Smoky the Cowhorse

It seemed like Mother Nature was sure agreeable that day when the little black colt came to the range world and tried to get a footing with his long wobblety legs on the brown prairie sod. Short stems of new green grass was trying to make their way up thru the last year’s faded growth, and reaching for the sun’s warm rays. Taking in all that could be seen, felt, and inhaled, there was no day, time, nor place that could beat that spring morning on the sunny side of the low prairie butte where Smoky the colt was foaled.

“Smoky” wouldn’t have fitted the colt as a name just then on account he was jet black, but that name wasn’t attached onto him till he was a four-year-old, which was when he first started being useful as a saddle horse. He didn’t see the first light of day thru no box stall window, and there was no human around to make a fuss over him and try to steady him on his feet for them first few steps. Smoky was just a little range colt, and all the company he had that first morning of his life was his watchful mammy.

But there was other things and more threatening than stumps which Smoky hadn’t as yet spotted, like for instance⁠—a big cayote had squatted and been watching him thru dead willow branches. He wasn’t at all interested in the action Smoky was putting into his play, and only wished the colt’s mammy would move away a little further when he would then take a chance and try to get him down⁠—colt meat was his favorite dish and he sure wasn’t going to let no chance slip by even if it took a whole day’s waiting for one to show itself.

A couple of chances had come his way but they was queered by Smoky’s mammy being too close, and he knowed better than show himself and get run down by them hoofs of hers. Finally, and when he seen his appetite wouldn’t win anything by sticking around that spot any longer, he took a last sniff and came out of his hiding place. Keeping the willows between him and the horses, he loped out till he was at a safe running distance and where he could see all around him, and there he squatted again, in plain sight this time. He hadn’t quite made up his mind as yet whether to go or stick around a while longer.⁠—Just about then Smoky spots him.

The first big event of Smoky’s life came when he was four months old. There was nothing to tell him anything would happen, no dark skies nor ill winds to threaten or warn, and as it was, the little feller was just in the steady motion of keeping one end of himself clear of the few flies that was around. That short tail of his was working like a pendulum, he was standing up and asleep, the breeze blowed thru his mane, and that same breeze made a sort of lullaby as it passed thru the branches of the big pine that shaded him and his mammy.

His mammy was asleep too, and so was the rest of the bunch, and when the cowboy that was riding up the canyon spotted ’em he knowed he could get above ’em and be where he could start ’em down before any of the bunch would see him.

It was a mighty good thing he done that, for soon as one of the bunch got wind of him and raised a head, there was a snort, they came to life and was on the run in a split second. Down the side of the canyon they went, a cloud of dust and the cowboy following.

It was a hot day, not a breath stirred the air; and as the old cowman rode he lifted his hat often to kinda let a fresh supply of atmosphere come in underneath. His big brown horse was covering ground in a running walk, and Jeff keeping him down to that gate wasn’t passing a coulee nor a draw without a glance in it and then to the skyline above. It was his habit as a cowman to keep his eyes on the job while riding, and for the good of the company or his own, nary a thing had ever escaped his vision unless it was just too far for that vision to reach.

It was as he was riding along natural that way, that he noticed a thin streak of dust to the right of him quite a ways; that dust wasn’t made by anything traveling fast, and even though it reached up in the air good and high Jeff could see at a glance that the dust was stirred by something dragging.

He stopped his horse so as to get a steadier view, and pretty soon he could make out the shape of a horse underneath that dust; something that looked like a turned pack was fastened or hanging on to him and dragging alongside.

“A good long ride’ll fix you,” says the breed one morning as he drug his saddle near the corral chute. “And I’ve got a hell of a long one ahead for you today.”

Smoky was prodded into the chute with a long pole, and saddled where he couldn’t move. Then the breed climbed in the saddle, opened the chute gate and started the horse out on a long run.

Ten miles of country was covered which Smoky didn’t see; his instinct made him dodge badger holes and jump washouts, and his eyes and ears was steady back and on the human he was packing, if he could only reach with his teeth and get him down.

The breed’s spurs kept a gouging him, and along with the quirt a pounding, Smoky was kept into a high lope. With that kind of tattoo being played on him the pony gradually begin to warm up and getting peeved. It wouldn’t be long, if that gait was kept up, when he’d be reaching the boiling point, and then get desperate.

A steep bank was reached by the edge of a creek, and there Smoky sorta hesitated a second. His ears and eyes was pointed ahead for that second and looking for a place where the going down wouldn’t be so sudden; when the breed, always looking for some reason to deal the horse misery, put the steel and layed the quirt to him at once.