Dixie Hart | Page 8

money out of a fool.
I want to know that a feller is up to snuff and fairly in the game, and
then I'll swat 'im if it is in my power. It's been the ambition of my life
to get the best of old Welborne across the street there. He's made his
pile off of widows and orphans, and if I ever get him under my thumb
I'll crack every bone in his hide."
"Traders that have the knack of it like you have, Alf, are simply born
that way," Cahews smiled. "I never had any turn of that sort. I can talk
an old woman into buyin' a dress pattern off of a shelf-worn bolt of
linsey, or a pair of shoes too tight for her, but this way you have of
buying a feller's wagon that breaks down in the road and having it
patched up by a blacksmith that owes you money, and selling the
wagon for more than it cost new--well, as I say, I don't know how to do
it."
"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