If Smoky had been raised amongst humans like a dog and been with ’em steady that way, he’d of had a hunch or felt what Clint said and meant. But Smoky was a wild horse of the flats and mountains, and even though the sound of Clint’s tone and the feel of his hand soothed him some, he would buck again and again. It was his instinct to fight the human, and he would fight till that human showed he could handle him and proved a friend.
That had to be done gradual, and Smoky had no way to know as yet that man could be a friend of his, not while the breaking was going on anyway, for thru that spell a horse is made to do things he sometimes don’t want to do, and which all keeps down the confidence that would come faster if that didn’t have to be done.
Smoky was doing some tall figgering as he stood there trembling and wondering if there wasn’t anything that he could get by with. He’d been made to do things just as that cowboy pleased and he’d found no say in the goings on, none at all. If he could only’ve bucked him off that would of pleased him a lot, but the little horse didn’t know that he wouldn’t of won anything by that;—he didn’t know he was on this earth for the purpose of the human and that if he did throw one man another would climb him till finally he’d have to give in and go thru a lot of grief the while.
Smoky felt a light slap on his neck. “Come on, young feller,” says the cowboy. “Lets see you trot around the corral a while.”
But Smoky bucked more than he trotted. The cowboy let him, and when his head would come up he’d keep him on the go till finally there seemed to be no buck in the horse at all.
“I reckon that’ll be enough for you today,” says Clint as he headed Smoky for the side of the corral and made him face the bars to a stop. He then reached for the pony’s left ear and twisted it some, just enough to keep that pony’s attention on the twist of that ear most while he got off.—
Clint touched the ground with his right foot, and keeping his left in the stirrup, at the same time keeping close to the horse’s shoulder and out of the reach of his hind feet, he held that position for a few seconds. Smoky was watching him, shaking like a leaf and ready to paw the daylight out of the cowboy at the first wrong move or sudden jab of a knee.
Clint wanted him to watch. This was part of the eddication, and all that cowboy wanted to teach right then was for Smoky to stand and not to go to acting up. Slow and easy, at the same time having complete control of himself and his horse, Clint raised himself up in the saddle again. It was done in a way that only bronc busters know. Smoky never even felt the pull on the saddle as the cowboy climbed on, and if that saddle hadn’t even been cinched it wouldn’t of budged then, so neat it was done.
Clint climbed on and off a few times that way, Smoky stood and shivered, scared, but willing it seemed like to take his medicine. Maybe it’d come to his mind that there was no use fighting that cowboy, or else he was getting tired—anyway that was the last of it; Smoky felt the cinch loosen and then slow and easy the saddle was pulled off. About that time he whirled and faced the rider who was holding the saddle, he took a sniff at the hunk of leather and snorted like to say, “Gee! I thought that thing was on me for good.”
The saddle was set to one side and the cowboy begin rubbing Smoky’s back with a gunny sack, and according to the way that pony acted that felt mighty good, his upper lip stuck out and twitched with every motion of the rubbing, and when Clint finally quit, the little horse’s action showed plain that he should do it some more; Clint rubbed again.
“I’m afraid,” he says as he grinned and rubbed, “that I’m naturally going to spoil you. Here we just got thru with the first saddling and you’re beginning to look for favors already.”
Smoky’s picket grounds was moved to a fresh one for that night and where the grass was tall, a plenty and green—but somehow his appetite wasn’t at its best, and when the break of day come there was very little sign (as Clint noticed) that the pony had et at all. He’d just stood in one spot, looked like, and seemed to’ve done tall wondering and figgering instead of feeding. He was ganted up the same as if he’d been rode all that night, and still there was no show of any appetite for the feed that was under and all around him.
As Clint worked in the corral busy with other broncs he’d look thru the bars for any show of interest in the little horse; he’d look often but most every time that pony’s position was about the same, and if he did catch him with his head down he noticed how Smoky was just nibbling at the feed, and not eating much.
Smoky was taking the change, from the life he’d led to what he was now going thru, kinda hard, harder than the average wild horse ever does; and Clint layed it that the little horse had more brains than the average, more sensitive maybe, and more able to realize.
“I guess I’d better lay off of him today,” decides the cowboy, as he noticed very little change in him even late that
