Today a man stopped by with a huge bull in a trailer and tried to sell it to me, but I turned it down because it was fucking huge and it looked like a fence jumper. He didn't bring it out of the blue, but I had rather asked him if he had a bull to sell when he stopped by a couple of days ago.

He and a young woman might have been a much younger wife or possibly a daughter or even granddaughter stopped by two days ago. This fellow said that his father had made and sold my father a pair of spurs, and he wanted to know if he could buy them.

In the country, people sometimes stop by without phoning first, or maybe I should say that this is more the rule than the exception. But the nature of his request was pretty outrageous, even if his own father did make these spurs. It was like the Lady of the Lake asking for Excalibur back or something, since this whole adventure is so mythic or archaic. I slept for at least 24 hours after this encounter.

I felt a little bit threatened. I did not keep my promise to speak to my brother about this bull and phone him yesterday. I slept 24 hours. I was up this morning at 8:30 and picked up his call. He said the bull was in the trailer and he was either taking it to the sale barn or bringing it here. Since he would have to drive by here on the way to DeQunicy anyway, I told him to stop by and let my brother and me see it and while he was at it to bring a camera and take a picture of these spurs.

He had said that he was interested in making some spurs himself using equipment of his father's including a form of bellows operated with a crank. He seemed to know a great deal about the details of soldering and riveting. When I let him see and handle my father's spurs, he knew that the yokes were iron and the rowels stainless steel, and that silver pieces were soldered to the iron, and that brass rivets attached the Indian head nickels without piercing them.

I was impressed with his knowledge of the old days here and consider it authentic probably even if he does look younger than my brother and I do. But the old time ethos involves taking advantage of your neighbor and getting the best of him--being a horse trader--and he told me--or did the young woman--how gentle he was. He was taking this bull to the sale barn and it was not his place to tell me why he was getting rid of him.

I first noticed that this was an unusually beefy longhorn. Longhorns tend to be on the small side, but this one looked capable of ignoring the fences here: 1100-pound beast.

His head was as wide as my 19-inch monitor and his horns stretched more than four feet, I think. Maybe no more than four feet, but there was a streak of red on one of his horns that made me remember that the reason this bull was so late in arriving involved a horse.

Some bulls when in a trailer get nervous and fearful and try to get out. This bull was without fear. He looked at me placidly, without any fear at all. He didn't roll his eyes or bellow. I noticed a scar in his armpit which betokened his having gone over a barbed wire fence.

I declined to purchase this bull, and his owner left the premises not unhappy that I had declined the purchase. He intimated that he would be willing to settle for the price he would bring for meat.

There is an etiquette among stockmen which cannot be taught--only learned. Or intuited. This fellow explained that he was selling this bull because he had decided to use artificial insemination instead.

In a horse-trading society, it's caveat emptor, and I've had such trouble with this because my father wouldn't tolerate my lying to him (and a tendency to lie is part of my nature, possibly as a result of having grown up in this society) and I've just had to figure out what the conventions are.

Normal people don't tell the whole truth, and normal people don't expect to be told the whole truth in this horse-trading frontier society.

There is an interesting story about U.S. Grant as a child when his father sent him to buy a horse and told him to offer $20.00 and go as high as $22.50. He blurted this out to the seller of the horse, and he lacked to have not lived this idiocy down at all.