Horse trading isn’t just for horses
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Julie Carter

The cowboy stood at the door in what, at one time, in some other lifetime, might have been a red canvas jacket.

Today it was more on the aged side of pink, fringed with very raveled seams, and had a pocket that was holding on only by a creative thought. He was headed to town.

After some verbal exchange with his wife, who knew he owned a better coat and reminded him of that, he drove off.

His rationale was that he was on his way to bargain for something and it was politically incorrect to go horse-trading (a term used for any kind of bartering in the West) in new or even salvageable clothes.

It is the nature of the work to be done that drives the appearance.

There is a cowboy on the east side of the state that has a ranch, free and clear of mortgages and enough money in the bank to stock cattle on it without the banker's permission. At shipping time, he would always appear at breakfast dressed the same as rest of the cowboys. He would stay that way until the cattle were penned.

Sometime just after the gate closed on the last steer and the cow buyer who had been waiting at the road with the cattle trucks showed up, this rancher would transform into a pitiful creature.

He would be clad in a sweater with holes at the elbows, cuffs hanging by a thread, a hat that had been through the big war and boots with more holes than a prairie dog patch.

The cow buyer would arrive clean and shiny with creases in his jeans like George Strait, driving a new Lincoln, a white, new out-of-the-box Stetson, and wearing a big pinkie ring with a diamond the size of a robin's egg. The contrast was always appreciable.

And even though the actual numbers for the trade had been signed for months before and were not questioned, it never failed to come up in a conversation that the next time the buyer would have to do a little better.

Trading, bartering and making a deal, whether buying or selling, keeps a cowboy's heart pumping strong the same way riding a good horse following fat cattle in belly-deep grass does.

There is an art to "horse trading" that is passed down through generations. It is honed to a sharp edge, practiced constantly, even on the wife and kids, and often has nothing to do with a horse.

But if it is about a horse, the trading will often go beyond the monetary value of the animal. It is not unusual for the dickering conversation to go on for hours when the transaction involves something other than cash.

When a prospect shows up at a trader's place with a trailer hooked to the pickup, it puts a spring in the step of the man with the merchandise for sale. It is a wiser, more-common practice to leave the trailer parked a couple of miles away, maybe at the truck stop, and arrive with only any other tradable goods to start the transaction.

Before the discussion of cash floats into the conversation, there may a considerable amount of time given to offering other livestock, horse trailers, saddles, pasture leases, colt breaking, day working or pick of the new litter of blue heeler pups as part of the "deal."

It is pinnacle entertainment to listen to horse traders while standing out in a dusty lot watching one "trader" pit his wits against another. A true regret to this unheralded talent is the increase of horses being bought and sold over the Internet, losing the tone and the visual of the transaction.

An entire art and language is being lost on the cyber highway. Without it, the Western world will be a less colorful place.

More than ever, the "buyer beware" phrase needs to be pasted to the pickup windshield or perhaps to the computer monitor.

Visit Julie at her website at www.julie-carter.com