The last big storm had let up a few days before, and many fresh tracks covered the horse range, Clint trailed and trailed, he found and went thru many bunches of ponies, but no Smoky. Even the bunch that pony was running with when last seen had seemed to evaporate into thin air, and there Clint wondered. He wondered if somebody'd stole him and the bunch, but he put that off, figgering that no horse thief would steal horses packing as well known a brand as the Rocking R, unless he was a daggone fool, or a daggone good one. Anyway, as worried as Clint was, he felt some relieved in not finding the bunch Smoky had been with, for if he'd found them and no Smoky that'd been proof enough that the pony had went and died somewheres. The other ponies he'd seen that day still looked good and strong, and that was proof enough that Smoky must be the same.
"Most likely him and his bunch just drifted with that last storm and went back to their home range," Clint thought, as he headed his horse back for the ranch, but the hunch that was still with him didn't seem to agree with that thought none at all.
Two weeks later found the cowboy on the horse range once more, and making a bigger circle, but Smoky and his bunch still kept being amongst the missing. He told Old Tom about it as he got back to the ranch that night, but the old man didn't seem worried; he waved a hand as Clint said how he'd finally got to believe that the whole bunch had been stole.
"Don't worry," he says, "we'll find him and all the rest during horse round up."
Finally, spring broke up, the deep drifts started to melting and the creeks begin to raise, then after a while, and when the "hospital stuff"[2] had been turned out on the range a couple of weeks, riders begin stringing out towards the horse range and gathering the remuda. Clint lined out by himself and hit for the country where Smoky had been raised. He reached the camp where he'd started breaking him, and from there he rode, every morning with a fresh horse and running down every bunch of stock horses a hoping to get sight of the mouse colored gelding.
He rode for a week and seen every horse that was on that range, strays and all, and finally after he'd combed the whole country where Smoky had run as a colt, he rode back to the ranch, feeling disappointed but a hoping that the other riders had found him.
The remuda was in the big corrals, when he got there, all of it, excepting for the seventeen head which couldn't be found nowheres. Smoky was one of the seventeen.
There was a few more days riding, and then of a sudden Old Tom decided Clint had been right, the horses was sure enough stolen—. His big car hit only the high spots as the old man headed for town,—jack rabbits was passed by and left behind the same as if they'd been tied, and when he hit the main street he was doing seventy. He put on his brakes and passed the sheriff's office by half a block, but he left his car there, and hoofed on a high run all the way back.
That official was notified of the theft, and notified to notify other officials of the State and other States around, and Old Tom stuck close to see that that was done and mighty quick. A thousand dollars reward was offered for the thief, and the same reward for the return of the horses, naming one mouse colored saddle horse as special.
The spring round up went by, summer, and then the fall round up and the close of the season's work. Nothing of Smoky, nor any of the ponies he'd run with or the horse thief was heard of; it seemed like one and all had left the earth for good, and if what all Old Tom often wished on the thief could of come thru, that hombre would of sure found himself in a mighty hot place.