He'd take ten broncs at a time and soon as he'd took the rough off them ten he'd turn 'em over as broke and run in ten more raw, wild ponies. Each green colt was rode every day if even only for half an hour, and gradually learned to behave under the saddle. There was a few that wouldn't learn to behave, but the Rocking R outfit had good men and all them ponies was put in to their work whether they was good or bad.
Clint had been with the layout for near two years, and in that time had broke to ride somewheres around eighty head of horses. He'd broke many more for other outfits and never made an outlaw, if one did turn outlaw once in a while it was because of that pony's natural instinct to be that way, but Clint handled and rode 'em all just the same,—if a perticular horse couldn't be learned it sure wasn't his fault and none had better try to learn that same horse anything.
As has been said before, bronc fighting was beginning to tell on Clint,—none of them ponies he'd broke had spared him, and instead they'd called on for all that was in him. Many had tried to tear him apart and scatter him in the dust of the big corrals; hoofs had come like greased lightning and took hunks off his bat-wing chaps, teeth had took a few shirts off his back, and as he'd climbed on one after another of these wild, kinky ponies they most all tried to see if they could move the heart of him from one side of his body to the other.
There was many times when he was layed up with dislocated shoulders, ribs broke and legs the same. From the root of his hair to the toes in his made to order boots there was signs, if not seen they was felt, where some horse had twisted, broke, or shook something loose. Each happening had come more or less separate, and healed some in time, but as some kept a repeating off and on there was some parts of him which never got strong again, and as time went on and as Clint said, "he was beginning to feel loose like an old clock and figgered that some day some bucking hunk of horseflesh would take the tick out of him and scatter him out so that none of the parts would never be found again."
Clint had started riding rough ones long before he quit growing and that's the condition he was in at thirty, an old man, far as riding was concerned. The horses of the same big outfit he'd rode for was worked on the average of only four months in the year, and in them four months the broke horses was rode only four or five hours once every three days. That might show some of the difference in the work the cowboy and the cowhorse does with a real cow outfit.—The men go to pieces young and early and the ponies stay fat,—but there was no grudge for there's nobody in the world likes to see and ride a fat strong horse more than does the cowboy.
They'll keep the ponies fat and feeling good, and some of them horses find it hard to behave and will try to jar loose the eye teeth of their riders. The cowboy wants 'em that way tho',—it's a pride of his to have a kinky horse under him that's feeling good rather than some gentle old plug that's leg weary. That all gets him in time, but there's a grin on his face when that time comes, a grin from the pride of knowing that he never was seen on no horse that was against the principle of a cowboy to ride.
Like with Clint, horses was the life of him. He loved 'em for all he was worth and the greatest pleasure in the world for him was in just being with a corral full of 'em, handling 'em and feeling of their hides. The satisfaction he'd get out of seeing some four year old colt learn the things he'd teach meant a heap more to him than the wages he drawed for that work, and there was times as he'd be breaking some right brainy gelding and watch the horse pick up fast on the eddication he'd give him, when he'd feel real attached to the pony. He'd hate to give him up when the time came for all half broke horses to be turned over to the round up wagons and where more teaching in the handling of the critter begin.
"I feel sort of married to them kind of ponies," he'd say, "and I sure don't hanker to part with 'em just when we're beginning to get along good together, but," he'd go on "I guess as long as I'll be breaking horses this way I can't get too sensitive."
But Clint kept a being sensitive that way, and he never was happy when he'd see riders coming in on him and then ride away hazing a bunch of the broncs he'd "started." "Some day," he was heard to say once "I'm going to meet a horse I'll really get married to, and then there'll be things a popping."
Clint would have such a liking for some of them ponies that he'd forget and didn't want to think that they belonged to the company and not to him. He was just hired to break 'em. He'd reason that out often but that reasoning never fazed the hankering he felt and that's how come when he run in the mouse colored gelding he begin to do some tall figgering.