The “pickup men” rode up to grab holt of the horse’s head and before the man was throwed; but they was just too late and in another second something happened that made everybody in the grandstand turn pale and hang on to each other. For the cowboy, still a fanning, was, by a wicked jolt, loosened from his saddle and headed for the ground. The Cougar reared up while the rider was still in the air, then turned, and with ears back, teeth a flashing, hoofs a striking with lightning speed, went to carry out his heart’s cravings.
The man was juggled up there for a second and then came down, the horse, like the cougar he was, right after him and to finish what he’d started.
It was then that Providence or something seemed to interfere; for as the rider came down and reached the earth he was on the other side of the fence, which kept him from being totally reduced to dust. But even with the fence separating, The Cougar wasn’t thru. There was a noise of splintering timbers as he tried to reach the cowboy, and it wasn’t till two ropes settled around his neck and pulled him away that it was what you’d call ended.
A few riders rushed up to find the cowboy setting up and shaking his head like a trying to get back amongst the living. Pretty soon he looked up at the men around him and a sort of vacant grin spread over his features; then he looked at his clothes, noticed his shirt was most tore off of him. He wrinkled his face as he moved his body and felt kinks along his ribs and back, and looked at his handmade rawhide chaps which showed marks where hard hoofs had connected. The sight of them made him grin again, and after a while he says:
“Daggone good thing I had these chaps on or I’d be setting here and going Adam one better.”
From that day on the freckle faced cowboy was, or tried to be, at every rodeo and near whatever chute The Cougar honored by his presence. He’d run up against a horse he couldn’t ride; it was hard to take and he couldn’t get it into his head how it was done. He’d never seen a horse he couldn’t ride before, but there was more and which all kept the cowboy to following the outlaw. The unnatural meanness of that pony had him guessing, and he sort of wanted to figger it out while a setting on top. There was a horse that not only called for skill and nerve, but the thinking ability of the pony was sure worth a trying to match.
Winters and springs and falls found him on the range and doing his work there, he was getting all kinds of good practice with his every day work, and when summers come he was always on the trail of The Cougar and with new hopes that he could go back to the range and tell his “majordomo” that he “rode him, slick and clean and to a standstill.”
For two summers he followed him, in that time, competing with other good riders; he’d had three chances at him and each time them chances wound up with him hitting the ground, and running as he hit.
“That horse sure means what he does,” he was heard to say to one of the riders one time, “and by golly that’s just what makes me keep after him.”
Three more long summers of rodeo work went by, and The Cougar kept on a challenging the world’s best riders. Another spring came, more rodeos was followed and where it was advertised that “The Cougar Will be Present.” The posters went on a telling how in five years’ time no rider had been able to set the horse till the gun was fired, and as the cowboys remarked, “That was one truthful statement.”
Smoky kept on a throwing men right and left that spring and on thru the summer. He kept his record and back clean that way till away along towards the fall, and then one day at the start of another rodeo, a cowboy from the Wyoming country, and who’d come south for the winter, happened to hear of the doings. A couple of days later that bronc fighter showed himself at the rodeo headquarters, and remarking how he’d heard of The Cougar, signed his name and entered on bronc riding.
He qualified and went thru the “tryouts” and “semifinals” like it all was so much play. The Cougar was a horse kept for the finals only, and that’s the pony the cowboy had been trying to reach; the others he’d had to ride had only been a means for him to get to The Cougar.
He’d easy won the right to ride that horse, and also the chance to win the thousand dollars that was up for any rider that could. He hung around the chute and mighty close the next afternoon. Soon the time would come for him to really try his ability; and while waiting he was using that time to seeing that the latigos and cinch had no weak spots, and would be able to stand the strain of staying around the middle of that Cougar horse.
Then the judges hollered out his name as the next rider out, and about that time the mouse colored outlaw peeked thru the bars of the chute at him and snorted. The rider whistled at the sight of the mean looking head,
