Horse Tradin' Read Free

hurtin’ to trade, that I was pretty well mounted, but that I did like the looks of the gray horse. He made an awfully big speech about the gray horse but wound up by saying that he couldn’t trade him for a few days yet because he had made a man a proposition and had promised to wait until he heard from him. That was pretty rare and a little hard to believe, but still I didn’t know any different, so I looked around the wagon. On the other side tied to the front wheel was a real nice bay mare. She was about fourteen-two, which was about the size of my paint, and she was well kept and very gentle.
    This little short, fat, squatty trader had every appearance of being an Irishman or some other breed of white man. He suggested to me that this was a mighty nice mare; he had known her a long time and knew her to be niceand gentle. He untied the little bay mare, jumped on her bareback, rode her off across the trade ground and back toward me. She traveled nice and smooth, had clean legs, and was a very nice kind of a little mare. When I was a boy, there were hundreds of horses that had never been ridden bareback, and when a horse would ride bareback it was proof of its gentleness—and it was generally assumed that it would ride even better with a saddle.
    I got down, looked in her mouth, and she was about an honest eight-year-old. Her feet and legs were exceptionally clean, and she didn’t give any appearance of ever having been used hard or mistreated. The trader asked to ride my horse, so I handed him the reins and he rode off. The paint horse wasn’t shod and was a little tenderfooted. The trader rode back, got off, and said he thought this would be a pretty nice horse if I had some shoes on him—that he was too sore to travel. The trader didn’t know it, but that horse came nearer to traveling when you could stand to ride him tenderfooted than he would have shod.
    We had quite a visit, and I finally gave him $20 boot. He took the halter off the little mare and I took my bridle off the paint, unsaddled him, and pitched my blanket and saddle on the bay mare. I reached under her and started drawing the cinch up. All of a sudden she swelled up like a toy balloon, walled her eyes, bawled, ran backward for about twenty feet, fell over on her side, and started groaning. I looked over at the trader and he showed every expression of shock and surprise and appeared to be terribly embarrassed. He said he didn’t know that a nice mare could act so bad.
    My first fast young impulse was to stomp her head inthe ground or kick her in the belly and make her get up. About the time I was about to hit her, the trader yelled: “Wait a minute!”
    He walked over to her head, reached in his pocket, got her a lump of sugar, patted her, and talked sweet to her. He reached down, loosened the cinch, and the mare got up.
    By this time we had a bunch of other horse traders and farmers gathered around watching the show. I tried to draw that cinch up about three more times, and every time she fell he would give her a lump of sugar and say: “Don’t hit her. Hittin’ her won’t do no good.”
    I left my saddle up on her without the cinch being tightened and walked away rattling my spurs and leading my mare. I always felt like a cowboy ought to set up and let his feet hang down when he moved, and that walking didn’t agree with my disposition and caused my little feet—that were carrying those big spurs—to complain about the way they were being treated. You could hear a little giggle and noise among the traders and farmers as I walked away, which didn’t add none to my ego.
    I went down to Ingram’s wagonyard, and as I started in the gate I met Uncle Barney. He had worked for about everybody breaking horses, and he said: “Mister Ben, what you gone and done now? That there is a gypsy mare.”
    I asked: “Do you know this mare?”
    â€œNo, but I knows that gypsy