A shallow creek bottom full of tall green feed was by that corral and Smoky headed down it; any place would do so long as he could run and keep a distance between him and that rider; but that run wasn’t to last long, once again he felt the rope tighten till he was brought to a stop, and facing the rider once more, watched him get off his horse and fasten the end of the long rope to a log.
“Well, little horse,” says the cowboy as he stood there and watched him for a spell, “don’t play too rough with this rope, the better you treat it the better it’ll treat you,” and with that he got on his horse and rode off towards the corrals where more broncs waited for the same eddication that Smoky had just got.
That long soft and thick cotton rope, and that log which held Smoky, was the means of his first learnings as to ways for usefulness to the human. The more he’d fight that rope and try to get away from it the more he’d learn that his fighting and tearing was of no use. That rope was on the job steady and to learn him to turn as he run and hit the end of it, it would take the stiffness out of his neck and there’d come a time when he’d give to a pull from either side without fighting and wanting to be convinced that it could be done. The log which the rope was tied to was part of the teaching apparatus, heavy enough to hold the pony, and even though it could be dragged around some Smoky couldn’t get very far with it.
The little horse realized somehow as he sized up the contraption that the end had come to all he’d enjoyed with the freedom he’d had—cool shades, clear streams, and grassy ranges to all roam on as he pleased had been took away from him; he didn’t know what was to come next but he did know that he was on that creek bottom, close to corrals, and there to stay for a spell.
V
The Bronc Twister Steps Up
A cloud of dust was hanging on over the big corrals where Clint, the bronc twister of the Rocking R outfit, was busy starting raw broncs under the saddle and “twisted” ’em in shape for good saddle stock. It was long, hot, and hard days for that cowboy as he wrestled with the slick, fat, and snorty ponies and convinced ’em that they all could be led, rode, and handled according to the way he seen fit; but Clint was used to that; he’d been at it for years with nary a rest or relief from the work that was beginning to tell on him.
He’d take ten broncs at a time and soon as he’d took the rough off them ten he’d turn ’em over as broke and run in ten more raw, wild ponies. Each green colt was rode every day if even only for half an hour, and gradually learned to behave under the saddle. There was a few that wouldn’t learn to behave, but the Rocking R outfit had good men and all them ponies was put in to their work whether they was good or bad.
Clint had been with the layout for near two years, and in that time had broke to ride somewheres around eighty head of horses. He’d broke many more for other outfits and never made an outlaw. If one did turn outlaw once in a while it was because of that pony’s natural instinct to be that way, but Clint handled and rode ’em all just the same—if a perticular horse couldn’t be learned it sure wasn’t his fault and none had better try to learn that same horse anything.
As has been said before, bronc fighting was beginning to tell on Clint—none of them ponies he’d broke had spared him, and instead they’d called on for all that was in him. Many had tried to tear him apart and scatter him in the dust of the big corrals; hoofs had come like greased lightning and took hunks off his batwing chaps, teeth had took a few shirts off his back, and as he’d climbed on one after another of these wild, kinky ponies they most all tried to see if they could move the heart of him from one side of his body to the other.
There was many times when he was layed up with dislocated shoulders, ribs broke and legs the same. From the root of his hair to the toes in his made to order boots there was signs, if not seen they was felt, where some horse had twisted, broke, or shook something loose. Each happening had come more or less separate, and healed some in time, but as some kept a repeating off and on there was some parts of him which never got strong again; and as time went on, and as Clint said, “he was beginning to feel loose like an old clock and figgered that some day some bucking hunk of horseflesh would take the tick out of him and scatter him out so that none of the parts would never be found again.”
Clint had started riding rough ones long before he quit growing and that’s the condition he was in at thirty, an old man, far as riding was concerned. The horses of the same big outfit he’d rode for was worked on the average of only four months in the year, and in them four months the broke horses was rode only four or five hours once every three days. That might show some of the difference in the work the cowboy and the cowhorse does with a real cow outfit.—The men go to pieces young and early and the
