During those years on the Royston farm, we witnessed the advent of cattle auction sales in our part of the country, and of course they led to other little happenings. I might as well tell about one or two of them right about here.
From our home it was only 30 miles to Sweetwater and 50 miles to Abilene. Those two cities together had at least three cattle sales a week. I was sitting at one of those sales one day, waiting for the cows to start selling, when they began selling a lot of odds-and-ends prior to selling the cattle.
There are times when these odds-and-ends can defy the imagination. Some of the items I have seen sell at such times were old saddles, new saddles, lariat ropes, milk goats, six bantam hens with matching rooster, three quart-bottles of screw worm medicine, a set of badly used harness, four weaning size hound pups, and many others.
Well, on this particular day, I was just sitting there being bored when suddenly here comes a sorrel saddle horse for sale. The bidding got off to a slow start and didn't speed up an awful lot. This gave me time to start thinking, but I started in the wrong direction. True, he was a good-looking animal—beautiful, not a blemish on him, tall and strong, just the horse for me.
Now, what I should have been thinking was, "If he's all that good, why isn't he bringing more money? Why aren't more men bidding on him?" I think I figured out the answers just about the time I made the final bid on the old horse. I think everyone there that day, except me, knew the horse, had owned him a week or two and had brought him back to sell to somebody like me, someone who had not owned him and didn't know about him. In fact, I sold him the following week. Only I didn't take him back to the sale, I sold him to a cow-buyer who didn't know him. And he took him back to the sale a week later.
Anyway, the bidding had only reached $20 when I offered $22.50. But just as I announced my bid, something told me I shouldn't have. And since no one would raise my bid to $25, nor to $24— not even to $23, I found myself with a horse I wasn't quite sure I wanted. I really think the owner had bid the $20 and waited for a sucker like me to raise his bid.
But at home the next day, Dennis rode the horse over to a neighbor's place and came back with a good report. He said the horse was lively, spirited, and altogether well behaved. I was beginning to feel better about my purchase, until a few days later when Anita tried the new horse.
Now, I'm not altogether sure she really wanted to ride the horse. It might have been my idea, or maybe it was Dennis' idea. One thing I do know for certain, it wasn't Ima's idea. However, there Anita was, up on the horse in our front yard, when the wind began flopping her neck scarf. And that was when the old horse began to come unwound.
I was holding the reins and managing to keep his front end fairly quiet and close to the ground, but his hind end kept bouncing up and down, getting higher and higher until Anita landed on the ground right by his front feet. That's when we learned that anything waving or flopping drove the horse crazy and made him pitch. He was not a flag-waving patriotic horse.
The man I sold the horse to learned the same thing the hard way when his hat almost blew off and he reached up quickly to grab it. He said he barely managed to stay on top, but got off as soon as the horse stopped bucking, and walked him to the barn. Next day he took the horse to the cow sale and auctioned him off.