Smoky nickered again and loped back to the bunch. He'd come to feel that it didn't matter so much which range he wintered on, he was a big horse now, and a few ridges to the north or south of that range he was raised in didn't make much difference.—An old mare had took the lead and from then on Smoky just followed side by side with the buckskin. A little colt nipped him in the flanks, and all was well.
CHAPTER IV
THE END OF A ROPE
Snow layed heavy on the range that winter, grass was hard to get at, and the little bunch of ponies that tracked the low hills which raised up on the prairies was finding themselves doing a lot of rustling and pawing, and getting very little feed. Bunches of cattle followed 'em wherever they went and rooted with their nose for the few blades of dry grass them horses had pawed the snow off of and left.
Hay couldn't be bought that winter and the stockmen found themselves where they had to take a chance and pull their cattle thru with whatever little hay the dry summer before could let 'em have. Cattle had been in fine shape that fall, but as the snow kept a piling and a drifting and covering up the feed the tallow kept a dwindling away from under the critters' hides and lean ribs begin to show more and more thru the long winter hair.
Then came a time as the blizzards blowed and regardless of what all the stockmen done (which was to the limit of what any human can do) when mounds of white begin to show here and there in that part of the range. Underneath them white mounds was the dead carcass of a critter. Some was dug up by the varmints, cayotes was licking their chops, and to make things worse, there appeared three big grey wolves on the skyline one day.
Smoky and the big buckskin horse was the first to see the wolves. Their ears was towards 'em as the three outlaws of the range trotted along and then stopped to look at the horses.
Smoky had never seen a wolf before, but the big old buckskin had seen too many of 'em and had scars to show for his meetings with the kind. He let a loud snort at the sight of the three grey shapes and from that Smoky got a hunch that these was more to be reckoned with than the cayotes he'd chased when he was a yearling. He had a hankering to go and give them a chase too, but the nervous way the buckskin was acting kinda warned him that it'd be best for him to stick with the bunch.
The weak and dying cattle is what had really drawed the wolves, of course they would just as soon tackle a strong animal as a weak one but the scent that scattered over the range from the dead stock and which would reach no less sensitive a nose than theirs was a lot to their liking, and they'd just drifted in to investigate.
It was below them to touch any of the carcasses they'd passed, for these was old wolves well up to the game of killing, and nothing but fresh meat would do. A good fat yearling or two year old colt is what came highest and most to their tastes, and when they skirted that ridge and spotted that little bunch of ponies in the draw below, it was the sight of them that reminded their appetites how long ago it was since they'd et last, and they'd traveled a long ways.