Smoky, the cow horse

by Will James

What a surprise it would of been for the cowboys who knowed Cloudy when he was The Cougar, the man killer, to've seen him in the act of bumming a young lady for sugar that way, and what a surprise it would of been for that same young lady to've learned that not so very long ago that horse would of took her hand and snapped it off at the wrist if that hand had ever come to within reaching distance.

It would of been a surprise sure enough, and afterwards, she'd figgered the horse being mean that way would of been on account of rough treatment by some one,—she'd been right, even if that some one was only a scrub of a degenerate halfbreed and not fit to be classed amongst humans. Without him coming into the life of that pony there wouldn't of been no such a horse as The Cougar, and he'd still be known around to the northern country as Smoky, the best cowhorse that ever busted a critter.

But anyway, and whatever had been in the past of the horse that was now better known as Cloudy, didn't worry the young lady any. To her he was "the sweetest horse" she'd ever seen, and she kept a supplying him with sugar. If she knowed that lumps of sugar wasn't the best thing there is to feed to a horse, she'd filled her pockets with a handful or so of grain instead, or something that's more fitting to a horse's stomach that way, but she didn't know, and she sure meant well.

Fine warm spring days came, the kind of days when folks and animals alike hunt for a place where the sun shines the best. The last storm of the season had left, and as it went the last of Cloudy's rest had come to an end. That pony was rearing to go (as best as he could) when the young lady came and saddled him one bright afternoon, and as she'd been cooped up considerable herself, her spirits more than agreed with that of the horse.

Out of the stable old Cloudy went, his legs hardly feeling the stiffness that was in 'em, and seeming like his hoofs was more for flying and not at all for touching the ground. The old pony acted like he wanted to go so bad that the girl didn't have the heart to hold him back, besides the stable man had told her one time that it wouldn't hurt to let him run once in a while, if for a short ways, so, leaning ahead on her saddle, she let the horse go.

Cloudy et up the distance and brought up sudden changes of scenery as mile after mile was covered and left behind. With the warming up of the run, the stiffness went out of his legs, he felt near young again, and was taking the steep hills more like a four year old than the old stove up horse he was. Sweat begin a dripping from him, and as the gait was kept up, that sweat turned to a white lather.

His whole hide was soaked and steaming from the heat of his body, but he kept right on a wanting to go, and like the girl, the excitement of the run had got a holt of him till neither realized they was carrying a good thing too far. The girl's hair was flying in the breeze that was stirred, she'd lost her hat, but she wasn't caring. To be going and splitting up some more of that breeze had got to the girl's head, and cheeks flushed and a smiling she was sure getting a heap of joy out of just being alive and a going.

The trail followed along a stream and up a canyon; it kept a getting steeper and steeper, and the old horse begin to breathe harder and harder, till finally, his wide open nostrils couldn't take on enough air to do him no more. He had to slow down or else drop in his tracks, but Cloudy didn't slow down, and not a sign showed on him that he was wanting to. He was the kind of a horse that never quit and would keep right on a going till his heart stopped.

The girl, not at all realizing, kept a riding and enjoying the fast pace for all she was worth. She might of rode the old pony to his death that afternoon, only, the trail stopped and she couldn't follow it no further. It had washed out during the spring thaw, and a place ten feet wide and as deep had cut the trail in two.

She stopped there, and coming out of the trance the fast ride had put her in, she started looking for a place to cross, but there wasn't any, and the only way left was to go back on the trail she'd come.