Horse Tradin' by Ben K. Green

Author:Ben K. Green [Green, Ben K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76094-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

Mule Colts

One early fall in the thirties there was a good demand for mule colts, yearlings, and two-year-olds. Most of the fellows that wanted to buy these mules intended to feed them through the winter, and in those days we had a class of mules that was spoken of as “feeder” mules. Farmers would buy these mules, run them on oat fields through the winter, feed them a little grain, and sell them as two-and three-year-olds, depending on the age of the mules, in the coming spring or following fall.

I was in Fort Worth one night, sitting in a café at the Cattleman’s Hotel on Exchange Avenue, and got into a conversation with some fellows sitting close to me about young mules being so high compared to some other classes of horse stock.

There was a half-Indian looking character sitting on a stool next to me, that followed me out of the café onto the sidewalk to give me a “real good” piece of information. He said he knew where there was sixty good young mares, and every one of them had a great big mule colt following her, and he knowed I could “shore buy ’em cheap ’cause the fellow was in a tight over some gamblin’ debts and needed the money.”

After a considerable visit with this character, he sold me on the idea that I ought to go see these mares with mule colts. They were located away out West, on the Pecos. My hook-nosed, high-cheeked, newly made friend said he was busy and couldn’t go with me but that he knowed they was there ’cause he was “rite fresh from the Pecos.”

The next morning I saddled up a brand new four-cylinder Chevrolet and headed for the Pecos, because it sounded like I could “steal” these mares and their mule colts. I bedded down somewhere on the way for part of the night, but I was driving hard because I was afraid someone else would find them first. I drove into Pecos, stopped at the Bell Garage, and inquired about the man that supposedly owned the mares with mule colts. They told me he lived about forty-five miles northwest of town, on the Carlsbad Road.

I didn’t have too much trouble finding the place, and the man was home. I drove up, got out of the car, shook myself, and asked for a drink of water. I will tell you now that water wasn’t very good—it was a little salty, a little gippy, and a little sulphury—but if you was dry enough and tough enough you could drink it. I swallowed it without making a face; I knew better than to make fun of a man’s country.

We passed the time of day, talked about the weather, and he asked me where I was from. I told him I was a horse and mule buyer from Fort Worth. To this remark the old man brightened up a little and said: “What kind of horses and mules you buy?”

By then I was

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