“It was all on account of a fool cow,” starts Clint, “she’d showed signs of wanting to leave the country soon as she seen me riding up on her, and being she was good and fast, I figgered it’d be a good time to line Smoky out after her and let him turn ’er over a few times. I throwed my rope but the loop didn’t land good, it just sorta sailed in front of her, and she stepped in it. About that time I jerked up my slack and I jerked it too hard. Down went the critter all in a heap and sudden, so sudden that with the speed Smoky was going he couldn’t stop in time, and first thing we knowed we both was straddle the critter.
“But she didn’t stay down long, she got up just at the wrong time and just right to yank Smoky’s front feet from under him, raise him up in the air with me on top, and just turned us a couple of somersets before we landed on the other side.
“I didn’t know much more after that, till now, I just sorta felt a weight on my back, and that was all. Maybe I got under Smoky somehow as we fell, but I think it’s that fool cow that stepped on me and separated me from my thoughts.
“I’ll most likely be all right in a few days, but I recognize this ailing. I got hurt a few years ago from an ornery black horse I was breaking for the Three C’s, and being that I don’t want this ailing to come back with me to stay, I figger I better quit riding rough ones. There’s other parts of me that’s hankering for me to quit too, and if you’ll let me join the boys at the wagon, I’m mighty willing that somebody else gets my job here.”
Clint was quiet for a spell, and then pretty soon he goes on, “But there’s one favor I want to ask, Jeff, if you’ll let me stay with the outfit, I want to ask that you let me keep Smoky in my string and as long as I’m with the company.”
What the cowboy had just said come from what he’d figgered, thought out, and worried on, ever since he’d first set eyes on Smoky. Clint liked all horses, maybe a little too much, but even at that he liked Smoky still more. The fear that somebody else would lay claim to the horse’d had him doing some tall thinking. He knowed that as long as he was breaking horses his work would come with raw broncs only and all half broke horses would be took away from him as fast as he’d turn ’em out. Smoky would had to go too.
And that’s where the hitch came. He figgered he’d have to quit breaking horses and go to riding the range, and take the big chance that the horse might be took away from him even then. He’d noticed how Jeff had stood, watched, and admired Smoky; and if signs of a human wanting anything right bad ever showed, there was never no signs more visible than Clint had seen on Jeff’s features when the horse was in sight.
There’d been only one way out for the cowboy, and he’d took it.—There was a worried look on his face as he glanced at the foreman and waited for him to answer, but Jeff didn’t seem to want to answer right then, and instead he asked:
“How long have you had that horse up, Clint?”
“Two months and maybe a little over,” says Clint, wondering some at the question.
“Wasn’t there a couple of boys here about a month ago to get all the broncs you’d started?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, why didn’t you let ’em have that horse Smoky? He was as well broke then as any of the broncs the boys came after, wasn’t he?”
Clint begin to take interest in looking at the wall of the bunk house about that time. He grinned a little, and finally he answered:
“Well, Jeff, I guess you know why.”
Jeff did know why, and knowed it a plenty. What he’d seen going on between Smoky and the cowboy the day before and that morning had already answered why Clint had hid the horse when the boys came to haze away the broncs he’d “started.” The foreman grinned back at the layed up rider and placed a hand on his shoulder, the same as to say that he understood.
“As long as I’m with this outfit,” he says, “and which from all indications will be a long time, you’re mighty welcome to join the wagon as one of my riders. You’ll be getting ‘top-hand’ wages too, Clint, the best string of ponies I can put together; and as for Smoky, why—I sure would like that horse.”
Clint’s heart fluttered up his throat and came near choking him—“Yep! I’d sure like to have him” went on the foreman “but after thinking it all over, I figger that horse really belongs to you more than he does to the company or me. He’s a one man horse and you’re the one man, Clint, and even if the horse took a liking to me, which I know won’t happen, I’ll sure never want to take him away from you—not after what I’ve seen.”
Clint had underfiggered considerable when he’d said how he thought he’d be all right again in a few days. A week passed and very little strength had gathered from his hips up. His back felt as broke, and he had no power to straighten up again once he’d stoop. He couldn’t even pick up a spur.
A new rider came one day and took up Clint’s work where he’d left it. From that time on Clint hung around the corrals a talking and watching the new “hand” ride, and when he wasn’t by the corrals, he could be seen in the shade of the big willows in the creek bottom where Smoky was
