XIV
“Dark Clouds, Then Tall Grass”
The man collecting old wore out and crippled horses had come along and led him away. He had a little salt-grass pasture a short distance out of town, and there’s where he took the old horse. He turned him loose amongst a few more old horses, and would keep him there till the time come when some “chicken man” around town would need the carcass of one of the horses to feed to his chickens; then the horse what looked like it had the shortest to live would be killed and hauled away.
It didn’t look like the end was very far for the mouse colored horse. All the work he’d done and the interest he’d had while under the names of Smoky and The Cougar, had stopped being accounted for, and sort of pinched out under the name of Cloudy; and now he had no name. He was just “chicken feed,” and soon, if he stayed in that pasture, all what he’d been and done would be blotted out with the crack of a rifle shot.
But the old pony had no hint of that, and as it was he wasn’t for quitting as yet. His old stiff legs was still able to carry him around some, the doctoring he’d got at the stable had helped him more than what had been hoped, and then getting out in a pasture where he could keep moving around as he wanted to was helping him some more. Besides, his old heart was still strong, quite a bit solid meat was covering his ribs, and with the salt and wire grass to graze on he could still make out and mighty well.
A few weeks went by when once in a while and every few days, one of the old horses he was pasturing with was caught, led out, a rifle shot was heard, and he’d never be seen no more. Other old horses was brought in and they’d pasture on with him till one by one they’d also disappear only to be replaced by more of ’em.
The old mouse colored horse must of looked like he was good to live for a long time yet; anyway, the “chicken horse” man had kept him, maybe for emergency, and so he wouldn’t be out of horses if an order for one came; and that kind was hard to get.
Then one day, a man came, looked all the old horses over. And finally, like he’d decided, pointed a finger towards the horse that’d last been known as Cloudy. That pony was caught and led out the same way other horses had disappeared, but no rifle shot was heard. Instead, a lot of parleying went on.
Cloudy was led alongside of an old bony something that’d once been a horse. The old rack of bones was hooked onto a light wagon and seeming like hardly able to stand as the eyes of the two men went from him to Cloudy, to sort of figger out which of the two was worth the most, and how much the most.
Finally the dickering came to an end and seemed like agreeable to both parties. Three dollars to boot was handed, and the trade was made. The rack of bones was unhooked, the harness pulled off of him, and turned loose in the chicken horse pasture. Then Cloudy’s old heart missed a few beats as that same harness was picked up again and throwed over his own back.
As true a saddle horse, and once hard to set on, as the mouse colored horse had been, the feel of that harness on his back was as much the same as if a shovel or a hayfork had been handed to a cowpuncher with the idea of his using ’em. The old horse felt it a plain disgrace, and snorted as it was buckled around him to stay; but the black whiskered hombre that buckled it on never seemed to notice or care that the horse had no liking for the collar and all the straps.
He kept on a fastening the harness, and when that was done, he jerked the old pony around and backed him into the shafts of the same old wagon that the rack of bones had been unhooked out of. Cloudy kept on a snorting and looked on one side and then the other as the shafts of the wagon was raised. If only he could act the way his heart wanted him to; but he didn’t have the strength, the action to put in it, nor the energy no more. The most he could do was to snort, quiver, and shake his head.
But, as he was all hooked up and the man jumping in the wagon grabbed his whip, Old Cloudy done his best to try and get back to some of the life and tearing ability that’d once been his. He kicked a couple of times at the rattling thing on wheels and which he was fastened to, then he tried to buck some and finally wound up by wanting to run away; but the harness held and the rattling thing behind came right along wherever he went, and worse yet, he felt the stinging lash of the man’s whip as he fought on and tried to clear himself. Then the jerking of the bit thru his mouth, and with all that to show how useless his fighting and wanting to get away really was, the old pony soon lost heart. He finally settled down to a choppy lope, then a trot that was just as choppy, and at last to a walk.
Another sting of the whip was felt on his flank, and at the same time, the line was jerked at the bit, and Cloudy, still pulling the wagon, was made to turn up a lane. At
