Horse Tradin' Read Free Page A

man. He don’t look like no gypsy, but he am, an’ iffen you ever breaks even swappin’ with a gypsy, you’s done made a hoss trader. She sho looks nice, but that’s just the top side.”
    I went back to the back side of the wagonyard and put my mare in the lot. By now it was dinnertime, so I went off and ate a little. Then I moseyed back down to where I had left my mare in the lot and my saddle hanging on the fence. I decided that without that bunch of onlookers and helpers, I might saddle her up by myself—but when I pulled that cinch she reared up, fell backward, rolled over, and groaned.
    Al Eiland, who was a very fine horseman and a Southern gentleman, came strolling to the fence. As usual, he was wearing a starched white shirt and a black bow tie and looked every part the distinguished individual that he was. I looked up and said: “Howdy, Mr. Eiland.” He had been my neighbor when I was a small boy, and we had always been great cronies.
    He looked over the fence at my mare lying on the ground with my saddle on her. He turned, looked all around behind him and saw that no one was listening, then said: “Ben, you have traded for the Sleeping Beauty.” He told me the gypsies had raised that mare from a baby colt on a bottle, and had started having her lie down for sugar when she was small enough that they could pick her up and lay her down to give her sugar. He said this Irish-looking gypsy was married to a very black gypsy, and that there were several of them camped down on Long Branch. He went on to explain that before the day was over, they would offer to give me my horse back and keep whatever money I had paid difference. He said the Sleeping Beauty had kept that particular band of gypsies in grub money for several years.
    As he started to walk away, as an afterthought it seemed he stopped and said: “Did they have a good grayhorse about seven years old and about fifteen hands high tied to their wagon?”
    I had already thanked him for wising me up, but I wanted to repay him, so I described the gray horse. He said they had traded Mr. Marshall at Terrell, Texas, some other kind of a snide for him, and that Mr. Marshall had too much pride to buy the horse back. Mr. Marshall was his good friend and had asked Mr. Eiland to try and buy the gray horse back from the gypsies.
    Mr. Eiland was going on toward the wagonyard gate when I had a bright idea and called him to wait. Times have changed now, but at that time a young boy didn’t holler at a grown man and tell him to
com’ere;
so he waited while I trotted up to him. I told him that if the Sleeping Beauty was as valuable as he said, I’d get the gray horse by night and he didn’t have to worry. He didn’t quite understand, but a twinkle came in his eye and a smile came on his big, fat face, and he said: “I’ll give you a chance, Ben, and I won’t bother with the gypsies until you’re through with them.”
    I didn’t leave my little mare, and about four o’clock here came about three or four copper-colored gypsy kids who stuck their heads through a crack in the fence. I knew then that the scouting party had arrived and the news would get back to the trading wagon fast. The little kids made quite a few strange noises to themselves, then one of them said: “What you doin’ to our mare?”
    I kind of grumbled at him: “That ain’t your mare no more.”
    The biggest one of the kids said: “What you got all dem ropes on her foots for?”
    I said in a normal, unconcerned tone of voice thatwhen I untied her, she would have been lying there long enough that she would want to stand up—when I turned her loose.
    It wasn’t twenty minutes until that Irish-looking gypsy man, followed by a couple of darker, skinnier, more typical-looking gypsies, came stepping down through the wagonyard like dry steers that had just smelled water. They looked over the