Clint watched him and smiled as he seen that the horse wasn't in near as bad a shape as he'd first thought. "But I'm going to take you in just the same, you little son of a gun, for God knows what you'll be like in a few weeks from now if this weather keeps up." He started on the trail Smoky and the other ponies had left, it was good and dark by then, but the trail in the deep snow was easy enough to follow. He wondered as he rode if he could get Smoky to stand long enough so as the horse would recognize him under all the disguise of his winter clothes, for at night specially he looked more like a bear than anything; then again, horses are spookier and harder to get near at that time, Clint had his doubts if he could catch him, and he figgered he'd most likely have to take the whole bunch along in order to get him to the ranch. He was riding along on the trail and trying to get sight of the ponies, when to his left just a little ways, and out of the snow came a faint beller; it sounded like a critter in trouble, and Clint stopped his horse, the beller came again, and he rode towards the sound.--All curled up, shivering, and near covered with snow, a little bitty calf was found,--couldn't been over two days old, figgered the cowboy, and he wondered how the poor little cuss could still be alive. "Where's your mammy, Johnny?" says Clint as he got off his horse and came near the calf. But the words was no more out of his mouth when a dark shadow appeared, and bellering, tried to get to the cowboy with her horns before he could get on his horse. In making his getaway, Clint noticed tracks of more cattle, and following 'em a ways, come acrost another cow and with another calf, only this second calf was older and more able to navigate. "These two wall-eyed heifers must of been missed during last fall's round up," Clint figgered, "and just as luck would have it they both have winter calves. Well, Smoky," he says as he looked the direction the ponies had went, "I guess that leaves you out, _this time_." It was near noon the next day when Clint showed up at the ranch packing a little calf on the front of his saddle. He found Jeff by the big sheds where the cattle was sheltered and fed, and told him: "I had to leave this little feller's mammy out about ten miles. There's another cow and young calf with 'er, and maybe you better send a man out after 'em before this storm that's coming catches up with 'em. Me, I'm going to eat the whole hind leg off a beef and roll in between my soogans." The storm Clint had spoke of came sure enough, and seemed like to want to clean the earth of all that drawed a breath, the snow piled up and up till, as the cowboy remarked, "the fence posts around the ranch are only sticking up about an inch, and soon wont be visible no more."