The next day passed with but one incident worth recalling.  In the afternoon we crossed the Niobrara at Grand Rapids on a tumbledown wooden bridge, and turned due west through the Keya Paha country.  This is so called from the Keya Paha River (pronounced Key-a-paw), a branch of the Niobrara which comes down out of Dakota and joins it a few miles below Grand Rapids.  The country seemed to be much the same as that through which we had travelled, perhaps a little flatter and sandier.  Just across the river we saw the first large herd of stock, some five or six hundred head being driven east by half a dozen cowboys.

A short distance beyond the river we came to a little blacksmith shop beside the road.  As soon as Jack saw it he said: 

“We ought to stop and get the horses shod.  I was looking at the holes the calks of Old Blacky’s shoes made in the wagon-box last night, and they are shallow and irregular.  He needs new shoes to do himself justice.  If this blacksmith seems like a man of force of character, we’ll see what he can do.”

Jack looked at the blacksmith quizzically when we drove up, and whispered to us, “He’ll do,” and we unhitched.  The pony had never been shod, and did not seem to need any artificial aids, so we left her to graze about while the others were being attended to.

“Just shoe the brown one first, if it doesn’t make any difference,” said Jack.

“All right,” answered the blacksmith, and he went to work on this decent old nag, who slept peacefully throughout the whole operation.

He then began On Old Blacky.  He soon had shoes nailed on the old reprobate’s forward feet, and approached his rear ones.  Old Blacky had made no resistance so far, and had contented himself with gnawing at the side of the shop and switching his tail.  He even allowed the blacksmith to take one of his hind-feet between his knees and start to pull off the old shoe.  Then he began to struggle to free his leg.  The blacksmith held on.  Old Blacky saw that the time for action had arrived, so he drew his leg, with the foolish blacksmith still clinging to it, well up forward, and then threw it back with all his strength.  The leg did not fly off, but the blacksmith did, and half-way across the shop.  He picked himself up, and, after looking at the horse, said: 

[Illustration:  Flight of the Blacksmith]

“’Pears’s if that ain’t a colt any more.”

“No,” answered Jack; “he’s fifteen or sixteen.”

“Old enough to know better,” observed the blacksmith.  “I’ll try him again.”

He once more got the leg up, and again Old Blacky tried to throw him off.  But this time the man hung on.  After the third effort Blacky looked around at him with a good deal of surprise.  Then he put down the leg to which the man was still clinging, and with the other gave him a blow which was half a kick and half a push, which sent the man sprawling over by his anvil.