for handling green horses. the railway company almost always owned some acreage around the yards which could be used for grazing. The traders would herd their horses, hobble some, or use a bell mare, depending on the number of horses with which they were traveling. These traders were the forerunners of the used car lots of today. In some cases these traders had a race horse, and the quality of these horses ranged from poor to excellent.

A couple of these horse traders ambled into one of the Battle Creek saloons, bellied up to the bar, cocked a booted foot over the well-worn brass rail, pushed back their big hats, and told the barkeep to fill up a couple to wash the dust out of their throats and maybe raise their spirits a little. After hoisting a few, they remarked, "We hear you boys had a runnin' horse or two around here." They immediately got an affirmative. Of course they knew they would. They said, "We have a horse we will run against anything you have around this burg." After crooking their elbows a few more times and getting more conversation started, a little of the green stuff was laid on the line. When they became a little more boisterous they said they would just bet all that the locals wanted to put up.

This called for a little consultation with the local sheriff, who happened to have the fastest race horse in town. He asked, "Where is this race horse of yours?" "Right out here," they answered, and proceeded to take the boys out to view a horse hitched to a cart or wagon with another horse with a set of chain tug harness. One look and the locals, trying to hide their laughter said, "Is this your race horse?" They said it was. He was about the sorriest looking speed demon they had seen. this big bay horse with a sway back was a rather sad looker, to say the least.

The betting then started in earnest and the traders called all the money the Battle Creek boys had. The misfit-looking bay horse was unhooked, saddled with a pad (since he was so swaybacked, a regular saddle wouldn't fit), and a rider was slapped up on his back (these traveling nomads of the turf always had an experienced lightweight rider in their group who knew his way around in this catch-as-catch-can horse racing game.) But the sheriff, who was a friend of my dad's, told him later that he smelled a mouse for when this unhitching and saddling up took place, right then and there this old horse woke up. When the dust had settled and the traders didn't seem as drunk as maybe they had put on, the home boys hadn't seen which way the horse, Sway Dick, had gone. The traders set up the drinks all around. But the sheriff was not a nitwit. Before the traders had pulled out of town, the sheriff had bought Sway Dick.

Many sheriffs of those frontier counties were not saints. Sheriff Pete Duffy, of O'Neill in Holt County, was a prominent race horse man and owned many fast horses. Jim Dahlman, lawman at Chadron in Nebraska's Dawes County, and later

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