Smoky the Cow Horse
About this audiobook
Smoky knows only one way of life: freedom. Living on the open range, he is free to go where he wants to and do what he wants to. And he knows what he has to do to survive.
Smoky can beat any enemy, whether it be a rattlesnake or a hungry wolf. He is as much a part of the Wild West as it is of him, and Smoky can’t imagine anything else.
Then he comes across a new enemy, one that walks on two legs and makes funny sounds. Smoky can’t beat this enemy the way he has all the others. But does he really want to? Or could giving up some of his freedom mean getting something in return that’s even more valuable?
This is the classic great horse story written by a cowboy who trained a little black colt to become his most dependable horse. Here are the experiences of a fascinating horse from his birth in the wild, through his capture by humans and his work in the rodeo and on the range, to his eventual old age.
About the author
Will James (1892–1942) was a Canadian-American artist and author of books about the American west, in particular, horses. His works consistently captured the imagination of the public, earning him the nickname “the Pied Piper of the West.” He wrote the 1926 book Smoky the Cowhorse, which won the Newbery Medal in 1927 and still remains in print. Several movie adaptations of the story have been created, including a 1933 version that included Will James himself as the narrator. He was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 1991 and into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1992, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth.
Keith Szarabajka has appeared in many films, including The Dark Knight, Missing, and A Perfect World, and on such television shows as The Equalizer, Angel, Cold Case, Golden Years, and Profit. Szarabajka has also appeared in several episodes of Selected Shorts for National Public Radio. He won the 2001 Audie Award for Unabridged Fiction for his reading of Tom Robbins’s Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates and has won several Earphones Awards.
