Free Horse Tradin' by Ben K. Green Page A

picked up a gate that had fallen off the hinges and stood it up in a corner of the fence, wired the ends to the fence, and put my baby colt behind it where nothing could happen to it. Their offer sure sounded like a good deal to me, ’cause I imagine at thatage I would have watered horses every night as long as I could stay awake for a colt a night.
    I kept this dogie colt around my trading pen at the wagonyard and fed it from a bottle, taught it to drink out of a pan, and the milk cow traders would let it suck out a fresh cow ever now and then. This bay filly called Nubbin’ soon became the pet of the whole trading yard, but she was also a lot of trouble to everybody.
    Holt Brothers had leased out their ranches in Palo Pinto County and moved a big bunch of mares and horses to the wagonyard at Weatherford to sell them and trade them off. These mares were all well bred but unbroke. I broke several mares, and wound up with a good young Holt mare that was heavy in foal as payment for breaking the other horses. The Holt mare brought a colt and lost it, so I was tying her up in a corner every morning and letting the dogie colt Nubbin’ nurse.
    Early one morning I was in the lot tending to my “trading stock” and had the Holt mare tied up and Nubbin’ was nursing when a big old lady who ran a dairy near town stopped her Model T Ford, got out, and walked over to my pen. This old lady would weigh 210, wore men’s brogan shoes, ran her dairy, and told her husband what to think and when to shut up. She looked over the fence and saw the colt nursing the mare and said: “What do you want for that mare and colt?”
    I told her I wanted $45 for the mare and $20 for the colt; and she immediately told me, “You ain’t goin’ to split ’em and sell ’em separate. I’ll just give you sixty dollars for both of ’em.”
    I started to try to tell her that the colt didn’t belongto the mare, and as I said: “Mam, you don’t want this colt with this mare,” she snapped back at me right quick: “Little feller, don’t tell me what I want.”
    That “little feller” made me mad. There I was all of thirteen years old, had been a horse wrangler one whole season on a chuck wagon, wore shop-made boots and had on a Stetson hat that would have shaded a man three times my size, and I sure didn’t like to be called “little feller.”
    Silas Kemp, who ran the wagonyard, mumbled through a crack in the fence: “Sell ’em to her, Benny. Don’t try to tell her any different. You won’t be lying to her, and she’ll be cheating herself.”
    About that time she snapped at me again: “Are you goin’ to just stand there, or are you goin’ to take my money?”
    I said: “But Mam—”
    And she cut in: “Don’t ‘mam’ me. Will you or won’t you?”
    By this time I was pretty mad, so I answered: “Pay me.”
    She said: “You’ll have to deliver them out to the dairy.”
    Silas spoke up and offered: “I’ll haul them out for you, Benny, while you’re gone to school.”
    The next morning about the same time, here came that Model T Ford; and that big, fat, mean woman stepped out on the ground and hollered at the top of her voice: “Where’s that kid?”
    In the meantime, my horse-trading friends had schooled me on what to say, because we all knew she would be back, and she was well known as an unpleasantcustomer to all the traders. I was over the fence in my pen feeding, and I said: “Here I am,” in a pretty meek tone of voice.
    She yelled: “That colt don’t belong to that mare. This morning she kicked it clean over the fence.”
    I stated: “Yes, that colt does belong to that mare—because I gave it to her.”
    All the traders were standing around listening, and they couldn’t help but laugh. I was a little shaky,