Clint climbed on and off a few times that way, Smoky stood and shivered, scared, but willing it seemed like to take his medicine. Maybe it'd come to his mind that there was no use fighting that cowboy, or else he was getting tired--anyway that was the last of it, Smoky felt the cinch loosen and then slow and easy the saddle was pulled off. About that time he whirled and faced the rider who was holding the saddle, he took a sniff at the hunk of leather and snorted like to say, "Gee! I thought that thing was on me for good." The saddle was set to one side and the cowboy begin rubbing Smoky's back with a gunny sack, and according to the way that pony acted that felt mighty good, his upper lip stuck out and twitched with every motion of the rubbing, and when Clint finally quit the little horse's action showed plain that he should do it some more, Clint rubbed again. "I'm afraid," he says as he grinned and rubbed, "that I'm naturally going to spoil you. Here we just got thru with the first saddling and you're beginning to look for favors already." * * * * * Smoky's picket grounds was moved to a fresh one for that night and where the grass was tall, a plenty and green,--but somehow his appetite wasn't at its best, and when the break of day come there was very little sign (as Clint noticed) that the pony had et at all. He'd just stood in one spot, looked like, and seemed to've done tall wondering and figgering instead of feeding. He was ganted up the same as if he'd been rode all that night, and still there was no show of any appetite for the feed that was under and all around him. As Clint worked in the corral busy with other broncs he'd look thru the bars for any show of interest in the little horse, he'd look often but most every time that pony's position was about the same, and if he did catch him with his head down he noticed how Smoky was just nibbling at the feed, and not eating much. Smoky was taking the change, from the life he'd led to what he was now going thru kinda hard, harder than the average wild horse ever does, and Clint layed it that the little horse had more brains than the average, more sensitive maybe, and more able to realize. "I guess I'd better lay off of him to-day," decides the cowboy, as he noticed very little change in him even late that afternoon, "he's having a hard time trying to figger things out as it is." It was bright and early the next morning when Clint looked out of the bunk house door and noticed Smoky out on the creek bottom. It appeared that the little horse, after figgering and figgering, had come to some sort of decision, and that done and settled had went to eating again, for that's what he was doing when Clint looked out,--Smoky was eating like he was trying to make up for the time he'd lost, and he seemed all at peace with everything in general.