The old trader stood still, hands on his hips and looking at the toes of his boots. He was wallering the cud of tobacco in his jaw from one side to the other. I was enjoying every move he made, eating out of his hand, so to speak. He had me completely mesmerized. The very odor of him cattle, chewing tobacco, slight sweat, made me think of things long past.

The trader who came to our home when I was a pup was almost exactly like this one. He smelled, walked and talked about the same. His fingers were gnarled up and his britches kept slipping lower so he was forced to give them an upward hitch every two minutes. I guess I thought they were all gone, like the Apache warriors of the old west.

This trader, the present one, found our place all by himself. He was driving along, looking for something to buy and spotted the old thin cow with her scrawny calf in a pasture all by themselves. He presumed he might make a dollar or two on her if he could buy her for the right price. He came up the drive in a good truck pulling a long aluminum trailer. Sure enough, that picture was not like the one of the olden times feller. He drove up in a baling wired truck with stock racks of splintery wood, homemade at that.

I introduced myself and he did the same. We made pleasantries, talked about the president and congress and how good old Dog looked. All the stuff a good trader says was uttered. He had no clue that I was already under his spell. I had to give myself a good shake mentally and sharpen up my wits or I knew I was gonna be had. These folks were the best of the best, the elite, at taking a cattleman by the nose and leading him to the proverbial slaughter.

I’dseen it happen before to better men than me.

My dear old Pappy sold a lame horse to the trader for what Pappy considered a heck of a deal. That horse was older than he looked and had been lame for some time. Pappy said the old nag got lame every time he rode him away from the barn. The trader unloaded the new purchase at the railroad loading pens and worked cattle on him for a couple of hours. That lame horse was sound as a dollar and sold for several hundred dollars more than Pap’s heck of a good deal put in his pocket!

We finally got around to talking about the cow that the trader had spotted and I explained she had just gotten thinner and thinner after delivering the calf in September. I did not offer any other detail and he didn’t ask for any. I did not feel one bit of guilt as he positioned that long sleek trailer up against the chute to load the cow.

It is my opinion, and everyone has one, if you can get to a trader just once in a lifetime you have accomplished a feat of daring! I danced a little jig on the way to the house with his cash stuffed into my shirt pocket. So proud of myself that I fairly swaggered into the kitchen and whipped the money out on the table.

Never in a million years did I think a dose of probiotics and a quarter cup of cottonseed meal fed twice a day with a gallon of sweet feed would make such a difference in one thirteen year old bovine. She sold high, a three in one package, and the calf on the ground and the one on the way would make it a double whammy on my self-respect since both were out of my high dollar bull!

The moral is, don’t try to outdo a doer!

-Bill

Opinion, Pages 4 on 12/30/2009