The cowboy was for catching the horse right there and bring him in to the ranch. He wondered if Smoky could travel that far, but as the horse raised his head out of the hole in the snow where he’d been pawing for feed, and spotted the rider coming towards him, Clint was surprised to see so much strength and action. Smoky hadn’t recognized the cowboy, and before he’d took a second look, he’d hightailed it from there in a hurry.
Clint watched him and smiled as he seen that the horse wasn’t in near as bad a shape as he’d first thought.
“But I’m going to take you in just the same, you little son of a gun, for God knows what you’ll be like in a few weeks from now if this weather keeps up.”
He started on the trail Smoky and the other ponies had left, it was good and dark by then, but the trail in the deep snow was easy enough to follow. He wondered as he rode if he could get Smoky to stand long enough so as the horse would recognize him under all the disguise of his winter clothes, for at night specially he looked more like a bear than anything; then again, horses are spookier and harder to get near at that time. Clint had his doubts if he could catch him, and he figgered he’d most likely have to take the whole bunch along in order to get him to the ranch.
He was riding along on the trail and trying to get sight of the ponies, when to his left just a little ways, and out of the snow, came a faint beller. It sounded like a critter in trouble, and Clint stopped his horse. The beller came again, and he rode towards the sound. All curled up, shivering, and near covered with snow, a little bitty calf was found—couldn’t been over two days old, figgered the cowboy, and he wondered how the poor little cuss could still be alive.
“Where’s your mammy, Johnny?” says Clint as he got off his horse and came near the calf.
But the words was no more out of his mouth when a dark shadow appeared, and bellering, tried to get to the cowboy with her horns before he could get on his horse. In making his getaway, Clint noticed tracks of more cattle, and following ’em a ways, come acrost another cow and with another calf, only this second calf was older and more able to navigate.
“These two walleyed heifers must of been missed during last fall’s roundup,” Clint figgered, “and just as luck would have it they both have winter calves. Well, Smoky,” he says as he looked the direction the ponies had went, “I guess that leaves you out, this time.”
It was near noon the next day when Clint showed up at the ranch packing a little calf on the front of his saddle. He found Jeff by the big sheds where the cattle was sheltered and fed, and told him:
“I had to leave this little feller’s mammy out about ten miles. There’s another cow and young calf with ’er, and maybe you better send a man out after ’em before this storm that’s coming catches up with ’em. Me, I’m going to eat the whole hind leg off a beef and roll in between my soogans.”
The storm Clint had spoke of came sure enough, and seemed like to want to clean the earth of all that drawed a breath, the snow piled up and up till, as the cowboy remarked, “the fence posts around the ranch are only sticking up about an inch, and soon won’t be visible no more.”
That storm would of meant the death of all the cattle that was on the range, and most of the horses too, but as the tail of it came, a high wind sprung up, the snow drifted and piled high in the coulees, and at the same time took the depth of it down considerable wherever that wind hit. When it all finally quit raging, there was many patches where the grass was buried only by a few inches, and them patches the wind had cleared was what saved the lives of the range stock that winter.
Clint had worried about Smoky as the stormy weather came on; he’d tried time and time again to get to him, but always some helpless critter made him branch off and finally turn back. “Tomorrow,” Clint kept a saying, but the “Tomorrow” came and went and the cowboy, always a fretting, hadn’t got near Smoky’s range.
The great liking Clint had for the mouse colored horse made him fret and worry more than was necessary. That liking made him imagine a lot that was nowheres near true, and many a time that cowboy rolled in his bunk, tired, and wore out, and dreamed of seeing Smoky caught in a snow bank, weak, starving, and wolves drawing near.
Smoky had sure enough lost considerable fat, and his strength was reduced some too, but he was nowheres weak;—that is, not so weak that he couldn’t get up easy once he layed down, or be able to travel and rustle for his feed. The last big storm had took him down some more, but he was still able to plow thru the snow banks that’d gathered on the sides of the ridges, and get on the other side where the feed was easier reached.
If it didn’t snow too much more there was no danger for Smoky and the bunch he was with. Him and Pecos had got to know that range so well, they knowed where the best of shelter could be found when the winds was cold or the blizzard howled, and then again, they knowed of many ridges and where the snow was always the thinnest. They had a spot to fit in with or against whatever the weather
