It was evening before the party, slouching all over their horses, returned to the stable. The stable man smiled, satisfied, as he noticed that the young feller, not at all mussed up, was still riding The Cougar. He'd been worried about letting that young feller have the horse, but everything was o. k. now and the folks seemed to've all enjoyed their ride considerable, and so well that they wanted the horses again for the next day.
"This is a very fine horse," says the young feller as he got off The Cougar. There was all about him that as much as went on to say, "Why certainly I can ride."
The stable man had seen many like him, and knowed exactly how well he could ride, but he was relieved in learning that The Cougar had behaved so well.
"And what's this horse's name?" asks the young feller.
For a minute the stable man done some tall thinking; if the horse's real name was given out, the young feller would sure swell up and bust in learning that he'd rode the famous outlaw nobody else had been able to ride for so long, and even tho the horse hadn't made a single jump with him, his "certainly" would get more conceited than ever. And then again, he maybe wouldn't want the horse any more. So after hesitating a while he finally came onto a new name for the horse.
"Cloudy, is that horse's name," he says.
That name sounded sort of pleasing all around, and it fitted the color of the pony mighty well, but then the good points for it would never loom up like the name of Smoky had in the cow country to the north, nor would it ever be mentioned about from state to state and give thrills just at the sound like the name of The Cougar had often done; but then again that horse wasn't the same no more,—he'd went from top cowhorse, to champion bucking horse and all around outlaw, only to fade away in a livery stable, and there for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to ride as they pleased. Cloudy, was just a livery plug.
As a raw bronc and then cowhorse, Smoky had been for learning all that could be learned. As The Cougar and outlaw, he'd been for killing and disfiguring every man that gave him the chance. There'd been something that called on him to do his best while on the Rocking R range, and there he went to the top as a cowhorse. Something else, and very different, had stirred his interest while in the arena of the rodeo grounds; he'd shined there as a fighting outlaw, and in a way that'd made all the others seem to be out of sight.
He'd had something big to work for, both on the range and in the arena, but now it seemed like as the big livery stable doors closed on him after his first day of use there, that the end of his string had come, he'd sort of felt it in a way, soon as the last car of the bucking horses he'd been with went and disappeared over the skyline. He hadn't tried to get away, or even snorted when the stable man came in the corral where he'd been left, and led him out.