Smoky didn’t come, but he held his ground and listened to the talk. Clint talked on and watched him till the horse lost some of his wild look and then slow and easy started walking his way. Something and away in the past seemed to hold Smoky as the cowboy slowly came nearer and nearer. His instinct was all for him a leaving the spot he was holding, but that something which stuck in his memory was the stronger and sort of kept him there.
Clint came on a few steps at the time, and then stopped, and talking the while, took his time till he was within a few feet of Smoky. A little flaw of any kind right then in that human’s actions could of spoilt things easy and sent the pony a skeedaddling away from there in a hurry; but Clint knowed horses and specially Smoky too well to do anything of the kind. He knowed just what was going on between that pony’s ears, and how to agree with all that mixed in there.
Finally, Clint got to where by reaching out he could near of touched Smoky. Slow and easy the cowboy raised a hand and held it to within a few inches of the pony’s nose, Smoky looked at it and snorted, but pretty soon he stretched his neck and mighty careful took a sniff of the human paw. He snorted again and jerked his head away from it, but it wasn’t long when he took another sniff, then another and another, and each time the snort growed less to be heard, till at last, Smoky even allowed that paw to touch his nostrils, the fingers rubbed there easy for a spell and gradually went on a rubbing along his nose along on up to between his eyes and pretty soon between his ears to that knowledge bump. Five minutes afterwards Smoky was following the grinning cowboy all around the corral.
The roundup wagons, all cleaned and loaded, was ready to pull out, the remuda was all accounted for and each string pointed out to each rider, and Jeff giving the whole outfit another look over waved a hand, the pilot reined his horse into a bucking start, all took up his lead and thru the big gates of the home ranch, wagons, riders, remuda, and all lined out. The spring roundup had started.
Smoky broke the record for learning that year, and when the fall roundup was over and the saddle was pulled off him for the last time before being turned out on the winter range, there was two little white spots of white hair showed on each side of his withers and about the size of a dollar—saddle marks they was, and like medals for the good work he’d done. There was a knowing spark in his eyes for the critter too, for the little horse had got to savvy the cow near as well as the old cowhorses that’d been in the same remuda that year.
There was only one thing that could of been held against the good record of that pony, and that was his bucking;—he just had to have his little buck out every morning, and sometimes he bucked harder than other times—that all depended on how cold the weather was—but Clint didn’t seem to mind that at all. If anything he tried to preserve that bucking streak in the pony, and he was often heard to remark:
“A horse ain’t worth much unless that shows up some.”
But Clint had other reasons for keeping the “buck” in Smoky’s backbone.—Old Tom Jarvis, superintendent and part owner of the Rocking R, had joined the wagon for a few days that summer and wanted to see his cowboys work his cattle for a spell. Him being an old cowman, and from away back before cattle wore short horns, made all the working of a herd all the more interesting and to be criticized one way or the other. He was present steady on the cutting grounds, and so was Smoky one day.
Clint felt that the eyes of Old Tom was on Smoky the minute he rode him to the edge of the herd, and an uneasy feeling crawled up his backbone as he noticed that that Old Grizzly seemed to’ve lost his eyesight for anything else but his Smoky horse. Clint knowed Old Tom’s failing for a good horse, and he’d heard of how many a time that same failing had come near putting the cowman in jail for appropriating some horse he couldn’t buy;—of course them times was past, but the failing was still in the old man’s chest, and Smoky belonged to him.
The cowboy had started Smoky to cutting out, a work where all the good points of a cowhorse have a chance to show up, and Smoky sure wasn’t hiding any. Old Tom’s eyes was near popping out of his head as he watched the mouse colored gelding work, and finally, as Clint noticed all the interest, he figgered it a good idea to get out of the herd and hide Smoky somewheres before the old cowman came to him and suggested swapping horses. The cowboy was afraid he’d already showed too much of that horse, and as he come out of the herd he made a circle and took his stand away on the opposite side from where Old Tom was holding.
But Old Tom was controlling owner of that outfit and he could be any place he wanted to on that range any time. A steer broke out, Old Tom took after him, circled him around the herd, and when he put him back in and brought his horse to a standstill, there was only a short distance between him and the
