Some More Horse Tradin' Read Online Free PDF

slack. When I passed through Thorp Springs I’d eased him up into a pretty good trot.
    This episode started a little after dinner and I rode into Lipan about two hours after dark.
    I had an old friend by the name of Ross that lived on the edge of town so I rode up to the edge of the yard and hollered, “Hello,” which was the custom of the country when you rode into a man’s house at night. Ross stuck his head out the door and hollered, “Git down!”
    I said, “Hell, I don’t think I can.”
    He saw who it was and started walkin’ out toward my horse. He said, “Ben, that’s the Cleveland bay horse that ole man Buck Hill traded that undertaker in on a bill because none of his cowboys could ride him. How come you with ’im?”
    I said, “It’s a long, painful story.”
    â€œWell, git down and spend the night and you can tell me all about it.”
    I told him I was pretty stiff and if this ole horse jumped as I started off, I might hang in the stirrups, and for him to reach up and git a hold of his bridle and twist one ear, and I’d try to git off. Ross was a good fellow, and we fed my horse and put him away and there was a whole lot less buck in him than there was when we started.
    It was already late when I got there, but Ross’s wife got up and fixed me a big supper and showed me where to go to bed. Ross and I visited a little while before we turned in.
    When I took my britches off, the hide was gone on both legs from the top of my boots plumb up past my knee joints, but I thought a night’s rest might cure a lot of that and it didn’t take me long to get to sleep. It didn’t seem like I’d been asleep for any time when I heard some pots and pans and noises around in the kitchen like country folk make that get up and cook and eat ’fore daylight.
    I eased up on the side of the bed, got my boots and britches on and finished dressing, and found that I could stand up. By this time I’d decided I was goin’ to live after all that buckin’, and the smell of ham and hot biscuits comin’ from the kitchen began to give me a new interest in life.
    After breakfast, Ross helped me saddle the horse that I forgot to ask if he was broke. He looked worse’n I did. Sweat was dried all over him, the hard ride had caused the hair to slip under the cinch on him, and you could tell that when we started out he was a soft, overkept horse. That’s where I had it on him. I was hard as iron and used to ridin’.
    He didn’t act like he was goin’ to let me get on, so Ross put an extra rope around his neck and ran the rope through his mouth and back around under his chin and twisted it a couple of times. This gave him a more reasonable outlook on the possibilities of me ridin’ him again, and I took my time about gettin’ on him. I finally got set down on them sore places and clenched my raw knees against the saddle and told Ross to turn ’im loose. I had his head pulled up and he didn’t offer to buck.
    I cut across the country to Weatherford that day and the next day I rode back to Granbury. I don’t know whether the folks in Granbury thought they would ever see me again or not, but by the time I rode in on the square, I had this used-to-be-badhorse drawed to about the shape of a greyhound. (In three days we’d been about a hundred miles.) He was unshod and his feet had broken off in a few places to the quick and he was feelin’ his way across the gravel where I was goin’ to tie him to that courthouse chain. It had been a hard three days, but to have this good horse under me broke was worth all the pain and trouble.
    I stepped down on the ground and as I started across to the drugstore, I tried to act like I was as fresh as a cowboy goin’ to a square dance. I glanced over my shoulder and here was comin’ Mr. Undertaker doin’ the single-foot, and four or five more people had