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. Smoky was right with the bunch from the start, he stampeded with the leader and once in his life it never came to him to wonder what it was all about, he just run and plum forgot to investigate. Tails was a popping as the horses slid off the mountain, jumped off ledges and sailed acrost washouts. Loosened rocks bumped against boulders, boulders crashed into dead hanging timber and pretty soon a landslide brought up the rear, but even that was too slow. The ponies and the cowboy behind 'em hit the bottom of the canyon first, and when the slide reached that spot and filled the canyon with ten feet of boulders, timber, and dirt, the whole wild bunch was half a mile away and kicking up dust on the foothills at the edge of the flat. It was away out on the flat and where the dust wasn't so thick that Smoky took a back slant over his withers and got his first sight of the human. The way his mammy and the rest of the bunch acted, the way they run and tried to dodge or leave that human behind sure put the impression in Smoky's mind that here was a different kind of animal, the kind that no horse would stop to fight or argue with but instead run away from, if it was possible. But it didn't seem possible, for the rider was still right on their tails, and stayed there till he drove 'em into the long wings of big log corrals which to Smoky seemed like trees growing sideways instead of up and down. But the little horse knowed that there was no going thru them trees. He stuck close as he could to his mammy's side, she and the bunch milled around for a spell around the big pen, the big gate closed on 'em and wild eyed the bunch turned and faced a bow legged, leather covered, sunburnt human.