It was about when Clint figgered he could do no more good in the way of sacking that he picked up his saddle again and came straight towards Smoky with it. The squeak of the riggin' brought some interest from the horse, but Clint was careful to bring the old blanket with him and keep a fanning the same as to let him know that one was no worse than the other.
In the first saddling of most broncs Clint generally tied up one of their hind legs so as to hinder 'em from kicking the saddle out of his hands and at the same time learn 'em to stand still while that went on;—a few of 'em he'd just hobble in front. And being that Smoky'd had more teaching than the average colt generally gets before first saddling, Clint figgered that just hobbling his front feet would do.
The sacking had helped a lot and Clint had no trouble fastening the rawhide hobbles around Smoky's ankles, the pony snorted at him a little but stood still, for Clint was waving that blanket around as he worked. Once the hobbles was on he picked up his saddle and eased it up and on that pony's back. Smoky had a hunch that something new was going on, something different than the sacking performance which he'd just went thru; but as nothing happened outside of the flapping of stirrup leathers and cinches he stood in one spot, only a quiver in the muscles along his shoulder showed how much alive he was, and how quick he could leave the earth if anything "goosed" him.
Plenty of practice had made Clint past master at putting a saddle on a green colt, nothing happened to make Smoky want to move out of his tracks, and even when the cinch was reached for and drawed up under his belly he never batted an eye. The sacking had all been a mighty fine preliminary for all this that followed and cured the horse from scaring at everything that flapped on or around him.
As it was Smoky hardly realized that he was saddled till Clint took the hobbles off his front feet and pulled him to one side. At that pull he felt something fastened to him and hanging on, that was a new kind of feeling to Smoky and it kettled him, down went his head and he lit in to bucking.
Clint had expected that, for no bronc likes the feel of the cinch no matter how loose it might be, and when Smoky bogged his head that way he was ready,—he let the hackamore rope slide thru his hands for a ways and till he could get a good footing, then he give that rope a little flip and set down on it. That done the trick and it come daggone near upsetting the little horse, but Clint let out just enough slack and that saved him. He didn't want to throw the horse but then he didn't want to have that horse buck with an empty saddle either.
"Now Smoky," says that cowboy as the horse jerked to his senses, turned and faced him, "I don't want you to waste any of your energy that way, if you want to do any bucking you just wait till I get in the middle of you."
Smoky waited, but it wasn't thru the talk the cowboy had handed him that he did wait; it was that he remembered how that rope had upset him that first day he was picketed to the log outside the corral, and he wasn't hankering to be "busted" that way again.
There's folks that's read some on how horses are broke on the range, and from that reading they get the idea that the cowboy breaks the horses' spirit, that it's the only way a wild horse can be tamed. What I've got to say on the subject if that's what's believed, is that either them folks read something that's mighty wrong, or else they got the wrong impression and misunderstood what they read, and breaking a horse the way he's broke on the range is about the same on the animal as schooling is to the human youngster. The spirit of the wild horse is the same after years of riding as it was before he ever felt a rope, and there's no human in the world wants to preserve that spirit in the horse like the cowboy does;—he's the one what knows better than anybody else that a horse with a broken spirit is no horse at all.