He'd been grazing for a good long time, and the sun was hitting towards the ridges to the west, when to the south a ways he noticed a big dust a soaring up the sky and a mile high. There was a steady rumbling noise as the dust came closer and pretty soon he could make out the bellering of the critter. A big herd it was, the "combings" of the first "circle," and a thousand head or more of white-faced, brockle-faced, speckled, red, black, and all colors and sizes of range cattle topped a ridge and on a high lope was swung towards the "cutting grounds." About that time the horse wrangler fogged in on the remuda, and in a short while Smoky and all the ponies found themselves in the rope corral once again; the cowboys was needing fresh horses and catch ropes begin a sailing once more as the twenty and more of 'em snared their "cut" horses, a few snaked out broncs and pretty soon all hands was mounted again, and working the herd they'd brought in. Smoky was spooked up once more as he heard the ropes sing over his ears. He heard a familiar voice say "How's she going, Smoky?" but the little horse was busy hunting a hole about that time and he was too excited to nicker an answer. Then, after what seemed an awful long time to Smoky, the ponies was left out of the corral once more and when the wrangler checked 'em all to graze, him and Pecos was in the lead. The ponies was grazing on a low bench and on the opposite side of the creek from where the cattle herd was being worked. Many was cut out and started back on the same range from where they come, and pretty soon Smoky's sensitive nostrils smelled the smoke from the fire that kept the branding irons hot; then the smell of burnt hair followed, he heard the beller of the critters, and snorting sorta low and in wonder the mouse colored pony watched. He watched the riders at work, seen long ropes a swinging, and how them long ropes would stop the bunch-quitting steer; he was familiar with some of that and somehow there came in him a hunch that he'd like to be closer; there was something about the workings of that herd across the creek that had his blood racing above natural, and he felt a kind of a call for the whole of the goings on, a call of the kind he couldn't as yet understand, but it was there sure enough. Finally, the smell of singed hair wasn't on the breeze no more, branding was over for that day, and the last rope was coiled up and fastened by the saddle horn. Smoky watched as all but a few riders left the herd and headed for camp, he went to grazing then, and neck and neck with Pecos he listened to the rattle of tin plates and the laugh of the cowboys as he nosed around for the tenderest stems of the blue joint.