"The reason I asked, is because the new stable boy I hired forgot to water him this morning, or he thought I did."
The grey haired man didn't get to ride Cloudy the next day, nor did anybody else, for that horse was hardly able to even get out of the stall; his legs was like so many sticks of wood and with no more bend in 'em than them same sticks have. His head hung near to the ground, and not a spear of the hay that'd been put in the manger had been touched.
The girl came to the stable that noon, and would of cried at the sight of him, only the stable man came up, and she held the tears back best as she could.
"Looks like he's done for," says that feller as he came up. He didn't ask the girl what she'd done, cause a look at the horse told him the whole story better than the girl could of, and as he figgered, a man has to take them chances when he's renting horses out that way, besides, the girl looked so downhearted about it that he didn't have the heart to do any more but try to cheer her up.
"I'll doctor him up the best I can, and maybe get him to come out of it a little."
The girl took hopes at them words, and her eyes a shining, asked:
"And can I come and help you?"
Every day from then on the time the girl had used a riding Cloudy was spent in the stable and by that horse. Liniments and medicines of all kinds was dug up and bought and used, and as the stable man watched her trying to do her best, he'd only shake his head. He knowed it was no use, and if the horse did come out of it, he'd never come out of it enough to ever be of any use as a saddle horse again.
The horse had been foundered.—The twenty-four hours without water, the hard run and sweating up, and then cooled off sudden in ice cold water, and drinking his fill of that same water, and all at once, had crippled him and stoved him up in a way where he'd be plum useless only maybe for slow work and hooked to a wagon.