“Now, you just take it easy for a spell, and keep your head up,” says that cowboy as he started walking towards the pony.—Legs wide apart, a wild look in his eyes, and a snorting his surprise Smoky watched him come; he didn’t know whether to stand his ground and start fighting or back away as the cowboy came.—On he came, and as Smoky was seeing no sign of harm, he stood in his tracks, watched, and waited. A hand touched him on the forehead and moved on down his neck, the cowboy was a talking to him the while, and pretty soon Smoky’s heart wasn’t thumping so hard no more.—
He was then led a little ways, and as he heard the squeak of leather and felt the weight of the saddle with each step he took, an awful hankering came to him to put his head down and try to buck it off, but the cowboy was right there in front of him and he didn’t want to be stopped again and so sudden as he’d been stopped that first time.
The other side of the corral was reached and there Clint turned and rubbed Smoky on the ear. “Well, old boy, let’s see how you’re going to behave when I get up in the middle of you.”
Smoky watched the man reach for the latigo and felt the cinch tighten up; a hump came in his back and which made the saddle set near on end—it was the hump that carried the punch in the buck, and most likely Clint could of led the pony around some till the hump wore down and his back straightened up again, but that rider wasn’t for taking the buck out of a bronc too quick. He believed a good sensible horse should buck at the first few “settings” and he wasn’t the kind of rider that’d smother that natural feeling and have it come out later, when the horse is supposed to be broke gentle.
He let the hump be and never moved the pony out of his tracks;—he knowed that just one move would be enough to start that pony to exploding, and Smoky was set and just a waiting for that signal to start. He watched the cowboy raise his chaps so the belt wouldn’t hinder his leg action, watched him pull his hat brim down solid, and then he couldn’t watch no more. Something had come between him and his vision, it was the cowboy’s thumb which had layed over his left eyelid and pulled it down over his eye—In the next second he felt a weight added on to that of the saddle, and all of a sudden he could see again.
But what he did see left him stary-yed and paralized. For half a minute he just stood like petrified. That cowboy had disappeared from the side of him, and instead, there he was right in the middle of his back and on that hunk of leather he’d been hankering to shed off ever since it was put on there.
Instinct pointed out only one way for him to act—it was telling him that neither the human nor the leather belonged up there in the middle of him that way, and that if he tried he could most likely get rid of ’em. There was nothing else to do that he could see, and right then he felt that he sure must do something.
His head went down, and a beller came out of him that said much as “I want you”—Up went Smoky’s withers followed by the hump that made the saddle twist like on a pivot, and last came steel muscles like shot out of the earth, and which carried the whole mixed up and crooked conglameration of man and horse up in mid air and seemed like to shake there for a spell before coming down. All seemed heads and tails and made a picture of the kind that was mighty hard to see, and still harder to figger out.
Saddle strings was a popping like on a whiplash, leather was a squeaking, corrals shook as the hard hitting hoofs of the pony hit the earth, and a dust was stirred that looked like a young cloud. Smoky was scared, mad, and desperate. All the action, strength, and endurance that was in him was brought out to do its best. Not a hair on his hide was laying idle thru the performance—every muscle tightened and loosened in a way to shake the weight on his back and make it pop.
Clint felt the muscles work even thru the saddle, and every part of that pony which his legs touched seemed as hard as steel and full of fast working bumps which came and went, twisted his saddle under him, and made him wonder if it was going to stay. It seemed like sometimes that Smoky was headed one way and his saddle another—he wasn’t always sure of the whereabouts of that pony’s head; and in all his riding that’s what he wanted to keep track of most, cause losing track of a horse’s head at them times is something like riding blindfolded—a rider would prepare for one kind of a jolt and meet another, which would cause things to scatter considerable.
Clint was still straight up and on top when Smoky’s hard jumps finally dwindled down to crowhops and then a stop. That pony was needing wind mighty bad, and as his nostrils opened wide, was taking in the necessary air, he felt a hand a rubbing along his neck, and wild eyed, ears cocked back at the cowboy that was still there, he stood and heard him talk.
“You done a mighty fine job, little
