That year as usual he was ready, and right on the dot, to take on some more of that kind of work. He’d hooked up the old mouse colored horse and taking a load of vegetables on the way in, stuck around town doing the different kinds of work the rodeo association had furnished him with. He’d be on the go all day and prodding the old horse into a trot, sometimes even if the wagon was loaded.
It’d be away into the night before he’d turn the tired horse towards home. Every day was a great day, for the man, there was so many people around to make the town lively; and being most of ’em was strangers, he could get to within talking distance of ’em easy enough, and a few would even stand to have him around for a few minutes at the time.
Them strangers had come to see the rodeo. Most of ’em was from other towns around, and mixed in the crowd once in a while could be seen the high-crowned hat of a cowboy who’d come to ride, rope, and bulldog. Then at the Casa Grande Hotel, and registered there, was many cattle buyers from the northern States.
They’d come to bid on the big herds of cattle that was being crowded acrost the border from Mexico; for Pancho Villa and the Yaquis was making it hard for the cattleman of that country. Villa took the cattle to feed his army, while the Yaquis run off whatever Villa overlooked; and the cowman that could, and had any stock left, soon seen where if he wanted to save anything of what he’d worked to accumulate, he’d have to rush whatever that was to the border and get it on American soil mighty quick.
That’s how come that the stockyards of the border towns was filled with cattle and that the hotels along them same towns was filled with cattle buyers. The Casa Grande Hotel was the most filled on account that along with the business of buying cattle, a little pleasure could be got there afterwards. A rodeo was in that town, and night celebrations; and being that them cattle buyers was still as much cowboys as ever, a good bucking contest and the fun afterwards couldn’t be overlooked, not if it could be helped. “Yep, the town was sure lively.”
Two of the buyers was setting in the lobby of the hotel one morning and a talking on the first day’s event of the rodeo. A telegraph pole stuck up right before their vision and on the edge of the sidewalk, and nailed to that pole was a poster advertising the rodeo, and with a photograph of a bucking horse in action on it, told all about “the great bucking horse and outlaw The Grey Cougar, the only one that could compare, in wickedness and bucking ability, to The Cougar, that once famous man killing horse.”
The two went on to talking about the rodeo, and naturally the talk drifted on about The Grey Cougar, and “how he could buck.”
“The boys tell me,” says one of the men, “that this Grey Cougar horse couldn’t hold a candle to the real Cougar when it come to bucking and fighting. According to that, the other horse must of been some wicked.”
The man was still talking on the subject, when an old mouse colored house, pulling an old wagon loaded down with vegetables, came to a stiff legged stop, and right by the telegraph pole on which the poster telling all about The Grey Cougar was nailed. The man in the lobby grinned a little at the sight of the old horse a standing there like in comparison with the famous grey outlaw, and pointing a finger in his direction, he remarked:
“There must be the Old Cougar right there, Clint. Anyway he’s got the same color.”
The man called Clint grinned some at the joke, but the grin soon faded away as he kept a looking at the old horse, and noticed the condition he was in. Then he seen the saddle marks that was all over the pony’s back, and he says:
“You can never tell, that old pony might of been mighty hard to set at one time too—but the way he looks like now, them times are sure done past and gone.”
“Yep,” agreed the other man, “it’s a miracle that pony can navigate at all—I wonder how it is that this Humane Society hombre that’s sticking around the rodeo grounds don’t happen to notice such as this. I’d like to help hang a feller for driving a horse like that around.”
The conversation was held up for a spell as the two men watched the bewhiskered man come out of the hotel with an empty basket and climbed the wagon on which the old mouse colored horse was hooked. He grabbed the lines and the whip both at the same time and went to work a putting the horse into a trot.
Clint was for getting up as he seen the whip land on the old pony’s hide, but the other man grabbed a hold of his arm and says:
“Never mind, old boy, most likely that Humane Society outfit’ll fall on the bolshevik’s neck before he gets very far.”
The man called Clint set down again, but he was boiling up inside, and he didn’t at all look pleasant as the conversation was resumed and noticed how his friend turned it to other things and away from the subject of old horses and such. He
