Some More Horse Tradin' (28 page)

I was ridin' down the back street south of the business district and lookin' off awatchin' that horse's image travel in the plate glass windows he passed, which was a cowboy's way of showin' off. While I was settin' up straight and watchin' this nice horse in the windows, he rode right into a wagon that had its hind wheels stickin' out in the street, stumbled, and fell to his knees. While I was scufflin' to get his head back up, he was headed square dab into a wide post at the railroad crossing. I spoke to him and reined him up and got him stopped and I could tell that he was ashamed of himself and knew that he had done something wrong and was quiverin' all over but not offerin' to fight. There was an old man smokin' a pipe and strokin' his beard watchin' me and as I moved the horse off and passed by him, he said, “That's sure a nice horse to be moon-blind.”

I let on like I didn't hear him but that word “moon blind” reverberated through my mind in a weird ghostlike voice. I didn't tell Choc nor Friole, and as I unsaddled him I brushed the dirt and loose hair off his knees the best I could with my bare hand.

That afternoon a dressed-up man and a little sissy fancy-dressed boy about fifteen years old drove up to camp in some kind of a long automobile and got out and started a conversation about wanting a saddle horse for the summer. As we talked on, the man went to telling the boy that they just might buy two horses and he might ride with him some and show him the finer points of horsemanship. This fellow seemed to be some kind of a railroad executive and early in
his conversation went to telling me about being raised on fine horses back in Tennessee and for me not to bother with him until he had walked around through them and picked out what he wanted. He said, “I know horse traders always pick out what they want to sell, but I had rather pick out what I want to buy.”

I told him that was all right. Just help himself.

Well, I guess he had had some fine horses in his bringin' up because he picked out the beautiful bay mare and the high-headed saddle horse for the two he wanted—he didn't know it but they were the two I wanted him to have bad. He asked if he could ride these horses, so Choc saddled up the mare and this fancy fellow rode her maybe half a mile down the road. There wasn't any creeks and he got off of her at the wagon. We didn't tie her and he asked, “How much for her?”

I said, “One hundred twenty-five dollars,” knowing that was way too high, but I didn't know whether he knew it or not and I was really just testin' him.

He didn't answer back, but he said, “Let's see you ride the nice high-headed gelding.”

Choc rode him and he started back toward the wagon and I stepped out and motioned to Choc to ride out toward the road. Well, this fancy man wanted to ride him, so he rode him down the straight road and back and got off him in the open. I breathed a horse trader's sigh of relief that he had got 'em both rode without them givin' away their secrets. You see, I suppose they were secrets because nobody had told me about their habits and ailments and I didn't feel like it would be appropriate for me to tell them either.

While I was breathing this sigh of relief, I heard him tell Choc that I looked a little young to be out selling horses. Well, Choc was a few years older and he told him that the horses were mine and that I could trade with him.

The fancy man said to me, “You wouldn't ask as much for him as you would the mare.”

I said, “Yes, I would.”

“I think they are too high and $100 apiece ought to be enough if I bought them both.”

“Well, I might not feel that way about it, but since you are buyin' them and that's all you'll give, I'm gonna do without 'em for that little amount of money.”

We gave him a couple of lead ropes and the little sissy boy was going to lead them to whereever they lived in town and the man was going to drive along in the long car and tell him how to do it.

Just as quick as they were out of hearing distance, I told Friole to catch his mules and break camp and get ready to move. I waved at Choc to come into camp and told him to bunch the horses up and start movin'. Well, he and Friole put up an argument about what a good campsite it was—it was late in the afternoon and we hadn't sold but two horses and we might be going off leavin' a lot of business. I said, “Yeah, but I don't want to be camping this close to town when the fancy man and that baby-faced boy try to get back home after their ride in the cool of the afternoon. They might cross a creek or the moon might come up wrong, and I think the grazin' would be better for this herd and we would probably get a better night's sleep seven or eight miles down the road.”

We drove farther than that and made camp close to the town of Crow, where Lake Fork Creek runs into the Sabine River.

Next day we drove our horses on into Big Sandy and stopped out in the edge of town on a little creek and made camp early in the afternoon. I rode into town to buy some grub and see if I could find a feed store that would sell me a few sacks of oats. The feed store man had two big used saddles that were in real good shape and he wanted to trade 'em for a horse that was gentle to ride. This sounded like a good deal to me 'cause we could always use an extra saddle or two. It's good for a bronc horse when you're drivin' him down the road to wear a saddle and it might make it easier
for somebody to get on him if he had it on for a day or two.

I went on back to camp and a little before dark, Mr. Feed Man drove up to camp with the oats that I had bought and his two saddles. He was driving a pair of nice, small, matched brown mares and you could tell at a glance from the frost around their ears and eyes that they had some age on them. Choc went to talkin' to him about tradin' him a pair of nice young horses for those mares.

Choc's horse tradin' argument by now had begun to get pretty good so the old feed man looked through our bunch and picked out a pair of young horses the same color as his mares and a little bigger than the mares. He asked a lot of questions and Choc had kind of took over the trade.

I was takin' a closer look at the mares when I heard Choc tell him that he would hook these horses and guarantee them to work and the reason he knew they was gentle was that he “drove” them right straight through downtown Dallas. That sounded like a good guarantee to the old man, so we got the horses and unhooked the mares and used the mares' harness and the old man's hack and he and Choc drove up and down the road four or five miles. This was a pair of young horses that we had put a good deal of breaking on and they didn't make a bad showing.

Friole had a good supper cooked in a little bit and the old feed man ate supper with us and traded us the two saddles for the difference in the mares and the young horses and drove his new team back to town after dark. I never knew whether or not the old man scattered any feed with his new team before he got them town broke.

We moved on through Longview the next day and didn't see any good camping places. It was really early in the day, so we moved on and made camp that night at Hallsville. Some farmers drove by in their wagons and stopped for a little conversation, but we didn't have any tradin' business and it was gettin' toward the end of the week.

We drove into Marshall the next day and were loose-grazin'
our horses in the edge of town along the railroad track and highway. We had found a good place to camp by the side of the road where there was some big trees. Marshall was a big country town and everybody gathered in on Saturday. News travels fast by the grapevine and it seemed like everybody knew there was a bunch of tradin' horses down by the railroad stock pens. We had several lookers Saturday afternoon and made some fairly decent kind of horse sales without taking in any tradin' stock.

I rode uptown—I guess to do a little loafin'—and when I came back, Choc had been asleep under a big tree and Friole had disappeared. He showed up about time to fix supper and told us that he had found some
amigos
that worked for the railroad. There were six Mexican families camped on a switch track in house cars. This was a construction or repair crew that the railroad moved around to work on the track. They were all young men with families and some of them had been raised in South Texas on ranches and were better-than-average cowboys. Friole had had a big afternoon visitin' with them and they told him that since tomorrow was Sunday they would be over to look at the horses.

During the time Friole was fixin' supper, he said he sure thought it would be a fine time to butcher that fat goat we had been carrying with us and have a big barbecue for all his new friends. Well, I could understand Friole being a little lonesome for some of his own tribe and these were probably the first real South Texas Mexicans he had seen since we had left Ballinger. I knew that if these were young South Texas ranch-raised men that I might have a chance to get some cowboy'n' done Sunday on my bronc horses. One reason we hadn't butchered the goat was that three of us couldn't eat up a fresh goat and I thought that would be good bait to use to get some horse workin' done, so I told Friole to leave his supper pots and pans and go back to the railroad
road house cars and ask the men if they would like to have a big barbecue and ride horses Sunday.

It was probably a quarter of a mile from where we were camping to the switch track where the railroad cars were and I could hear the laughin' and talkin' and carryin' on that this invitation brought on and I knew long before Friole got back to camp that we were about to have a big Sunday.

Friole hung the goat up in a tree and butchered and dressed him before he went to bed so the meat would cool out during the night. Next morning all the men came over to camp before we were finished with breakfast and drank two pots of coffee while they visited and told about their horse experiences.

They took the goat and carried it back to the railroad house cars and the Captain had a key to the railroad stock pens which were nearby. He unlocked them and we gathered up all the horses and drove them into the stock pens. Stock pens in East Texas towns were not nearly as large as those in the West and this set of stock pens had one big corral and two small corrals that joined the loading shute.

These misplaced railroad cowboys were already having a lot of fun by hurrahin' each other about who could ride certain horses. Me and Choc caught and drove the gentle horses and work mules into one of the small corrals. We had brought the extra saddles over and plenty of rope and halters and me and Choc worked horseback putting two or three head of unbroke horses into the other small corral. Then these railroad cowboys would catch a horse and do whatever they had to to get a saddle on him and one of them would ride this horse around in this small corral where he wouldn't have room to buck for a little while and then I would open the gate to the big corral and this bronc would buck and run into the main herd of horses. There was lots of buckin' and laughin' and horse-breakin' went on all morning.

The women folks had took over doing the barbecue and
they were trying to outdo each other with garlic and pepper and the other kinds of stuff that they knew to use that would ruin most meat but would improve goat. By dinnertime, there was a few clothes tore and a little hide knocked off of the railroad cowboys but the horse workin' had improved appetites.

We had liver and fresh fried goat meat for dinner and the best parts that were being barbecued wouldn't be ready till supper. I ate as much meat and pepper and garlic as the rest of them. We went back to the stock pens after dinner and leaned back against the pens in the shade of trees and siesta'd and visited until that goat liver quit movin' around. Then we went back to breakin' horses.

By middle of the morning, I had begun to see that I was goin' to get a whole lot of good done on the forty-one unbroke horses that me and Choc had been having trouble building up nerve enough to ride. What was left unbroke were the older and rougher-actin' horses that were left out of the one hundred or so head that we started out with that never had been broke. The common wear and tear of drivin' and halterin' and handlin' had gentled these horses a lot but I thought I would make it interesting to these railroad cowboys and told them that I was gonna pay them a dollar a head for all the horses that they rode until they stopped buckin'. Well, I think this made the horse breakin' a lot faster, and two of the six that weren't much stock hands had really begun to take hold.

Me and Choc did the horse work during the day, such as ropin' and snubbin' the broncs to saddle horns, and we led the worst ones around the big corral to keep them from buckin' so much. After all, I was tryin' to get these horses broke enough to sell to buyers and wasn't too interested in seeing how high they could throw these misplaced cowboys. By late afternoon I had a well-sapped-out, near-broke bunch of horses, and the railroad had a section crew that might be a little sore and stiff for Monday's work.

We gathered under the trees close to the railroad house cars. By now the women had sure fixed a big barbecue with beans and taters and pepper and all the rest of the Latin American trimmings and everybody had a big time. I think that extra money kept the skinned places and bruises from hurting too much. After supper we turned the horses out where they could graze and fill up from the day's horse workin'.

There had been a good many natives gathered during the day and set on the fence and watched the show. When bronc horses were being ridden and handled around a crowd of East Texas natives, it didn't generate any horse tradin business because it was plain to see that they were a little rough for cotton pickers and cane growers. This made me think that the best thing to do the next day was to drift on deeper into the woods.

We camped the next night close to Waskom. Friole found some good farm people along the way and got them to sell him butter and eggs and chickens, and that night at supper we got most of that garlic out of our mouths from the night before.