There was many times when he was layed up with dislocated shoulders, ribs broke and legs the same. From the root of his hair to the toes in his made to order boots there was signs, if not seen they was felt, where some horse had twisted, broke, or shook something loose. Each happening had come more or less separate, and healed some in time, but as some kept a repeating off and on there was some parts of him which never got strong again, and as time went on and as Clint said, "he was beginning to feel loose like an old clock and figgered that some day some bucking hunk of horseflesh would take the _tick_ out of him and scatter him out so that none of the parts would never be found again." Clint had started riding rough ones long before he quit growing and that's the condition he was in at thirty, an old man, far as riding was concerned. The horses of the same big outfit he'd rode for was worked on the average of only four months in the year, and in them four months the broke horses was rode only four or five hours once every three days. That might show some of the difference in the work the cowboy and the cowhorse does with a real cow outfit.--The men go to pieces young and early and the ponies stay fat,--but there was no grudge for there's nobody in the world likes to see and ride a fat strong horse more than does the cowboy. They'll keep the ponies fat and feeling good, and some of them horses find it hard to behave and will try to jar loose the eye teeth of their riders. The cowboy wants 'em that way tho',--it's a pride of his to have a kinky horse under him that's feeling good rather than some gentle old plug that's leg weary. That all gets him in time, but there's a grin on his face when that time comes, a grin from the pride of knowing that he never was seen on no horse that was against the principle of a cowboy to ride. Like with Clint, horses was the life of him. He loved 'em for all he was worth and the greatest pleasure in the world for him was in just being with a corral full of 'em, handling 'em and feeling of their hides. The satisfaction he'd get out of seeing some four year old colt learn the things he'd teach meant a heap more to him than the wages he drawed for that work, and there was times as he'd be breaking some right brainy gelding and watch the horse pick up fast on the eddication he'd give him, when he'd feel real attached to the pony. He'd hate to give him up when the time came for all half broke horses to be turned over to the round up wagons and where more teaching in the handling of the critter begin. "I feel sort of married to them kind of ponies," he'd say, "and I sure don't hanker to part with 'em just when we're beginning to get along good together, but," he'd go on "I guess as long as I'll be breaking horses this way I can't get too sensitive."