After a little time, as was usual with these storms of the West, the rain ceased. It didn’t quit by degrees—it stopped as suddenly as it had begun and soon the clouds began to roll away and the sky was as clear as if nothing had happened. The western sun shone fine and beautiful on the drenched earth, and it shone bright and warm on the shivering horses below.
Already Cinchfoot was walking around the herd and he was snorting—snorting and looking at the water tearing along in the stream not far away. He put his nose down to the ground, raised his head and stamped his foot on the wet ground. It was as if he were thinking, “Well! I can’t figure all this out, but somebody must be trying to be funny or something! I got about enough of this.”
But about this time Blaze Face walked up to Cinchfoot and these two nosed each other and seemed to be talking about the matter in their own language, for they made sounds to each other. Blaze Face looked around and snorted as if he might have told Cinchfoot that he, too, didn’t care to have much more of this sort of thing. And then, for the first time, Blaze Face, always alert, saw on the hillside a little distance up the slope, the two riders.
Clem and Sam had tried to be quick about it. They had already led their horses to the edge of the mine hole and were just ready to mount and try to “fog” the range horses home. They knew Blaze Face would try to run away. They would just let him go for they knew that, as Clem said, “We always have to run him in alone.”
The instant Blaze Face saw the men he began to prance in a small circle, his eyes wide, his tail high. Sam grinned. He said, “Look at Blaze Face! Look at his tail! Did you ever see a horse that could hold his tail as high as he can?”
“No,” said Clem, “no other horse could hold his tail that high.” And that’s all the time there was for words.
Down the rocky hillside Clem and Sam rode. They got into action so quickly they were on their way when Blaze Face shot out for open country. Here a queer thing happened. Clem and Sam spurred hard to get close and swing their loops over Cinchfoot. They figured they would have a pretty hard time driving him in with the other range horses. They knew colts his age that had never seen humans might run clear away.
But just at this time some help was seen not far off. This was three cowboys who had been caught in the storm and who now rode up on a ridge a little to the west of where Clem and Sam happened to be. When the three cowboys looked out and saw the herd of range horses, and at the same time Clem and Sam, they understood everything. But Blaze Face knew what to do, for he had now seen all the cowboys. With a loud snort Blaze Face started to run. The other horses followed him. Blaze Face kept well ahead of all the horses, but Cinchfoot kept right behind him and sometimes he was neck and neck with him. Probably Cinchfoot thought he would get away. Certainly he had, as the cowboys said, “uncorked an awful lot of speed, him being plumb determined to travel to new country.” But Cinchfoot had not yet learned the ways of cowboys. He did not know that no matter how he figured things out, they had a way of doing a better job of figuring than he did. And another thing Cinchfoot did not know was that while all five of the cowboys began to crowd in on each side and behind, they were all looking at him and admiring him. Cinchfoot heard loud yells coming from these humans but he did not know they were saying:
“Whoopee! There’s a yearling colt!”
“Daggone his little hide!”
“Yes, how did he ever live through the winter?”
“Why, he’s tough as a pine knot, that’s how!”
“Certainly! And he don’t aim to be caught, not by considerable.”
And while the cowboys yelled, their faces were wide with admiring grins for the racing “little feller.” But they had no notion of letting him get away. On the contrary; his speed and his jet black coat and silver mane and tail, which now showed plainly, made it the more certain that Cinchfoot would have to go right along with Blaze Face and the other range horses to the big corrals at the ranch house.
Several times, while the race was on, Cinchfoot whirled and tried to run off to one side. It seemed to him that the thing to do was to go the way he wanted, but each time there was a cowboy on a running horse on that side to keep him with the others. And now, on his first meeting with humans, Cinchfoot showed them that his opinion was not the same as theirs. Cinchfoot wanted to stay free always! So did Blaze Face, and somehow on this day he was more determined than ever. He and Cinchfoot ran neck and neck and it was plain these two didn’t care where the other horses went; they would go off in another direction. All of a sudden Blaze Face saw his chance and he shot out on some level ground toward the west and Cinchfoot followed right beside him. Two cowboys spurred as hard as they could to head them off, but it was no use. They ran like the wind and got away. It seemed that Blaze Face had decided that since he had Cinchfoot for company he was going to take him away and stay away if his legs had anything to do with the matter.
Clem and his cowboys wisely let them go and drove the other range horses on and finally got them where they belonged, in a big corral at the ranch. After the snorting horses were in the corral and the gate was shut the talk was all about the new colt and Blaze Face. It was plain that Cinchfoot no longer needed a mother. Clem said, “He feels plumb growed up, having Blaze Face to teach him, but we’ll ‘fog’ ’em in here tomorrow.”
In the meantime Cinchfoot was, for the time, proud of himself. Night had come and the stars were shining out in the Buffalo Springs country where Blaze Face had led him. There was plenty of water and grass here, and after Blaze Face had stopped from his running he nosed Cinchfoot, as he had done since the first week Cinchfoot had been born. They were both hot and sweating, but they did not care about that. They were free and that’s all that mattered to them.
Blaze Face had tried, during all his seven years of life, to escape the spring roundup. And every spring he hated more than before to have a saddle and a man on his back. Once he had run miles away and thought he’d never come back to the range horses. He got away that spring and met some of the wild horses, but as Clem Brown said, “a big wild stallion there almost chewed Blaze Face up.” After he had gotten free he believed he had better hang around on the outskirts of the range and get such company as he could among the tame horses. He liked the company of these range horses, but he wanted them to stay away from the place where they had to be in the hands of the cowboys all summer. And he was so hard to catch one season that he managed to keep away until late June. Then Clem and his cowboys surprised him one day, roped him and brought him in. When they saddled him up he bucked like a wild cat, but it was no use. There were too many good riders. Sam Blades, who rode him that summer, bragged about him: “He’s the hardest bucker I ever got up on but he’s the best horse, too, him being that full of disgust, he don’t get tired at all.”
As to Cinchfoot, although he was hardly a year old, Blaze Face knew him pretty well already. Blaze Face could tell that Cinchfoot also had a fighting spirit and he was going to try to stay a long way off from the cowboys if he could. And while Cinchfoot did not know it yet, on this day he proved to the cowboys who chased him that he had two things above the average colt. He had great speed and great determination to go on his own. He wanted to be free, to get clear away from men and stay away. There was one just born that way now and then, and the cowboys liked this kind more than any other. They made the best cow horses if they could be caught. So at this time, Blaze Face and Cinchfoot had one thing in mind. They would watch out for the men and when it got light they would be ready to run again.
After Cinchfoot had eaten grass for some time he felt pretty well. The grass tasted sweet and good. Several times he went over to the springs here and drank beside Blaze Face. The sweat dried on his coat. Now and then, as the two of them bit off the green grass on the level valley, Blaze Face would raise his head and listen. At these times he would hear such sounds as a coyote yipping or maybe an owl hooting in the shadows of a pine woods north of them. Cinchfoot would toss his head up, too, and look in the direction Blaze Face did, but after a little, Blaze Face would put his nose on Cinchfoot’s and make some sounds as if he said, “It’s nothing—just sounds, nothing more. We can go right on eating and being comfortable.” And the two would go