Anywheres, and in any line, very little respect is ever showed for a "has been." If The Cougar had fought and tore things up as he'd once had, all would of been hunkydory, and the crowd would all been satisfied, but the horse had come to the end of his fighting streak. Not a jump was left in him, for the Smoky heart had growed over and smothered the heart that'd been The Cougar's. He was a "has been" and only willing to be the plain behaving Smoky again.
The crowd was disappointed, they felt they wasn't getting their money's worth, and there was hollers of "take him away and hook him up on a milk wagon," or "sell him for a lady's saddle horse," and so on.—It was queer, but only natural, to notice that them loud mouth remarks was passed only by the most useless, and of the kind that's plum helpless whenever away from their home grounds. Others hollered more to kind of show off, but the looks they'd get from the sensible folks around only went to prove that the show off was of just plain ignorance.
The cowboy rode The Cougar till the other side of the grounds was reached. There he stopped him and climbed off, and hearing the hurrahs from the grandstand, he touched the horse on the neck and says:
"Never mind, old horse, you've done yours—and I'd liked mighty well if I could of turned you loose amongst that bunch that's making all that noise up there, and watch 'em scatter,—but you're not fighting any more."
The rodeo was on its last day, the prizes was handed out that night, and the next morning the bucking horses was loaded in the stock cars on the way for some other town where another rodeo was going to be pulled off. In them box cars there was one place where The Cougar had stood while on the road, but this time, and in that same place was a grey horse who snorted as the train begin to move—The Cougar had been left behind, and from the inside of the stock yards watched the train pull out of sight.
CHAPTER XIII
"A MANY-MEN HORSE"
The Cougar being he was useless for rodeo purposes, had been sold to the livery stable man for twenty-five dollars.
It was figgered that at least twenty-five dollars worth of use would be got out of him there,—the horse was fat and strong looking, could be broke to harness, and made to do his share with any of the six and eight horse teams which was kept on the road acrost the deserts as freight teams.