Summer passed, the grass had gradually turned to a yellow brown and the leaves of the aspens begin banking up on the edges of the streams, fall had come, and one day the bunch started a grazing steady lower and lower till a few days later the foothills was reached. It was there that Smoky took the lead and headed for the winter range where his mammy had put him thru that first year, the big buckskin followed till, glancing back over his withers he noticed that the mares and colts had left off and branched out another direction. The buckskin stood in his tracks, watched Smoky line out straight ahead and then looked back at the mares again. For the time being he wasn't sure wether to go on with his pardner or turn back to the bunch. It was hard for him to decide, he wanted to go with Smoky and still them little colts sure had a mighty holt on his heart strings, it was just about as he was doing the hardest figgering when one of them little fellers came out of the bunch a ways and nickered for him. That little nicker decided things for the buckskin, he answered it and loped back to join with the other little fellers and the mares. Smoky went on straight ahead. Maybe he was thinking strong, thinking that he'd see his mammy again on that winter range. Anyway, it never come to him to look back and see if the bunch was following him, and finally when it did come to him that he was drifting on alone, he stopped and looked around in a sort of vacant stare, his instinct had been controlling him and was taking him back to his home range, but when he found himself alone that way it all left him surprised at first and then doubtful as to what to do. He was mighty attached to that buckskin, the little colts, and the bunch in general. He looked at the far away hills of his range and he seemed like to think on the subject for quite a spell, then of a sudden his head went up, a loud nicker went out and away in the distance he could hear an answer,--the answer had come from his pardner, the buckskin. Smoky nickered again and loped back to the bunch. He'd come to feel that it didn't matter so much which range he wintered on, he was a big horse now, and a few ridges to the north or south of that range he was raised in didn't make much difference.--An old mare had took the lead and from then on Smoky just followed side by side with the buckskin. A little colt nipped him in the flanks, and all was well. CHAPTER IV THE END OF A ROPE Snow layed heavy on the range that winter, grass was hard to get at, and the little bunch of ponies that tracked the low hills which raised up on the prairies was finding themselves doing a lot of rustling and pawing, and getting very little feed. Bunches of cattle followed 'em wherever they went and rooted with their nose for the few blades of dry grass them horses had pawed the snow off of and left.