Clint often thought of his little place up in the heart of the cow country to the north. He could picture his own cattle ranging there and packing a brand of his on their slick hides,--he'd a long time hoped for the likes, and at last he was getting it. A couple more days now, and he'd be heading north again, and there to stay, this time. * * * * * The last day of the rodeo had come, and Clint was to start with his train load of stock that night. Him and his friend was setting in the lobby of the hotel that evening a talking and wondering when they'd be seeing one another again, when outside and by the telegraph pole, came the same old mouse colored horse and stopped not an inch from where the two men had seen him a couple of days before. Both was quick to spot him again this time, and right then, for some reason or other the conversation died down. The first sight of that old pony hadn't been forgot, and when he showed up this second time, right before their eyes, he was like reminding 'em, and natural like, set the two men to thinking. That old shadow of a horse told some of the hard knocks of life, of things that was past and gone and which could of been bettered while the bettering could be done. It was while the thinking was going on that way, that Clint sort of felt a faint, far away something a knocking and from down the bottom of his think tank. That something was trying hard to come back to life as that man's eyes kept a going over the pony's blazed face and bony frame, but it was buried so far underneath so many things that'd been stacked there, that the knocking was pretty well muffled up. It'd have to be helped by some sort of a sudden jolt before it could come out on top. The jolt came as the vegetable man got his seat on the wagon and as usual reached for the whip. Clint's friend a trying to keep him from running out and starting a rompus had tried to draw his interest by asking: "What's become of that cowhorse _Smoky_, that used to----?" But the question was left for _him_ to wonder about, for Clint wasn't there to answer, instead the hotel door slammed and only a glimpse of that same cowboy could be seen as he passed by the lobby window. In less than it takes to tell it, he was up on the wagon, took a bulldogging holt of the surprised vegetable man, and by his whiskers, drug him off his seat and down to earth. The telephone on the desk of the sheriff's office rang till it near danced a jig, and when that feller lifted the receiver, a female voice was heard to holler: "somebody is killing somebody else with a whip, by the Casa Granda Hotel. _Hurry! Quick!_"