But Smoky was learning fast, and along with his own experiences he learned from his mother just what was what in the timber and on the flats;—like another time on the foothills, his mammy was in the lead and him following close behind on a hot dusty trail towards a shady spot. Of a sudden there was a rattling sound, and just as sudden his mammy left the trail as though she’d been shot. Instinct made Smoky do the same and none too soon, for on the left just a foot or so off the trail was a wriggling thing that’d just struck, and missed to reach his ankle by an inch.
Smoky stood off at a safe distance and snorted at it as it coiled up ready. Somehow he had no hankering to go stick his nose nowhere near or take a sniff at the grey and dirty yellow colored rattler, and when his mammy nickered for him to follow there was a warning in her nicker; he took another look at the snake. He’d remember, and do the same as his mother had done whenever the rattling sound would be heard again.
Taking in all, Smoky was getting mighty wise along with being mighty lucky in getting that wisdom. Scratches is about all he ever packed out of any scramble, and scratches didn’t count with him. His hide was getting tough and the blood that flowed in his veins wasn’t from a heart that’d peter out very easy.
The little horse was having a great time up in that high country, and if he’d seen more of life, he’d most likely wondered how long it all was going to last. It would of struck him as too good to last much longer, but as it was, Smoky took in all that life could give and enjoyed it to the limit. He never passed anything which had him wondering for fear of missing something. If a limb cracked anywheres within hearing distance he’d perk his ears towards the sound and seldom would go on till he found out just why that limb cracked that way. He’d follow and pester the badger till it’d hunt a hole; he’d circle around a tree and watch the bushy tailed squirrel as it’d climb up out of his reach. Skunks had crossed his trail too, but somehow, the atmosphere around ’em would sort of dampen his curiosity and he always kept his distance.
Smoky had met and had experiences with all the range country’s wild animals excepting the lion and the wolf. His mammy kept clear of the territory where them outlaws ranged, and if by scent the bunch suspicioned them two as neighbors, they’d drift, or else keep on the lookout till the others had drifted. Smoky met them too and had scrambles with ’em, but that came later in his life, and it’s a good thing it was later, for I most likely wouldn’t be telling about Smoky now.
The first big event of Smoky’s life came when he was four months old. There was nothing to tell him anything would happen, no dark skies nor ill winds to threaten or warn, and as it was, the little feller was just in the steady motion of keeping one end of himself clear of the few flies that was around. That short tail of his was working like a pendulum, he was standing up and asleep, the breeze blowed thru his mane, and that same breeze made a sort of lullaby as it passed thru the branches of the big pine that shaded him and his mammy.
His mammy was asleep too, and so was the rest of the bunch, and when the cowboy that was riding up the canyon spotted ’em he knowed he could get above ’em and be where he could start ’em down before any of the bunch would see him.
It was a mighty good thing he done that, for soon as one of the bunch got wind of him and raised a head, there was a snort, they came to life and was on the run in a split second. Down the side of the canyon they went, a cloud of dust and the cowboy following.
Smoky was right with the bunch from the start. He stampeded with the leader, and once in his life it never came to him to wonder what it was all about; he just run and plum forgot to investigate.
Tails was a popping as the horses slid off the mountain, jumped off ledges and sailed acrost washouts. Loosened rocks bumped against boulders, boulders crashed into dead hanging timber, and pretty soon a landslide brought up the rear; but even that was too slow. The ponies and the cowboy behind ’em hit the bottom of the canyon first, and when the slide reached that spot and filled the canyon with ten feet of boulders, timber, and dirt, the whole wild bunch was half a mile away and kicking up dust on the foothills at the edge of the flat.
It was away out on the flat and where the dust wasn’t so thick that Smoky took a back slant over his withers and got his first sight of the human. The way his mammy and the rest of the bunch acted, the way they run and tried to dodge or leave that human behind, sure put the impression in Smoky’s mind that here was a different kind of animal, the kind that no horse would stop to fight or argue with but instead run away from, if it was possible.
But it didn’t seem possible, for the rider was still right on their tails, and stayed there till he drove ’em into the long wings of big log corrals, which to Smoky seemed like trees growing sideways instead of up and down. But the little horse knowed that there was no going thru them trees. He stuck close as he could to his mammy’s side. She and the bunch milled
