Clint laughed, but the laugh wasn’t of the kind that comes from a joke.
“What’s the matter, little horse?”
But Clint knowed what was the matter, he could hear the thump thump of Smoky’s heart as he came nearer, and feel the throb of it as he layed a hand on his neck. He rubbed on the slick hide a spell, and that cowboy experienced a mighty great feeling when he noticed as he stayed, that gradually the pony’s heart beats begin to slow down and soon was behaving normal again.
Smoky watched the cowboy leave him to go to where his saddle was laying on the ground out a ways. He watched him put the saddle on the strange horse, and when Clint came back leading the horse and finished saddling by Smoky, that pony nipped at the cowboy’s chap’ leg the same as to say “Stick around a spell.”
Clint did stick around for a spell. He wasted a lot of good company time fooling with the latigos and seeing that his rope was coiled up neat, and even though he knowed that as a good cowboy he should been helping tearing down camp, he stuck by the corral and Smoky till the last rider had caught, saddled, and rode his horse away. The remuda was let out then, the wrangler circled the bunch and started grazing ’em till the wagons started again for that night’s grounds.
Smoky was hazed along and lost in the big horse herd, Clint watched him and when he couldn’t see him no more started coiling up the big cable, which was the rope corral used on open range, and with the help of another rider put it in one of the wagons where it’d be easy reached again.
It’d been less than an hour since the cook had stopped his team and jumped off the wagon to cook the cowboys’ noon bait, and now he was up on the wagon again and waiting there for the boys to finish hooking up his team and hand him the “ribbons.” Soon enough that was done, the pilot started and the cook warhooped his broncs into a running start, the bed wagon, loaded down with twenty some odd “Montana Rolls,” took up the swing, and the wood wagon tagged along behind. Then came the remuda of over two hundred saddle horses and hazing ’em was the “Wrangatang” (day wrangler).
The first “circle” of the fall roundup was on that afternoon. The circle starts from wherever the roundup wagon might be. The roundup wagon of most countries is composed of three wagons, one for “chuck” and pots and the cook, another for the riders’ bedding which is rolled in big canvas tarpaulins. It takes quite some bedding for twenty or more men, specially in countries where it’s apt to snow in the middle of June. The third wagon is for wood and water and which is used in prairie countries where there’s neither wood or water to be found for a ways.
The cook drives his chuck wagon, the “flunky” (cook’s helper) drives the bed wagon, and the “nighthawk” (rider who herds the remuda at night) drives the wood wagon. Them three wagons which is called “The Wagon” is the cowboys’ home while on the range. It carries his grub, his “war bag” (bag of clothes), his bedding, and strips of rawhide which he salts down and sometimes cuts into strings and braids things like “bosals” (nose bands) or such.
“The Wagon” moves camp most every day, and sometimes twice and three times a day; all depends on how quick the country is “worked.” The “circle” starts from “The Wagon.” The twenty or more riders and the cow foreman ride straight to some point for ten or fifteen miles. On top of some butte the bunch stops, then the cow foreman “scatters the riders.” He’ll send ’em in pairs to the right, left, and straight ahead and spread ’em fan shape to a certain point where they turn, or where there’s no more cattle to be seen, and they’ll head back towards the wagon again, bringing with ’em all the cattle that’s seen in the ride.
That’s what’s called a “circle.” It averages twenty-five miles and ends at the wagon where all the riders meet again each bringing with ’em whatever cattle was found. The wagon might of moved and a new camp set up while the boys was out on “circle,” but wherever the wagon is that’s where the “circle” ends. To one side of the camp a mile or so is the “cutting grounds” where the herd is “worked,” the spot where all the cattle is brought to from that one “circle” and held there for branding, and cutting out whatever is not wanted. Two “circles” are made a day.
Soon as Jeff, the cow foreman, seen the wagons lining out in good shape for that night’s camp, he put his horse in a high lope and looking back at the boys that was doing their best in putting up a ride on the sun-fishing ponies, he grinned as he seen that all stuck on and fanned, and felt mighty proud of being the cow boss of such a bunch of riders.
Clint was riding a big “apelusa” called Chapo, and one of the best circle horses the outfit had, but he wasn’t appreciating him much just then. And as he rode along leaving the wagons and remuda to his left his eyes was a whole lot on the dust that remuda made, and a trying to get a glimpse of a mouse colored piece of horseflesh which he’d called Smoky.
But Smoky was getting along fine as he trotted and loped along on the trail of the wagons. He’d no more than left Clint by the rope corral when he run acrost that brother of his again and after the two nickered “howdedos” at one another they trailed
