The sacking had helped a lot and Clint had no trouble fastening the rawhide hobbles around Smoky's ankles, the pony snorted at him a little but stood still, for Clint was waving that blanket around as he worked. Once the hobbles was on he picked up his saddle and _eased_ it up and on that pony's back. Smoky had a hunch that something new was going on, something different than the sacking performance which he'd just went thru; but as nothing happened outside of the flapping of stirrup leathers and cinches he stood in one spot, only a quiver in the muscles along his shoulder showed how much alive he was, and how quick he could leave the earth if anything "goosed" him. Plenty of practice had made Clint past master at putting a saddle on a green colt, nothing happened to make Smoky want to move out of his tracks, and even when the cinch was reached for and drawed up under his belly he never batted an eye. The sacking had all been a mighty fine preliminary for all this that followed and cured the horse from scaring at everything that flapped on or around him. As it was Smoky hardly realized that he was saddled till Clint took the hobbles off his front feet and pulled him to one side. At that pull he felt something fastened to him and hanging on, that was a new kind of feeling to Smoky and it kettled him, down went his head and he lit in to bucking. Clint had expected that, for no bronc likes the feel of the cinch no matter how loose it might be, and when Smoky bogged his head that way he was ready,--he let the hackamore rope slide thru his hands for a ways and till he could get a good footing, then he give that rope a little flip and set down on it. That done the trick and it come daggone near upsetting the little horse, but Clint let out just enough slack and that saved him. He didn't want to throw the horse but then he didn't want to have that horse buck with an empty saddle either. "Now Smoky," says that cowboy as the horse jerked to his senses, turned and faced him, "I don't want you to waste any of your energy that way, if you want to do any bucking you just wait till I get in the middle of you." Smoky waited, but it wasn't thru the talk the cowboy had handed him that he did wait; it was that he remembered how that rope had upset him that first day he was picketed to the log outside the corral, and he wasn't hankering to be "busted" that way again. * * * * *