The round up wagons, all cleaned and loaded, was ready to pull out, the remuda was all accounted for and each string pointed out to each rider, and Jeff giving the whole outfit another look over waved a hand, the pilot reined his horse into a bucking start, all took up his lead and thru the big gates of the home ranch, wagons, riders, remuda, and all lined out. The spring round up had started.
Smoky broke the record for learning that year, and when the fall round up was over and the saddle was pulled off him for the last time before being turned out on the winter range, there was two little white spots of white hair showed on each side of his withers and about the size of a dollar,—saddle marks they was, and like medals for the good work he'd done. There was a knowing spark in his eyes for the critter too, for the little horse had got to savvy the cow near as well as the old cowhorses that'd been in the same remuda that year.
There was only one thing that could of been held against the good record of that pony, and that was his bucking;—he just had to have his little buck out every morning, and sometimes he bucked harder than other times—that all depended on how cold the weather was—but Clint didn't seem to mind that at all. If anything he tried to preserve that bucking streak in the pony, and he was often heard to remark:
"A horse aint worth much unless that shows up some."
But Clint had other reasons for keeping the "buck" in Smoky's backbone.—Old Tom Jarvis, superintendent and part owner of the Rocking R had joined the wagon for a few days that summer and wanted to see his cowboys work his cattle for a spell. Him being an old cowman and from away back before cattle wore short horns made all the working of a herd all the more interesting and to be criticized one way or the other. He was present steady on the cutting grounds, and so was Smoky one day.
Clint felt that the eyes of Old Tom was on Smoky the minute he rode him to the edge of the herd, and an uneasy feeling crawled up his backbone as he noticed that that Old Grizzly seemed to've lost his eyesight for anything else but his Smoky horse. Clint knowed Old Tom's failing for a good horse, and he'd heard of how many a time that same failing had come near putting the cowman in jail for appropriating some horse he couldn't buy;—of course them times was past, but the failing was still in the old man's chest, and Smoky belonged to him.
The cowboy had started Smoky to cutting out, a work where all the good points of a cowhorse have a chance to show up, and Smoky sure wasn't hiding any. Old Tom's eyes was near popping out of his head as he watched the mouse colored gelding work, and finally, as Clint noticed all the interest, he figgered it a good idea to get out of the herd and hide Smoky somewheres before the old cowman came to him and suggested swapping horses; the cowboy was afraid he'd already showed too much of that horse, and as he come out of the herd he made a circle and took his stand away on the opposite side from where Old Tom was holding.
But Old Tom was controlling owner of that outfit and he could be any place he wanted to on that range any time. A steer broke out, Old Tom took after him, circled him around the herd, and when he put him back in and brought his horse to a standstill, there was only a short distance between him and the horse he'd had his eye on.
Clint was scared and he cussed a little. He tried to keep Smoky down whenever a critter broke out that needed turning, and even tried to let a couple of 'em get away, but he couldn't do it without making it too plain to see, and besides, Smoky had ideas of his own about handling them critters.