"Well then, why didn't you let 'em have that horse Smoky, he was as well broke then as any of the broncs the boys came after, wasn't he?"
Clint begin to take interest in looking at the wall of the bunk house about that time. He grinned a little, and finally he answered:
"Well, Jeff, I guess you know why."
Jeff did know why, and knowed it a plenty. What he'd seen going on between Smoky and the cowboy the day before and that morning had already answered why Clint had hid the horse when the boys came to haze away the broncs he'd "started." The foreman grinned back at the layed up rider and placed a hand on his shoulder, the same as to say that he understood.
"As long as I'm with this outfit," he says, "and which from all indications will be a long time, you're mighty welcome to join the wagon as one of my riders. You'll be getting 'top-hand' wages too, Clint, the best string of ponies I can put together, and as for Smoky, why—I sure would like that horse."
Clint's heart fluttered up his throat and came near choking him—"Yep! I'd sure like to have him," went on the foreman "but, after thinking it all over, I figger that horse really belongs to you more than he does to the company or me. He's a one man horse and you're the one man, Clint, and even if the horse took a liking to me, which I know wont happen, I'll sure never want to take him away from you—not after what I've seen."
Clint had underfiggered considerable when he'd said how he thought he'd be all right again in a few days. A week passed and very little strength had gathered from his hips up, his back felt as broke, and he had no power to straighten up again once he'd stoop, he couldn't even pick up a spur.
A new rider came one day and took up Clint's work where he'd left it. From that time on Clint hung around the corrals a talking and watching the new "hand" ride, and when he wasn't by the corrals, he could be seen in the shade of the big willows in the creek bottom where Smoky was picketed.
Clint had looked at Smoky in a new way since Jeff had come and left. The visit of the old cowboy had brought out things in that little horse which Clint hadn't dreamed of ever being in any horse. He'd been mighty surprised, and then sort of proud that he could raise such a feeling in the gelding—The horse was good as his too,—that put the cap on his worries of losing him, and all was well.