The first thing that came to her was to try and cool him off before, as she figgered, he fainted from being overheated. She tore at the saddle and worked at the latigos till it was loosened, then she pulled it off and with the blanket throwed it to the ground. Steam raised off the pony’s back, and at the sight of that the girl got excited all the more. Then she spotted the mountain stream below and just a little ways.
She led the horse careful and over to it, and then, thinking steady of quick ways to cool the horse off, she figgered it a good idea to lead him in the water and where it was the deepest. She skipped from boulder to boulder till finally a place was found where the water came up above the pony’s knees, and there she let him stand, while with her cupped hands she splashed the cold snow water on his chest, shoulders, and back.
A half an hour or so of that, and the horse at last quit quivering, showed signs that he was cooled off and got his breath all OK again. After a while he drank, and then drank some more, and the girl watching him felt sure that the worst was over and that the horse was saved. She smiled, petted him on the neck, and felt relieved at the natural way he’d got to acting again.
The sun was hitting for the tall peaks to the west when the girl finally decided Cloudy was all right again and fit to start back. He was good and dry by then and felt cool; she’d kept him in the shade all the while, and being that mountain shade is not at all warm at that time of the year, the old pony was near shivering from the cold by the time the girl led him back to the saddle and put it on him again.
The ride back to the stable was like a funeral march as compared with the one starting out. The horse was kept on a slow walk all the way, and every care was taken by the girl so that only the easiest trail was followed. She worried as she rode along and noticed that the horse didn’t seem to be the same as before; his step wasn’t so sure and he’d stumble when there was nothing on the ground for him to stumble on, and then he’d sway like he was weak.
It was away after dark when finally the stable was reached, the stable man was there and waiting, and greeting the young lady with a smile he asked:
“Did you water Cloudy before you left?”
“No,” says the girl, “but I watered him on the mountain where I turned to come back.”
“The reason I asked, is because the new stable boy I hired forgot to water him this morning, or he thought I did.”
The gray haired man didn’t get to ride Cloudy the next day, nor did anybody else, for that horse was hardly able to even get out of the stall; his legs was like so many sticks of wood and with no more bend in ’em than them same sticks have. His head hung near to the ground, and not a spear of the hay that’d been put in the manger had been touched.
The girl came to the stable that noon, and would of cried at the sight of him, only the stable man came up, and she held the tears back best as she could.
“Looks like he’s done for,” says that feller as he came up. He didn’t ask the girl what she’d done, cause a look at the horse told him the whole story better than the girl could of; and as he figgered, a man has to take them chances when he’s renting horses out that way. Besides, the girl looked so downhearted about it that he didn’t have the heart to do any more but try to cheer her up.
“I’ll doctor him up the best I can, and maybe get him to come out of it a little.”
The girl took hopes at them words, and her eyes a shining, asked:
“And can I come and help you?”
Every day from then on the time the girl had used a riding Cloudy was spent in the stable and by that horse. Liniments and medicines of all kinds was dug up and bought and used, and as the stable man watched her trying to do her best, he’d only shake his head. He knowed it was no use, and if the horse did come out of it, he’d never come out of it enough to ever be of any use as a saddle horse again.
The horse had been foundered.—The twenty-four hours without water, the hard run and sweating up, and then cooled off sudden in ice cold water, and drinking his fill of that same water, and all at once, had crippled him and stoved him up in a way where he’d be plum useless, only maybe for slow work and hooked to a wagon.
A month went by, and the doctoring went on, the girl always a hoping; and then one day she came to the stable to find the horse gone. She hunted up the stable man and finally, after a lot of running around, found him up in the hay loft.
“I figgered,” says that feller on finding himself cornered, “that it’d be best to turn him loose. There’s good range up north a ways and thinking it’d do him more good to be loose that way on good feed, I just took him up there.”
But there was no good range in that country, not for many miles. The stable man had lied to save the girl’s feelings. And instead, realizing that he couldn’t turn the horse loose only maybe to let him starve, and being he couldn’t afford to keep and feed a useless horse, there’d
