"I believe myself, as you say, that the trading turn is born in a feller," Henley laughed, reminiscently. "I know I was swapping knives 'sight unseen' when I was wearing petticoats. I had a stock of old ones and I kept the jaws of 'em rubbed up bright. My daddy used to whip me for it. He was one of the best men, Jim, that ever wore shoe-leather, and he never could stand to see one neighbor get the best of another. He was dead agin all the deals I made when I was growing up, but I learnt him the trick and showed him the beauty of it before I was twenty."
"You say you did?" Cahews sat down and eyed his employer eagerly.
"Yes, it come about through my fust hoss-trade," Henley smiled. "It was this way. Pa was on the lookout for a hoss to do field-work, and he let everybody know he had the money, and a good many came his way. He wasn't any judge of hoss-flesh, and a gypsy, passing along, stuck him—burned the old chap clean to the bone. It was a flea-bitten hoss that was as round and slick as a ball of butter, and as active under the gypsy's lash and spur as a frisky young colt. The gypsy said he had paid two hundred for him, but, as he was anxious to get to his sick wife in Atlanta, he would make it a hundred and fifty and be thankful that he'd made one man happy. The old man was his meat. He told him he only had a hundred and twenty-five, and—well, the gypsy was a smooth article. He wanted to get his eye on the cash. He said a whole lot about havin' had counterfeit money paid to him, an' that he had to be careful, and with that Pa went to the house and got the money and spread it out before the skunk to prove that it was all right. And in that way the chap got his hands on it. He shed some tears as he put it into his pocket. Pa said he kissed the hoss square betwixt the eyes and rubbed him on the nose and went away with his head hanging down."
"I catch on," the clerk broke in, deeply interested; "it was stolen property, and your Pa had to give 'im up."
"No, the titles was all right," Henley answered, dryly. "The time come when Pa would have greeted any claimant with open arms. The hoss had the disease traders call 'big shoulders.' I was a mile or two off when the calamity fell, but somebody told me Pa'd bought a hoss, and I come home as fast as I could. I found Ma and Pa out in the stable-yard, and he was fairly chattering over his wonderful bargain, and what a kind heart the gypsy had. Pa saw me and grinned from ear to ear.
"'Say, Alf,' he said, 'you are always making your brags about knowing hoss-flesh; what do you think of this prince of the turf?'
"I walked round in front of the animal to size him up, and my heart sunk 'way down in my boots. 'Pa,' I said, 'it looks to me like he's got "big shoulders."'
"'Big nothing!' Pa said; but when he stood in front and took a squint I saw him turn pale. 'Big shoulders, a dog's hind-foot!' he grunted, and he was so mad at me that he could hardly talk. He put the hoss in a stall and jowered at me all that evening, and at the supper-table he clean forgot to ask the blessing. The more he feared I was right the worse he got, till Ma had to call him to order by putting the family Bible in his lap and making him read and pray. I couldn't help laughing, as serious as it was; for while we was on our knees the thought struck me that he ought to ask the Lord to bless that gypsy and restore his wife to health. Well, I was right. Early the next morning, after a good night's rest and plenty of water and feed, we found the hoss lying down. He'd get up and go about a little whenever we'd prod 'im, but he'd lie down whenever our backs was turned."
"I've seen hosses like that," Cahews remarked, "and they might as well be shot."
"That's exactly what Pa decided to do, after two weeks' nursing and cajoling," Henley laughed. "He come in to the breakfast-table one morning with his rifle in his clutch, a sort of resigned look in his eyes.
"'What are you going to do, Pa?' I asked him.
"'Why, I see that danged thing has got on one of his lively spells,' he said, 'and I'm going to shoot him while he's at his best. If there is any hoss-heaven, he'd make a better appearance like he is now than at any other time. I've had my fill. The sight of that hoss peeping out betwixt the bars every day at meal-time and lying on a bed of ease the rest of the day is driving me crazy. He'll be on his way in a few minutes if I can shoot straight.'
"'No, don't kill 'im,' I said, my trading blood up. 'Let me ride 'im to town while he's lively and maybe I can git rid of him. I might get a few dollars for his hide, and that would be better than having to dig a hole to put 'im in.'
"'No, don't kill 'im here,' Ma said, for she had a tender heart—God bless her memory—and so the old man hung his gun up on the rack and went to eating, almost too mad to swallow. Well, after the meal was over I saddled the hoss and rid into town at a purty lively gait. It was really astonishing what a decent trot the thing could take at times. You see, I'd heard that Tobe Wilks, a big hardware man at Carlton, who had a plantation in the country, was looking for a hoss, and I thought I'd see what he'd say to mine. I was jest a boy, but I'd hung around hoss-swappers enough to know that it never was a good idea to be the first to propose a trade, and so I hitched at the post in front of Wilks's store and went in. I bought a pound of tenpenny nails, that I thought would come in handy in patching fences at home, and while the clerk was weighing 'em up I saw Tobe leave his chair behind a counter and go out and walk around the hoss. Finally he come to me and said, said he:
"'Alf, does your Pa want to sell that stack of bones out there?'
"'He don't,' says I, 'fer the hoss is mine; he gave 'im to me.'
"'Oh, that's it!' said Wilks; 'well, do you want to sell him?'
"'Well, I ain't itchin' fer a trade,' I says, and I paid no more attention to Wilks, pretending to be looking at some ploughshares in a pile on the floor, till he come at me again.
"'But you would sell him, wouldn't you?' he asked.
"'Well,' I said, slowlike, as if I had some difficulty in recalling exactly what we'd been talking about, 'I had sorter thought that a good mule would do the work I have to do better than a hoss.'
"'What would you take for him?' Wilks come at me again, and he looked kinder anxious. 'I want a hoss to send out to my plantation. They are needing one about like yours.'
"'It will take a hundred and fifty of any man's money to buy him,' I says. 'Friend nor foe don't get him for a cent less.'
"Well, we went out to the hoss, and Wilks got astraddle of him, and, sir, he took him round the square in the purtiest rack you ever saw shuffle under a saddle. I saw Wilks thought I was his game, for his eyes was dancing as he lit and hitched.
"'How would a hundred and forty strike you, cash down?' he said.
"'I'm needing the other ten,' I said. 'I'm a one-price man. I know what I've got in that hoss' (and you bet I did), 'and you can take him or leave him. I didn't start the talk, nohow.'
"'Well, we won't fight over the ten,' he said, 'but here is one trouble, Alf. You are under age, and I don't often trade with minors. I don't know how your daddy may look at it, and I'm going to make this deal before witnesses so there won't be any trouble later.'
"'You'll not have any trouble with Pa,' says I. 'I'll guarantee that.'
"Well, Wilks called up two of his clerks to see the money handed to me, and with the wad of bills in my pocket I lit out for home. But the nearer I got to the house the more I got afraid Pa wouldn't endorse what I'd done, and so I felt sorter funny when him and Ma met me at the gate, their eyes wide open in curiosity to know what I'd done.
"'Well, what did you do with the hoss?' Pa wanted to know.
"'I sold him,' says I. 'I let him go to Tobe Wilks for cash.'
"'Cash the devil,' says Pa. 'How much?'
"I drawed out my roll and fluttered the bills in the wind. 'A hundred and fifty,'