Some More Horse Tradin' by Ben K. Green

my dun horse, young Collin mentioned that he was a good stout horse but didn’t look like he would have much speed. I said that I hadn’t had him long and hadn’t tried him—he might not, I didn’t know. I did notice that when the young Collin commented about my horse, one of those cowboys had just a little bit of a smile on one side of his face. Of course, everybody said something about one another’s horses, and I didn’t think much about it.
    I rode into the little town of La Rio on the banks of the Rio Grande, way up high on the bluff and looking over into Old Mexico—a typical little bitty old border town. You wondered how it got built there and how it survived. But there were some people, and some business—a country store, a few other little buildings. Wasn’t anybody around much it was nearly sundown, but dusk lingers in the dessert regions of the Southwest and it would be a good while before dark. At the back of this country store was a set of corrals to be used by anybody that rode in to spend a day or two in town. Whatever you might buy at the store, your horse or your team was handy there for you. Everybody just generally understood this, and a newcomer knew at a glance that this was the place to leave his horse. At the back side of the corrals there were some little old low sheds, and a few snarled old mesquite trees were in the middle of the corrals. The trees gnarled and you could tell by the bark on them that they had been rope-burned by broncs and that all kinds of horses had been tied to them. The leaves were picked off pretty high, like some old pony had stood there waiting for a rider that was spending a little too much time in town and had left him there to pick at the mesquite or starve. I tied my horse to one of these old trees.
    Nobody was in sight. The door to the country store wasopen, so I walked in to ask if it was all right to leave my horse there. A nice-looking, squatty old Mexican fellow said, “
Sí, señor,
you are welcome.”
    Then I said, “I guess I’ll spend the night. I wonder if it would be all right if I make my camp there in the back of the corrals?”
    â€œ
Sí, señor,
’most everybody that comes in horseback stays here. You are welcome.”
    I walked up the street a little piece to one of the few buildings on the same side of the street—facing north with the back of the buildings toward the bluff that overlooked the Rio Grande—and into the little café. It was a plain, dingy kind of place, but a nice-looking middle-aged man behind the counter said, “Come in. What’s it for you?”
    I asked him what he had, and he named a thing or two. He could cook me some steak, or he had some chili all ready to serve. Eating there at the counter was a nice-looking white-haired old gentleman sitting straight and erect on a stool. He was slight of stature, but he had a very impressive profile. As I glanced at the food he was eating, I couldn’t help but notice that his hands didn’t look near as old as his body. To a cowboy, this would mean that there was a man who, even though he had spent his life in the saddle as a rancher and a stockman, hadn’t been given to any menial chores. His hands weren’t knotted or gnarled up by post-hole digging, moving rock, or the common labor that boogers up a man’s hands as time goes on.
    I sat down next to him and ordered a bowl of chili. On the wall was a sign that said, “Water, 5c a Glass.” The drouth had robbed the little town of its water supply, and what water that was being used had to be hauled in quite a distance from some wells. There were wells, possibly, in the town that the natives shared with each other, but for water that had to be hauled to serve to a passer-by there was a charge. I glanced at the sign and said, “I’ll need some water.”
    The café man put a goblet down—one of those heavy, old-timey