DEALIN' IN MULES
It must have been about the twentieth of April when I finished building.
I started to "batch" and prepared to break out my claim. Having only one
horse, it became necessary to buy another team. I decided to buy mules
this time. I remembered that back on our farm in southern Illinois,
mules were thought to be capable of doing more work than horses and eat
less grain. So when some boys living west of me came one Sunday
afternoon, and said they could sell me a team of mules, I agreed to go
and see them the next day. I thought I was getting wise. As proof of
such wisdom I determined to view the mules in the field. I followed them
around the field a few times and although they were not fine looking,
they seemed to work very well. Another great advantage was, they were
cheap, only one hundred and thirty-five dollars for the team and a
fourteen-inch-rod breaking plow. This looked to me like a bargain. I
wrote him a check and took the mules home with me. Jack and Jenny were
their names, and I hadn't owned Jack two days before I began to hate
him. He was lazy, and when he went down hill, instead of holding his
head up and stepping his front feet out, he would lower the bean and
perform a sort of crow-hop. It was too exasperating for words and I used
to strike him viciously for it, but that didn't seem to help matters
any.
I shall not soon forget my first effort to break prairie. There are
different kinds of plows made for breaking the sod. Some kind that are
good for one kind of soil cannot be used in another. In the gummy soils
of the Dakotas, a long slant cut is the best. In fact, about the only
kind that can be used successfully, while in the more sandy lands found
in parts of Kansas and Nebraska, a kind is used which is called the
square cut. The share being almost at right angles with the beam instead
of slanting back from point to heel. Now in sandy soils this pulls much
easier for the grit scours off any roots, grass, or whatever else would
hang over the share. To attempt to use this kind in wet, sticky land,
such as was on my claim, would find the soil adhering to the plow share,
causing it to drag, gather roots and grass, until it is impossible to
keep the plow in the ground. When it is dry, this kind of plow can be
used with success in the gummy land; but it was not dry when I invaded
my homestead soil with my big horse, Jenny and Jack, that first day of
May, but very wet indeed.
To make matters worse, Doc, the big horse, believed in "speeding." Jenny
was fair but Jack, on the landside, was affected with "hook-worm
hustle," and believed in taking his time. I tried to help him along with
a yell that grew louder as I hopped, skipped, and jumped across the
prairie, and that plow began hitting and missing, mostly missing. It
would gouge into the soil up to the beam, and the big horse would get
down and make a mighty pull, while old Jack would swing back like the
heavy end of a ball bat when a player draws to strike, and out would
come the plow with a skip, skip, skip; the big horse nearly trotting and
dragging the two little mules, that looked like two goats beside an
elephant. Well, I sat down and gave up to a fit of the blues; for it
looked bad, mighty bad for me.
I had left St. Louis with two hundred dollars in cash, and had drawn a
draft for five hundred dollars more on the Chicago bank, where my money
was on deposit, and what did I have for it? One big horse, tall as a
giraffe; two little mules, one of which was a torment to me; a sod
house; and old wagon. As I faced the situation there seemed nothing to
do but to fight it out, and I turned wearily to another attempt, this
time with more success. Before I had started breaking I had invited
criticism. Now I was getting it on all sides. I was the only colored
homesteader on the reservation, and as an agriculturist it began to look
mighty bad for the colored race on the Little Crow.
Finally, with the assistance of dry weather, I got the plow so I could
go two or three rods without stopping, throw it out of the ground and
clear the share of roots and grass. Sometimes I managed to go farther,
but never over forty rods, the entire summer.
I took another course in horse trading or mule trading, which almost
came to be my undoing. I determined to get rid of Jack. I decided that I
would not be aggravated with his laziness and crow-hopping any longer
than it took me to find a trade. So on a Sunday, about two weeks after I
bought the team, a horse trader pulled into Calias, drew his prairie
schooner to a level spot, hobbled his horses--mostly old plugs of
diverse descriptions, and made preparation to stay awhile. He had only
one animal, according to my horse-sense (?), that was any good, and that
was a mule that he kept blanketed. His camp was so situated that I could
watch the mule, from my east window, and the more I looked at the mule,
the better he looked to me. It was Wednesday noon the following week and
old Jack had become almost unbearable. My continuing to watch a good
mule do nothing, while I continued to fret my life away trying to be
patient with a lazy brute, only added to my restlessness and eagerness
to trade. At noon I entered the barn and told old Jack I would get rid
of him. I would swap him to that horse trader for his good mule as soon
as I watered him. He was looking pretty thin and I thought it would be
to my advantage to fill him up.
During the three days the trader camped near my house he never
approached me with an offer to sell or trade, and it was with many
misgivings that I called out in a loud, breezy voice and David Harum
manner; "Hello, Governor, how will you trade mules?" "How'll I trade
mules? did you say how'll I trade mules? Huh, do you suppose I want your
old mule?" drawing up one side of his face and twisting his big red nose
until he resembled a German clown.
"O, my mule's fair", I defended weakly.
"Nothing but an old dead mule," he spit out, grabbing old Jack's tail
and giving him a yank that all but pulled him over. "Look at him, look
at him," he rattled away like an auctioneer. "Go on, Mr. Colored Man,
you can't work me that way." He continued stepping around old Jack,
making pretentions to hit him on the head. Jack may have been slow in
the field, but he was swift in dodging, and he didn't look where he
dodged either. I was standing at his side holding the reins, when the
fellow made one of his wild motions, and Jack nearly knocked my head off
as he dodged. "Naw sir, if I considered a trade, that is if I considered
a trade at all, I would have to have a lot of boot" he said with an
important air.
"How much?" I asked nervously.
"Well, sir", he spoke with slow decision; "I would have to have
twenty-five dollars."
"What!" I exclaimed, at which he seemed to weaken; but he didn't
understand that my exclamation was of surprise that he only wanted
twenty-five dollars, when I had expected to give him seventy-five
dollars. I grasped the situation, however, and leaning forward, said
hardly above a whisper, my heart was so near my throat: "I will give you
twenty," as I pulled out my roll and held a twenty before his eyes,
which he took as though afraid I would jerk it away; muttering something
about it not being enough, and that he had ought to have had
twenty-five. However, he got old Jack and the twenty, gathered his plugs
and left town immediately. I felt rather proud of my new possession, but
before I got through the field that afternoon I became suspicious.
Although I looked my new mule over and over often during the afternoon
while plowing, I could find nothing wrong. Still I had a chilly
premonition, fostered, no doubt, by past experience, that something
would show up soon, and in a few days it did show up. I learned
afterward the trader had come thirty-five miles to trade me that mule.
The mule I had traded was only lazy, while the one I had received in the
trade was not only lazy, but "ornery" and full of tricks that she took a
fiendish delight in exercising on me. One of her favorites was to watch
me out of her left eye, shirking the while, and crowding the furrow at
the same time, which would pull the plow out of the ground. I tried to
coax and cajole her into doing a decent mule's work, but it availed me
nothing. I bore up under the aggravation with patience and fortitude,
then determined to subdue the mule or become subdued myself. I would
lunge forward with my whip, and away she would rush out from under it,
brush the other horse and mule out of their places and throw things into
general confusion. Then as soon as I was again straightened out, she
would be back at her old tricks, and I am almost positive that she used
to wink at me impudently from her vantage point. Added to this, the
coloring matter with which the trader doped her head, faded, and she
turned grey headed in two weeks, leaving me with a mule of uncertain and
doubtful age, instead of one of seven going on eight as the trader
represented her to be.
I soon had the enviable reputation of being a horse trader. Whenever
anybody with horses to trade came to town, they were advised to go over
to the sod house north of town and see the colored man. He was fond of
trading horses, yes, he fairly doted on it. Nevertheless with all my
poor "horse-judgment" I continued to turn the sod over day after day and
completed ten or twelve acres each week.