Some More Horse Tradin' (29 page)

For the next two or three days we sold gentle horses that we had traded for and those that were well broke including the feed man's mares, and the afternoon that we drove into a mule barn at Bossier City, Louisiana, we had forty-five head of horses and one pair of work mules.

By now my horse Concho had gotten to be a steady mount and had made a real good horse. I thought that we were far enough from home and it was early enough in the fall that there was some money in the country, and I had begun to think that I would like to sell out. Friole and Choc had begun to hurrah me about how was I goin' to give up Concho. I had been tellin' them for two or three days that he would be the last horse I would sell.

The mule barn at Bossier City had some big lots around it with shade trees and we were brushin' and curryin' and
workin' on all our horses and tryin' to have some business when I had the bright idea that a big auction would be the way to sell plumb out of business.

I rode up to the printing office and asked about having some circulars printed to advertise a horse auction. The old printer helped me write out what would go on the circular and told me that he would print 500 for $2.50. I thought that would be a big bargain and he evidently had the time and needed the business because he printed them that afternoon and we were advertisin' a horse sale for Saturday at two o'clock. This gave us a few more days to get our horses ready.

Me and Choc rode around and scattered the circulars. I put them in all the stores and tacked them on telephone posts, and the next morning the mule barn was swarming with farmers and traders wanting to buy horses before the auction. I thought it would be smart to not sell any more horses and make them come to the auction. We took a lot of time to halter and lead and show horses but we refused to sell a horse until Saturday afternoon.

By sale time Saturday the fences were pretty well covered up with Cajun farmers ready to bid on these horses. We had spent that morning putting halters or lead ropes on all the horses and we had them tied around the fences and to the trees. I got up on a big stump in the middle of one of the corrals that was going to be my auction stand. I made a short speech about how good these horses were and how bad I wanted to sell 'em, and I stressed the fact that all these horses were all gentle to catch and lead and all of them had been rode and some them were broke to work. I didn't explain that they were all rode the Sunday afternoon before.

Choc led out the first horse; then Friole would lead with the next one. These Cajun farmers came off the fences and got down real close to look at the horses and look in their mouths and holler and ask questions.

Our bookkeeping system was real simple. When I got what I thought was the last bid on a horse and hollered “Sold,” the buyer would come up to the stump and hand me his money and Choc or Friole would hand him the horse's halter rope. Then we would sell another horse.

About halfway through the horse sale, we rolled in the spring wagon and the harness and everything that we had that we weren't goin' to take back with us. I sold everything from the tin cups to the harness and collars at good enough prices. Then I started back in on the horses.

As these buyers got their horses, most of them took them back and retied 'em because they wanted to watch the rest of the sale and every time Friole or Choc led a horse around the stump, they would holler, while I was trying to get a bid, about how gentle the horse was and they would always wind up that he had been rode.

When the sale was over and all the horses were sold but Concho, some of these Cajuns were afoot and jumped on their new-bought horses bareback. Several led them off behind their wagons without much trouble, but two different men hooked their new-bought “teams” to their wagons and there was a good hour and a half of runaways and bronc ridin'. I didn't hear much whinin' or complainin' because the buyers were too busy tryin' to catch the horses that got away or too far off with the ones that had run away and the crowd got smaller until by late afternoon, we had our bedrolls and saddles we kept in the hall of the barn and I still had Concho.

During the day I had been waddin' money up and stickin' it in my pockets. I set down on my bedroll and straightened out my money and felt good about the whole trip. Since I had bought these horses cheap and drove 'em a long ways, this had been a successful trip. I paid Choc and Friole all I owed them and gave them an extra $20 apiece for travelin' money to get home on.

We went uptown that night and tried to eat up all the Creole grub there was in a Cajun café, went to the Saturday-night picture show, and walked back out to the barn. That was the only time I had been to town afoot since this drive started, but I would have felt a little ashamed to ride Concho along while Friole and Choc had to walk.

Next morning Friole wrapped all his belongin's up in that red bedspread that he had traded for and tied it together with a lariat rope. Choc had his bedroll tied with a lariat rope and both of them had cinched their saddles around their bedrolls just like you would cinch a saddle around a horse.

They hired a jitney to haul them and their riggin' across the river to Shreveport, where they was goin' to catch a train home. Choc was headed for Oklahoma and Friole was going to San Angelo, and when we shook hands and said goodbye, they was still hurrahin' me that I probably was goin' to ride Concho back home. I told them, no, that I would sell him at the depot platform in Shreveport just before I got on the train.

I tied all my riggin' on Concho and rode over to Shreveport about noon and I unsaddled Concho at the depot. A cowboy has all his belongin's in his pockets or wrapped up in his bedroll and when he is going to travel by train or bus, he would do his bedroll up real short and big around and then he would cinch his saddle over his bedroll and tie the saddle blanket and bridle to the saddle. This was considered the proper way for a cowboy to carry his luggage.

I went into the depot and bought a ticket to Greenville and I announced to the ticket agent and to the people in the waiting room that I was fixin' to sell a young grey horse at auction at the depot platform. I had had such good luck at my horse auction that I knew I could sell this good horse just before I got on the train.

I took Concho's lead rope and stood up on the depot platform and bellered a few times to where they could have
heard me back to Bossier City, and all those people in the waiting room or in hearin' distance must have thought I was jokin' 'cause didn't nobody show up for the horse sale. The people in the waitin' room was just like me—they was fixin' to catch a train and didn't need to buy a horse! After I had made a speech about this horse that I thought would have been good enough to have sold a jackass, nobody bid. The station agent raised the window to his office and hollered, “I'll give $10.”

About that time I heard the train whistle and hollered, “
SOLD
!”

Ben K. Green, whose
Horse Tradin'
and
Wild Cow Tales
and
The Village Horse Doctor: West of the Pecos
are already minor classics, at the very least, in a rich assemblage of Western Americana, was the kind of Westerner who almost crawled out of the cradle and into a saddle, spending his childhood, adolescence, and young manhood on horseback. He studied veterinary medicine in the United States and abroad and practiced in the Far Southwest in one of the last big horse countries in North America. When he eventually gave up his practice and research, he returned to his home town, Cumby, Texas, where until his death in 1974, he raised good horses and cattle.