A Good Trade

A Tale of a Horse Trade – as told by my guest author, my Granddad, of his “batchin’ days.”

John Sherod and I got hold of some pretty good flat land in the eastern part of Montana and decided to put it into wheat.  We had a fourteen inch gang plow and four work horses for their summer fallow work. This wasn’t enough horsepower to break up eighty acres of new ground.  But luck came our way. My brother, Buster, was looking for a pasture for a herd of horses. Buster’s horses were not notoriously gentle when they were broke.  Most of these were unbroken. John and I tied into breaking horses. We were breaking rigging too.  Finally we created two teams of eight horses each. These included our own horses. 

Dust raised over the prairie. John plowed half a day in the morning. I took the afternoon shift. Some horses worked out good, but a few stayed green around the edges. One, on John’s string, was a mean eyed, Roman nosed booger. “Geeraff” John called him. Geeraff was a long legged horse who was short on disposition. He was tough and had harness marks, but he was difficult to handle. We took to harnessing Geeraff in the chute. He kicked and fought and raised cane, but we fastened him in the middle of the eight horse team. After being dragged a few times he gave up laying down and got on his feet and pulled like a gentleman. But, by golly, you had to watch him. He was always ready to make trouble. 

Some old timers believed that for every tough horse there was someone who could train him. Claude Gray was one such a fellow. Gray had another flatland farm. His was a prosperous place complete with a wife and a poultry yard which contained a goose to provide down for the lady’s pillows.  One day Gray came by when Geeraff was in the chute being outfitted. 

“How long you been doing that?” Gray asked. 

“Too damn long,” John replied. 

“Why I could have him working in two weeks.” 

“Give me a trade and you can have him,” Sherod challenged. He was midday cook and wanted a break.  “I saw a goose on your place. I’ll let you have Geeraff for a goose. Just have your wife cook the goose for dinner and Geeraff is yours.” 

A horse for a goose dinner was a good trade for a couple of fellows who were batching. It was especially a good trade when the horse was Geeraff and belonged to another fellow.  A couple of weeks later we went to collect our dinner. The meal lasted all afternoon. 

“That was a fine dinner,” I said. “But tell us, how is old Geeraff working out?” 

“He’s just like the goose ‑ eat up. Couldn’t do anything with the long legged outlaw, so I fed him to the hogs.” 

Gray shook his head. “Run me out of my own corral, and when I lost my hat the son of a gun grabbed it with his teeth. Then he stomped it into the ground. Lucky I wasn’t in it.” 

I don’t know what Geeraff did for the hogs. But with him out of the way we finished the job in jig time. I made the final round and headed for the barnyard. My eight horses were hooked to the plow and a thirty foot drag log with stub limbs was fastened behind the plow for leveling the ground. 

When I went to open the wire gate, one of the horses spooked.  The others took the challenge. They stampeded through the gate with the tree drag chasing them.  The corral and barn were ahead. A log outhouse was to one side. When the horses flew by the corral the drag log was getting airborne. As they rounded the barn on the way back the drag swung wide, hit the outhouse and sent logs flying though the air like match sticks. The horses ended up in a glorious wreck ‑ plow, logs, match sticks, and harness. 

I had one tame horse. He was on the bottom of the pile. 

We were most of the afternoon cutting the horses out, and the next day we started sewing the harness back together. The field was plowed. I asked John, “Now what shall we do?” 

“Head west,” came the reply. 

We hitched up our horses and headed for the mountains. We reached the Big Hole Basin two weeks before haying time. Rainbow welcomed us. “Glad you came early,” he said. “I’ve got some green horses that I need to break so we can get in the hay fields.” 

John had spent several winters working in the Big Hole Basin for Rainbow. This was on a big cattle and hay operation. Someone in Seattle owned this. Rainbow was the ranch manager.  His wife, Blanche, was a good manager herself. She’d borrow me for her special chores. Sometimes mowing Blanche’s orchard took precedence over the nut grass in the meadows.

Blanche had an old horse that was full of miseries and on his last legs. One of my special tasks was putting the old horse out of his miseries. 

(Note: Sometimes Mr. Bee speaks of this ranch as the Huntley ranch)