Horse Tradin' (13 page)

About the fifth or sixth night away from home I rode onto a road construction job where there were a good many teams and a big camp. I fed my horses in one of their corrals, ate supper, and spent the night with the mule skinners, who were driving the fresnoes that were being used to build the highway roadbed—much of which was done in those days with teams.

During the night's visit, sitting around the cook's campfire, one of these old boys thought that the Washita Valley up in Oklahoma would be a good place to sell the kind of ponies I had. Well, I didn't have any better information than that, so I decided it ought to be all right.

I crossed the Red River close to Marietta, Oklahoma,
and in a few days drifted up near the town of Paul's Valley. Sure enough, that country was prosperous and my horses just lasted a few days. Of course I always kept one good horse—to keep from being afoot and to have a way to carry my money.

By this time I had been gone about three weeks, and the weather made a man glad that he was living outside. It was the early part of Indian summer, and I didn't feel like hurrying home too fast. I was carrying a good deal of pack on my saddle horse, since I had sold my packhorses, and everywhere I found a good wagonyard or good livery stable I'd rest my horse and visit a day or two. After all, a man shouldn't rush through a fresh country that he hasn't been in before. A good many of the country roads were not infected with so many automobiles as they are now, and it was easy to stop in the middle of the road and talk to whomever you met or visit with somebody who was plowing and came up to the side of the fence. These people who didn't have any more sense than to stay home were all right to pass the time of day with. They always had watermelon patches, ripe peaches, and other forms of country hospitality that would make the modern-day drive-in seem like an empty eggshell.

I stopped in Decatur, Texas, and it was trades day. I decided it was a shame to be that close to home—thirty miles—and go back with just the horse I was riding. The best-looking horses on the trade ground happened to be a team of beautiful blood-bay, matched geldings with black mane and tail. They were exactly the same size, appearing to weigh about fourteen hundred pounds; their hair was short and slick, and they were carrying just the right amount of fat to make them purty. They were
hitched to a new wagon, which was painted green with red wheels, and the wagon bed and wheels were trimmed with bright yellow stripes. The team was harnessed with a flashy set of harness—brass spots all over the leather breeching and big brass knobs on the hames. The bridles had long, flowing tassels about the color of corn silk and just as shiny.

I don't know what made me think I needed a wagon and team, and I suppose the reason I wanted to buy them was because I was carrying too much money.

The man sitting in the spring seat and holding the lines was dressed up like a gentleman farmer. He was talking to some people on the ground. I rode up and listened a while and was really surprised to learn that a team and rig like that was for sale. He was telling somebody else that he had moved to town and the team was just standing in the lot eating; and his wife and kids had been naggin' and beggin' him to sell the wagon, team, and harness and buy an auto, and that was the only reason they were for sale. The conversation around among the lookers was that they were too high priced for anybody around there to afford for just common farm work. One old man commented that the team ought to be hooked to a railway express wagon or a dray wagon.

I finally broke into this conversation by asking the man how much he wanted for them. He made me quite a speech about how good the set of harness and new wagon was and how hard it was to find two horses so perfectly matched. I got down off my horse and looked in their mouths. At a glance their mouths looked to me like they were eight years old. (Now, thirty years and two hundred
thousand mouths later, I realize they were eighteen years old and their mouths had been worked.)

He asked $600 for the whole rig—to just “get down and hand me the lines.” I told him that was enough money to buy a farm (of course, I didn't want a farm) but that I might give $500 for the rig. He acted like he was highly insulted and just wasn't going to think about it anymore, so I rode off.

There was a chile joint on one corner close to the trade square where I ate dinner. There was a feedstore close by where I bought some oats and fed my horse on the corner of the store loading-dock. My horse had about finished eating, and I was brushing and currying his back and getting ready to resaddle him, when this old gentlemanlike retired farmer drove up with his wagon and this good team of blood-bay horses. He said that I was the only bidder he had had, and if I still wanted the team he would take $550 for them.

Of course I was a real smart boy and knew when I made the offer that my bid didn't have to stand after I rode away the first time. So I told him I had changed my mind and didn't think they were worth more than $450, and we were still $100 apart.

He said: “Young fellow, you just think we're $100 apart.” He crawled out of the wagon, stood on the ground, and handed me the lines.

I tried not to show much eagerness, but I didn't waste any time digging into my pocket and coming up with the money.

I tied my saddle horse behind the wagon and started home. It still hadn't dawned on me that I didn't need a
wagon and team. This nice big fat team walked about half as fast as a man would ride horseback. By dark I wasn't much more than out of sight of the town, and had begun to wonder if riding in a wagon was worth the time it took.

That night I camped by the side of a creek. I had bought a sack of oats and a couple of bales of hay; I fed my newly acquired team out of the wagon and tied my saddle horse up toward the front of the wagon bed and fed him. I staked these nice fat horses out on each side of the wagon where there was plenty of grass and gave them some hay. I crawled in the wagon bed, spread out my little pallet, and went to sleep about dark.

When I hooked up the team the next morning, they seemed a little listless and moved off slow to the wagon. I noticed it but thought that was just the difference between work horses and saddle horses, and it didn't bother me much. By noon I got to Springtown, Texas, and this pair of nice big fat horses had lost at least two hundred pounds apiece. They walked up to the public water trough, drank as much as an elephant, and began to sweat just a little. I still thought everything was fine—that this was just a pair of big fat horses the man had kept in his back yard, and it would take them a day or two to get drawed down and used to traveling.

By dark they looked like a pair of skeletons—they had lost so much bloom—and were barely moseyin' along to that wagon. My saddle horse was following along behind the wagon, enjoying the rest, and looked like he was gaining weight.

I got back to Weatherford the following day, which made two and a half days to come thirty miles, and by
then the horses were almost reeling in the traces. I unhiched them at the wagonyard, put them in a pen, and rode my saddle horse on home.

I guess my folks were middlin' glad to see me, but nobody seemed to be bothered about whether I had had a good trading trip or not. My citified brothers didn't ask to borrow any money or offer to loan me any. My mother commented that she was glad all the horses were gone out of the back lot and that I didn't bring any home with me. At supper my daddy commented: “I see the Indians didn't set you plumb afoot. You still had a horse to ride home on.”

Next morning I went to the wagonyard, and my big, high-priced pair of work horses were barely able to stand. This was the first time I really appreciated that new wagon, because it looked like that was what I had for my $450.

Several of my old horse-trading friends came by, looked at my team, and smiled to themselves, but offered no advice or comment, and walked away. (I learned later that they didn't know anything about my horses and had no advice to give.) I knew I had me
somethin'
in that pair of horses—but I didn't know what. They had lost their appetites for feed, drank very little water, ate very little hay—and any horse trader knows that's not the habits of a big horse.

I stayed away from the wagonyard all day, because I didn't want to answer questions about what I was going to do with my wagon and that set of harness. Late that afternoon I rode off out to the edge of town, where an old-time road trader lived. He had long since been out of the horse business because of his age and his inability to
see. We set a spell in the front yard on some old hickory-bottom chairs, and I told him my troubles.

When I got through with my story he sat a while; then he said: “I didn't know there was anybody left that could do that good a job of doping a horse.”

At that stage of my life, “doping” meant putting salve on a sore; so I told him the horses didn't have any cuts on them and hadn't been doped.

He said: “Ben, this is a bad piece of experience for you, because you'll never be able to use it again.” Then he explained to me that these horses had been fed arsenic. He told me how a road trader could take a sound but wore-out old horse and put him on arsenic. A man would start putting arsenic in a horse's feed, measuring it on the point of a knife blade. The first dose would barely be enough to cover the point of the blade, but in three or four weeks he would be feeding the horse as much arsenic as would stack on the knife blade from the point back to the handle.

He explained that if you didn't kill the horse, you could “puff him up,” and the arsenic would also cause him to have a good appetite and eat enough to make his hair look good. He told me it was a wonder that my horses ever lived these four or five days after they had been cut off from their “knife-blade medicine.”

The old man stopped talking and we sat in silence a long time. I finally choked and in a very meek, whipped-like voice asked him what I must do with my horses. He sat a few minutes longer, finally stomped his walking cane on the ground, and said: “I've still got a knife with the right size blade in it—give them to me.”

I went back to the wagonyard that night, led the
horses out of the back gate, took them and turned them in the old man's back lot.

A few weeks later I rode by and saw a beautiful, fat pair of blood-bay horses standing under the shade tree back of the old man's barn. I never asked him what he did with them—and he never told me. To my knowledge, I've never seen an “arsenic fiend” horse since.

Round Rock, Texas
, is known and remembered by most people because Sam Bass, early-day gunman and horseman who owned the Denton mare, was hemmed up and killed there during a robbery. But when I think of Round Rock, it reminds me of a horse trading experience that I am not likely to forget.

It was in the early fall, and I had driven a herd of mules and horses from West Texas down to Gonzales and Caldwell County, south of Austin. I had sold the herd
to the native farmers, who were mostly of German descent, for cash and was riding a good seven-year-old horse named Tom, a blood-bay with black mane and tail. He was shod, hard fat, and a real good road horse.

I stopped in Round Rock a little before noon and found a feed and mercantile store, where I bought my horse some oats, led him out under a big live oak tree, took the saddle off of him, and poured his oats in a pasteboard box that I had got at the store. There was a Sam Bass Café in town, and I thought I'd go up and eat some dinner while my horse ate his oats and rested in the shade of that live oak tree.

When I came back to my horse, there were three or four men standing around looking at him and probably admiring him, but they didn't say so to me. One of the men finally spoke up and said he had a mate for that horse—the same size, height, and color and ever bit as good a horse. Well, I was carrying a batch of tradin' money and would always buy a horse as good as Tom, so I told him I would be interested in buying his horse. He said he'd rather trade him because he was hard to catch and a little mean to handle, and that he would give me some boot. I was a long ways from home and on a good horse, so I wasn't going to be put afoot by that kind of a conversation. I told him I could use two horses, and I'd rather buy him than to swap mine off—if his horse was worth the money.

We got in a Model T Ford and drove out of town for about a mile to a creek-bottom pasture where there were several horses; and sure enough, the man had a good bay horse, rolling fat, with a few cockle burrs in his mane and tail. As we got close to him in the car, the man said to his
friend, who was with us sitting in the back seat: “Those kids must have been down here riding those horses, and that bay horse has gotten away with one of their belts around his neck.”

Sure enough, this bay horse had a good leather belt around his neck at his throat latch. This fellow got out of the Model T with some ears of corn, shucked an ear or two, hollered a few times, and the horses came up to him. He eased around and caught ahold of the belt around the bay horse's neck. He said: “I guess he broke loose from those kids, but that belt made it handy for me to catch him.”