Some More Horse Tradin' (22 page)

I
was riding past Hamilton's filling station and garage on a pretty good sixty-dollar horse when a fellow that was buying gas hollered at me and waved me to come over. I wasn't in a big hurry, so I reined over to the side of the road and he walked out from the station and asked, “What will you take for that horse?”

Well, that was a question I wasn't bad to answer and I wasn't riding one of my favorites. In order to leave some room for him to trade I said, “Seventy-five dollars.”

He said, “I really don't want to buy no horses. I was just wondering what one like that would be worth in this part of the country, because there was a man that tried to sell me some at Paint Rock, Texas, that were pretty nice lookin' horses about the size of this one for $10 a head.”

I said, “I don't know where Paint Rock is, but if you can buy horses like this one for $10 a head, it will have to be a long way to keep me from goin' after 'em.”

He said, “Well, it's too far to go horseback. It's about two hundred and fifty miles southwest of here down close to San Angelo.”

I asked, “Who's the man? That don't sound too far.”

He told me that Shultz Bros and some other ranchers had a good many young unbroken horses for sale. By this time Hamilton had tended to his car and had made me very miserable with that piece of information, and I waved at him and rode off.

It was early summer and I had been out of school for about two weeks and was pretty well caught up with my loafin' and visitin' and kind of needed some place to go after a bunch of horses. I talked it over with my dad late that evening about them cheap horses out in West Texas and that I had all summer to go get 'em, break 'em, and sell 'em. I thought I would be less trouble to him if I was gone for two or three months.

He didn't see much wrong with that and he knew I had several hundred dollars of tradin' money, so he told me to rig up and leave when I got ready but be back in time to start to school that fall. He said he wanted to hear from me once in a while so he would know that the rest of the horse traders hadn't gotten all my money and I hadn't starved to death.

That night I got a map and figured out where Paint Rock was and how to get there by common roads and highways ahorseback. I wasn't worried too much if this particular bunch of horses had been sold, because if horses sold that cheap, they must be plenty more in the same country.

Next morning I rigged up Beauty and led Charlie with a light pack on him, mostly just a bedroll and some extra clothes. It was a nice time of year, the grass was green along the roads and the running water was clean in the creeks that crossed the roads and highways and the nights were always nice and cool. I did get rained on a few times during the trip, but there wasn't much danger of me meltin' and there was no other reason that a good rain would hurt a young cowboy.

About ten nights later I camped in the wagonyard at Ballinger and ate supper at an old-timey two-story concrete block hotel over by the railroad. Settin' on the porch of the hotel after supper that night. I got into a conversation with some railroad men and two or three native merchants and began to ask questions about the horses and ranches.

The country around Ballinger was mostly farms, but I had already crossed lots of grassland and the farms were along the Colorado River and plenty of ranches lay beyond there. These old native merchants said that if I wanted to buy horses I had better not say it very loud or I'd get more than I could handle.

The next morning the wagonyard man told me that it was about twenty miles to Paint Rock. He said that anybody there could tell me how to find the Shultz Ranch or the Paint Rock Cattle Company, which was the two names that I had. I rode into Paint Rock a little after dinner and an old country mercantile man told me that the Shultz Ranch had a phone and before I rode out there, why didn't I call 'em. Well, I was just a big green country boy and hadn't learned to cut off much mileage by usin' the telephone and writin' letters.

He got the Shultz Ranch on the phone for me and talked to the foreman; he told him that there was a kid that wanted to buy some horses. As he stepped back from the phone, he said, “Here, you talk to him.”

The old man had said I was a kid and I guess my conversation
sounded like it too, so the foreman wasn't too much impressed and evidently didn't think he had much of a horse buyer because he said he would come in and talk to me that afternoon when he had finished working on the windmill.

I bought up a batch of cold grub and ate it off the counter at the mercantile. It was the heat of the day and business wasn't too rushin', so the old man and me had a good visit. After he found out where I was from, he said it looked like I came a long way to get eight or ten horses. He was talkin' to me like I was a kid and I thought I was grown but he probably didn't think I had enough money to pay for more than eight or ten horses and then they would have to be cheap.

There was some shade trees around the mercantile and a good place to graze my horses, so I slipped the bits out of their mouths where they could drag the reins and graze till they was full, and I stretched out under the lacy shade of a mesquite tree and went to sleep. I waked up after a while and made it back to the mercantile and got me some candy and a cold drink for a wake-up tonic.

It was a long, draggy afternoon and it was real late when this foreman drove up in a pickup and walked out to where I was shadin' under a tree with my horses and asked, “Are you that kid that called about buyin' some horses?”

He was a big, stout, ranchy-lookin' fellow about forty years old, and I guess he had a right to call me a kid, but I thought horse buyers ought to be treated with a little more respect, so I said, “Yeah, are you the flunky of the outfit that's got 'em for sale?”

He started to bristle a little bit but then he decided it was funny. As he looked at the sucker rod windmill stains on his clothes and hands, he said, “Yeah, I guess you would call me that.”

We talked on and he said that he didn't believe that he had time to round up these horses just to sell three or four head.

“Well,” I said, “you think like a flunky too. How many head you got?”

He went to tryin' to figure up and count on his fingers, talkin' about thirty head of four-year-olds and a few threes and some older horses. He finally squinted one eye and looked up at the sun and said he guessed it would be about a hundred and thirty head of horses.

I asked, “What's the askin' price?”

He said that he had been told to get $10 a head for them straight across and I asked, “Will you round 'em up if you could sell half of 'em.”

He said, “We got so many horses and grass is gettin' short in the horse pasture that we'll round them up to sell less than that. But how do I know you got any money? You're just a kid.”

I said, “How do I know you got any horses? You're just a flunky.”

We was gettin' pretty well acquainted by now and he said, “Why don't we drive out there in the pickup and see some of them before dark and then you'll know whether you're interested or not.”

I said, “That's a good idea, only it's a poor way to buy horses.”

He said, “Well, we could round them up tomorrow morning if you think you would buy enough of them to make it worthwhile.”

Since I was goin' to be gone for a little while, I tied my horses up like they ought to be to wait on me and we drove out to the ranch. I opened several gates while he did the driving and we went into a pasture that was fairly open, with only some scattered mesquite trees and big rocks in the way. We drove around close to several small bunches of horses that had just left the shade and began to graze in the late afternoon. I didn't see a horse that wasn't worth more than $10 and I thought a lot of them were worth $50 if I could
move them far enough east—and break 'em on the way—where horses weren't quite so plentiful and there were more people to use 'em.

It was dark when we got back to town and I guess my conversation had convinced him that I could buy some horses even if I was a kid. He told me he would have the horses in the corral by middle of the next morning. I told him that was plenty of time to ride out there. And we said our good-byes.

I made camp under the big mesquite tree and took some of the feed that I had tied on the back of my pack horse, fed my horses, and staked them out to graze for the night.

I broke camp before daylight and packed my riggin' on Charlie and saddled old Beauty and started for the ranch. I got there way ahead of the horse herd and was settin' on the fence when they came into sight and watched the cowboys bring them into the corral. This was a very colorful bunch of West Texas ranch horses. They were from three to seven years old, but most of them were fours and fives, mares and geldings, unbroken and would weigh from 850 to 1,000 pounds. They were bay, roan, grey, and the chestnut horses had lots of splashy white markings on their faces and legs. There was twelve head of old, fat cow horses that had been turned out for one reason or another and they would do to ride while moving the herd. There were six little hard, fat mules, but I wouldn't describe them as being “wore out” because nobody can quite tell by lookin' when a mule is wore out.

There were no brood mares nor colts in the bunch, but I did want to cut out enough horses to have just a hundred head and I still hadn't agreed to give $10 for 'em, so we had a whole lot of smart conservation for each other while we was tryin' to make the trade. I offered him $5 a head and take 'em all or $6 a head and cut out thirty.

Well, he acted like this made him mad enough to fight, and after he had slobbered and stomped in the dirt and
jerked his horse a time or two, I said, “Well, I guess you were sure enough right about me wastin' your time.”

He finally said he would take $10 a head for a hundred head or he would take $7 a head for all of 'em. We argued a little while longer and I pointed out ten head to him that were crippled one way or another that wouldn't “road” good and told him that if he would cut out that ten head I would give $7 a head for the rest of 'em.

I could tell that he thought he had cheated me to death and was real proud of himself and was going to be glad to tell his boss about robbin' a kid, but he sobered up a little bit to ask who was I going to give the check on and what town the bank was in. I got off the fence, turned around, and unbuckled the flap on my saddle pocket and pulled out a couple of brown paper sacks full of peanuts and candy and stuff. From down in the bottom I pulled out a wad of money that pretty near made this old boy faint and gave him forty-two twenty-dollar bills—$840 for a hundred and twenty head.

In the trade I had made with him he agreed to furnish two hands to help me get the horses to Ballinger, and as I was about to pay him, I reminded him again of this part of the trade and he said, “That's all right. With as many horses as you're buying, I might go along to help you.”

We cut out the ten head that I didn't want and turned the rest out of the corral and drove them through the pasture to the public road. I turned Charlie loose with his pack to travel with the main herd while I rode Beauty on the drive. These horses were fresh and fat and traveled fast and we drove them to Ballinger and turned them into the wagonyard by late afternoon.

I took the two hands that the ranch had sent to help me and we went to a country café and ate up so much stuff that the kitchen might have run out of grease. They rode back to the ranch that night.

In those days in a West Texas town a hundred and
twenty head of horses didn't create much disturbance and not many people passing the wagonyard stopped to look at what I had. The next morning I told the old wagonyard man that I wanted to hire some help to drive these horses to East Texas. He said, “Kid, you need more than help. Let me sell you this little spring wagon over here by the fence. It used to be a grocery-store delivery wagon and it's in real good shape and I've got harness that will fit a pair of them little mules, and I know an old camp cook that you can hire to drive that wagon and keep camp for you all summer, if you want him that long.”

There were times when I admitted to myself that I was pretty young. I really hadn't thought about a camp wagon and didn't see anything wrong with two or three pack horses driving along with the herd. But the camp wagon kind of appealed to me if somebody else was goin' to drive it. After walkin' around and shakin' the wheels and lookin' at the bed, I told him that if he could furnish that camp cook like he said he could, then we might make a deal on the wagon and harness.

I walked off uptown to eat some breakfast and when I got back to the wagonyard, there was a little old friendly Mexican that had a straggly beard that was almost white and I could tell had spent his early life cowboy'n and was spendin' his time now keepin' camp. I bought the spring wagon and harness enough for a team of mules from the old wagonyard man for $25. I made a trade with Old Friole for $2 a day to go with me and follow this bunch of horses until I sold out.