little older. One of the young men butted in to tell me that Ted was now president of the company he had worked for selling policies.

I asked Ted how he recognized me, and he said that I was older and fatter but I still had that old stiff saddle walk that caused him to know me. Our visit was cut short by the great common American rush to get back to business; so we each got up, shook hands, and told each other good-bye.

As I drove off into the desert, I tried to remember what had happened to the heifer. But as I pondered it all and remembered Ted as he is today and speculated in my mind how much Angel may have had to do with his success in life, I decided that was the most boot I ever drawed in a trade.

It was early
in the fall, and the horse and mule business had begun to take on new life. Mule buyers were buying young feeder mules, which were mules from three to five years old, broke but not in good condition, that they could put a bloom on in time for the late fall horse and mule market. On this nice brisk Saturday morning, which was
a little bit cool, there were a few scattered watermelon wagons around on the public square, and you could see an occasional wagon with a bale of cotton—cotton picking had just started. You could tell we were about to have a real fall Saturday in Weatherford, Texas.

I rode around the square with nothing particular on my mind, stopped and sat on my horse and visited with a few fellows. While I was talking, I noticed a man driving a good team of mules to a wagon and leading a better mule tied to the back of the wagon. The mule he was leading was a four-year-old mare mule with no harness marks. She was real typey, the kind that would sell for a lot of money. I reined my horse up and rode away from that non-profitable conversation to ride over where that man had stopped his wagon to find out why he was leading an extra mule. It would be supposed that he had brought her to town to sell. As I came near his wagon horseback, I noticed the mule was standing very quietly on a loose halter rope and showing no signs of fear from the people or other teams around her. She was an exceptionally nice-made mare mule, black with a mealy nose, white underbelly, and no scars or blemishes—strictly fancy so far as mules go. In order to conceal my anxiety at seeing such a nice mule, I said to the man in the wagon: “You want to buy a mate for that mule?”

That set up a conversation, and he told me that he was too old to break young mules when he already had a broke team; he had worked this mule some, but she was just green-broke and had just shedded in for a four-year-old. His conversation matched the mule's general condition, and there was no reason to doubt what he said. He had already told me that the mule was for sale “iffen the
price was good enuff.” After much persuasion, I got him to price the mule—instead of me making a bid on her first. He thought she was worth $135, but that if I had a mate to her the span would sure bring $300. We talked on, and I finally bid him $ 100. He told me that if he didn't have to spend all day in town trying to sell the mule, he would take $125 for her. I finally agreed to give him $115, and he sold her to me and throwed the halter and rope in. I reached in my pocket and paid him in cash—I never had gotten down off my horse. I reached over and untied the mule from the wagon, dallied the rope around my saddle horn, and led her down to Jim Merritt's barn.

Jim Merritt was an old-time horse and mule buyer who had come to Texas from Georgia. He knew the mule business and was always a good buyer for an exceptionally nice mule, since he had a trade that would buy the better kind of mules. There was not a doubt in my mind but what I had just made $25, and maybe even $35, by leading that mule about three city blocks.

Mr. Merritt wasn't at the barn, but I was so sure this mule would suit him that I led her in, unbuckled the halter, and rode on. Mr. Merritt was my good friend and had always been more than fair in all my dealings with him, and I knew all that was left to complete the trade was to wait until Mr. Merritt got to town to pay me a reasonable profit for my thirty minutes work and, of course, my shrewd ability as a young mule man. I thought of something that I wanted to do and rode away from town for three or four hours.

I came back up the street about the middle of the afternoon, and there was a whole bunch of men standing in front of Mr. Merritt's mule barn—but nobody was
very close to the gate. That nice, black, mealy-nosed four-year-old mare mule had kicked and torn down a chute, the partition gate between the barn and the back lot, and was backed up with her hindquarters in the corner of the barn, her mouth open, bawling in an unknown mule tongue. Her eyes were popped out like they were on sticks, her ears were stuck forward, and at the least excitement she would rush against the other side of the barn and knock herself down. She had already peeled and skinned her shoulders a little bit.

All the rest of the horses and mules had gotten themselves into the back lot and crowded into one corner away from her. Nobody knew who the mule belonged to—Mr. Merritt was there, and he knew he hadn't bought a mule like that. I sat on my horse and looked over the crowd at my mule that nobody knew was mine. I damn near didn't want to claim her myself.

I choked, tried to act unconcerned, and said: “Mr. Jim, have you got a mule with the colic?”

He replied, “Colic, my foot. Somebody has turned a mule in my barn that's a maniac.”

That started the conversation, and there were two or three people in the crowd who had seen a crazy mule before. I stood up in my stirrups, looked at that mule, and said: “Mr. Merritt, people are the only things that have got little enough sense to go crazy. She must be loco.”

Nobody could remember having seen a mule that was loco act like that. Somebody had called old Dr. Justice, a village horse doctor of the old order who had treated lots of horses and mules. He had no suggestions to make, except that he thought something ought to be done with the mule. The mule stood still in one corner for some
time, and the crowd finally got tired of watching and began to drift away. I still hadn't gotten off my horse and thought maybe it was best not to, as I rode up close to Mr. Merritt and said: “Mr. Merritt, that's my mule, but she didn't act like that when I put her in there and turned her loose.”

He sucked on his pipe a few times, finally took it out of his mouth and said: “Benny, you sure got a booger. If we could get in there and look around on the ground or in that hay or manure, we'd find a ball of cotton that had been saturated with chloroform and stuck up that mule's nose. She was asleep when you bought her.”

I looked at her a few minutes and said: “How did they ever get the cotton in her nose?”

Mr. Merritt gave a deep belly laugh and answered: “Benny, that's your problem, but we've sure got to get that mule out of my barn before dark.”

I needed help bad. Amateurs and town cowboys weren't going to do me any good. I went on down to the wagonyard, and everybody knew about the mule, but it still hadn't leaked out who she belonged to. I talked to two or three of my advisers, but nobody knew how to put chloroform in a crazy mule's nose without catching her!

After while I found a cowboy friend of mine who was ever bit as crazy as that mule. We took two lariat ropes, and he walked a rafter in the barn, tied the end of the rope to a beam, and dropped the loop down over the mule's neck—which started another mule war. When she choked and fell on the ground, I ran in with another lariat rope, tied her forefeet together, and laced her to the saddle horn on my horse. I had already gone and bought a good supply
of chloroform because we figured we'd waste most of it. I had some big wads of cotton already made up in my britches pocket. My wild friend jumped down from the rafters, and I pitched him a wad of cotton. He poured chloroform all over it, grabbed that mule by the ear, and jobbed the cotton up her nose while I drug her enough to keep her feet off the ground. In a few minutes she was lying nice and still. We put a halter with a long rope on her without any trouble. I turned my foot-rope loose while my friend slapped her in the face with his hat and made her get up. She was a nice, quiet mule.

We rubbed all the dirt and hay off her and brushed her while we had her in the dark part of the barn. Needless to say, there was a fair audience at a good safe distance on the other side of the gate. I took several wraps on my saddle horn with the halter rope and asked them to open the gate. My friend Mr. Merritt looked much relieved when he saw we had the mule caught, and he was glad to open the gate and get the people out of the way—which wasn't much trouble when they saw me coming toward them with my mule.

I started across the square for no particular reason except to get the mule out of the way of the people and things before that chloroform cotton came out of her nose. I wasn't sure where I was going or what I was going to do with her. Out on South Main about three blocks from the square, I met a man that I had particular reasons for wanting to become the owner of this nice, quiet mule. He ran a dairy out on the edge of town, and he had a bull tied to the back of his wagon. There were very few trailers or trucks, and it was not uncommon to see gentle cattle being led tied to the back of a wagon. He
was bringing this bull to town to be put with some more cattle to be sent for sale to the Fort Worth stockyards.

This good old dairyman was the kind of fellow who starved his mules, scolded and whipped his dogs, be-meaned his family, and made his living by stealing milk from calves. About two years before this, when I was an even younger trader, he had sold me a spoilt-bag milk cow without letting me in on the secret that her bag was spoilt—and since she was a dry cow, I couldn't tell it. After I had sold the cow and took an awful loss on her, he told me that was cheap knowledge—it would keep me from buying another spoilt-bag cow, and he had no remorse for contributing to my education.