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Title: Tall tales from Texas
Author: Boatright, Mody Coggin
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Tall tales from Texas" ***
[Illustration: decorated line]
TALL TALES
_from_
TEXAS
By MODY C. BOATRIGHT
_Illustrated by_
ELIZABETH E. KEEFER
_Foreword by_
J. FRANK DOBIE
[Illustration: tales around campfire]
THE SOUTHWEST PRESS
_Publishers in and of the Southwest_
DALLAS, TEXAS
COPYRIGHT 1934
SOUTH-WEST PRESS
.. _To_ ..
MY FATHER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Preface--J. Frank Dobie vii
Introduction xix
Pizenous Windies 1
Speed 18
Birds and Beasts 28
Wind and Weather 40
By the Breadth of a Hair 53
The Genesis of Pecos Bill 68
Adventures of Pecos Bill 80
The Exodus of Pecos Bill 95
[Illustration: landscape]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“I feels somethin’ tappin’ me on the leg” 12
“Jist as he pulls the trigger, he runs to beat hell” 23
“Purty soon the whiffle-pooffle gits interested and
pricks up his ears” 33
“Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled out” 47
“Well, sir, them birds jist naturally lifted me right
out of that sink hole” 63
“A settin’ on that tornado and a-spurrin’ it in the
withers” 85
“That gal come ridin’ down the Río Grande on a
catfish” 93
A PREFACE ON AUTHENTIC LIARS
An authentic liar knows what he is lying about, knows that his
listeners--unless they are tenderfeet, greenhorns--know also, and hence
makes no pretense of fooling either himself or them. At his best he
is as grave as a historian of the Roman Empire; yet what he is after
is neither credulity nor the establishment of truth. He does not take
himself too seriously, but he does regard himself as an artist and
yearns for recognition of his art. He may lie with satiric intent; he
may lie merely to make the time pass pleasantly; he may lie in order to
take the wind out of some egotistic fellow of his own tribe or to take
in some greener; again, without any purpose at all and directed only by
his ebullient and companion-loving nature, he may “stretch the blanket”
merely because, like the redoubtable Tom Ochiltree, he had “rather lie
on credit than tell truth for cash.” His generous nature revolts at
the monotony of everyday facts and overflows with desire to make his
company joyful.
Certainly the telling of “windies” flourished in the Old World long
before America was discovered; nevertheless the tall tale both in
subject matter and in manner of telling has been peculiar to the
frontiers of America, whether in the backwoods of the Old South, in the
mining camps of the Far West, amid the logging camps presided over by
Paul Bunyan, or on the range lands stretching from the Gulf of Mexico
to the Canadian line. Very likely the Pilgrim Fathers did not indulge
much in the art of yarning, and the stately Cavaliers pretty much left
that sort of entertainment to the poor--“poor but honest”--settlers. As
to whether the “decay in the art of lying” that Oscar Wilde observed
in literary fiction has blighted that to be heard around camp fires and
on the galleries of ranch houses, we need not here inquire. The “big
uns” that Mody Boatright has gathered together in this book are not
altogether out of the past.
They express a way that range folk talked and they express also a
way in which these folk cartooned objects familiar to them like
rattlesnakes, sand storms, jack rabbits, the expanding and contracting
powers of rawhide, the suddenness of Texas northers, “killings”
according to a code that clearly distinguished a killing from a
murder, and other things. They are, in short, authentic both as to the
characters represented and the subjects discoursed upon.
When in the old days two cow outfits met upon the range, and there
was “ample time,” as Andy Adams would say, they sometimes arranged
what was known as an “auguring match.” Each outfit would pit its prime
yarn-spinner against the other and there followed a contest not only of
invention but of endurance. John Palliser in _The Solitary Hunter; or,
Sporting Adventures of the Prairies_ (London, 1856) relates how after
an all-night talking contest between a Missourian and a Kentuckian, the
umpire “at a quarter past five” found the Kentucky man fast asleep,
his opponent “sitting up close beside him and whispering in his ear.”
What the contestants talked about, Palliser does not say, but there is
ample testimony to prove that the “auguring matches” on the range had
as precedent among the backwoodsmen of the South who were to push out
upon the ranges a kind of round table talk in which each talker sought
to cap the tall tales of his fellow with one a little taller.
* * * * *
For genuine artists a solitary opponent is sufficient; art is
substantive. _In Piney Woods Tavern; or, Sam Slick in Texas_
(Philadelphia, 1858), by Samuel A. Hammett, the narrator in traveling
from the Brazos to the Trinity rivers found the San Jacinto “a roarin’
and a hummin’ it.... Free soil movements was a-goin’ on, and trees
a-tumblin’ in all along the banks.”
I see thar war no help for it [the narrator goes on]. So I
took my feet outen the stirrups, threw my saddle-bags over
my shoulder, and in me and the mar went.
We war in a awful tight place for a time, but we soon
landed safe. I’d jest got my critter tied out, and a fire
started to dry myself with when I see a chap come ridin’ up
the hill on a smart chunk of a pony....
“Hoopee! stranger”--sings out my beauty--“How d’ye? Kept
your fireworks dry, eh? How in thunder did ye get over?”
“Oh!” says I, “mighty easy. Ye see, stranger, I’m powerful
on a pirogue; so I waited till I see a big log a-driftin’
nigh the shore, when I fastened to it, set my critter
a-straddle on it, got into the saddle, paddled over with my
saddle-bags, and steered with the mare’s tail.”
“Ye didn’t, though, by Ned!” says he, “did ye?”
“Mighty apt to”--says I--“but arter ye’ve sucked all that
in and got yer breath agin, let’s know how _you_ crossed?”
“Oh!” says he, settin’ his pig’s eyes on me, “I’ve been
a-riding all day with a consarned ager, and orful dry, and
afeard to drink at the prairie water holes; so when I got
to the river I jest went in fer a big drink, swallered half
a mile of water, and come over dry shod.”
“Stranger,” says I, “ye’r just one huckleberry above my
persimmon. Light and take some red-eye. I thought ye looked
green, but I were barkin’ up the wrong tree.”
Story-telling in Texas was so popular that at times it interfered with
religion. The pioneer Baptist preacher, Z. N. Morrell, relates in his
autobiographic _Flowers and Fruits in the Wilderness_ (Dallas, 1886)
that on one occasion while he was preaching in a log cabin in East
Texas his sermon was drowned by the voices of men outside “telling
anecdotes.” After an ineffectual reprimand, the preacher finally told
his interrupters that if they would give him a chance he would tell
an anecdote and that then, if it was not better than any of theirs,
he would “take down his sign and listen to them.” They agreed to the
challenge. The anecdote he proceeded to relate about Sam Houston and
the battle of San Jacinto won him the right to keep on talking without
interruption. The triumph was but a repetition of David Crockett’s
election to Congress through his b’ar stories.
An anecdote is not by any means necessarily a windy, but people who
cultivate the art of oral narration will sooner or later indulge in
exaggerative invention. Some candidate for the Ph.D. degree should
write a thesis on the interrelationship of the anecdote, the tall tale,
and the short story in America. What is probably the most widely known
story that the nation has produced, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County,” is all three--and it is mostly just a yarn in which
the frontier character, Jim Smiley, character being the essence of good
anecdote, is more important than the frog.
Sixty years or so ago at Covey’s college for ranch boys, located at
Concrete, Texas, near Cuero, the “scholars” organized a liar’s club.
According to the rules of the club every boy present at a session
must tell a story. The teller of what was adjudged the best yarn was
habitually awarded as a prize a dozen hot tamales cooked by one of the
Mexican women about the premises.
One night a certain lad of few words who had been drawn into the club
was called upon to contribute.
“Wall,” he drawled, “I was raised away out in the bresh up whur I never
heared nobody talk, and I jes’ ain’t got no story to tell.”
“Oh, go on and tell something,” the other club members urged.
“No,” the diffident youth remonstrated, “it ain’t no use fer me to try
to make up anything. I jest can’t do it. I’ve been a-trying to figger
up something while you all was telling your stories, and the pump won’t
even prime.”
There was more urging and encouraging. But still the boy from up the
creek hung back. As a member of the club, however, he simply had to
tell something--or “take the leggins.” Finally the leader of the
group suggested, “I guess we can let you off from lying if you’re so
much like George Washington. Just go ahead and tell us about some
interesting happening. It don’t have to be a lie.”
“Wall,” the drawly tongue started off, “I’ll tell you about something
that happened to me. One morning I was a-leaving the ranch to look out
for wormy calves. I was going to be gone all day, and jest as I throwed
my leg over the saddle, a Meskin girl that lived with her people in
a jacal close to the corral came a-running out. ‘Here,’ says she,
‘we’ve jest been making tamales out of the cow that got her leg broke
yesterday and you all had to kill. The meat is fat and the corn is new,
and the tamales are _muy sabroso_. You must take some of them with you.’
“Now I would do nearly anything this little Meskin girl suggested. So
I told her all right, to wrop the tamales up in some paper and a flour
sack and I’d put ’em in my morral with the hank of dried beef and the
bottle of worm medicine. Which she did. Tamales ain’t much good unless
they are hot, you know, and I figgered the wropping would keep these
warm.
“Well, after I’d gone about six miles, I struck a bull that I decided
to rope. Which I did. The bull he kept on going after he hit the end
of the rope and my horse he could not stop him. He dragged me about
forty miles more or less, I guess, before I hung up in a mesquite tree
with my chin between the forks of a limb. I don’t know how long I hung
there, but it was some time. People differ as to how long it was.
Anyway, it was until the limb rotted down and I dropped to the ground.
“I didn’t want to go back to the ranch afoot, and so I hit out
follering the horse’s tracks. I found him a good piece out looking
purty gant but still saddled and the rope that had rotted off the
bull’s neck still tied to the horn of the saddle. I went right up to
the morral, for it was still on the saddle, and untied it. I was a
little gant myself. Then I felt of the sacking around the tamales, and
I couldn’t feel no heat. Says I to myself, ‘I bet that Meskin girl
didn’t wrop ’em right and the danged things have got so cold they won’t
be no count to eat.’ But I went on and unwropped the paper, and when I
got to the shucks, danged if they didn’t burn my fingers. Them tamales
shore tasted good after all that bull running and then hoofing it after
the horse. It is remarkable the way tamales hold the heat when they are
well wropped.”
Even the schools for ranch boys in Texas included “windjamming” among
their activities. But many a frontiersman who had not had the advantage
of an education must have been forced by circumstances to “make it
strong” in telling about the Wild West to gentle Easterners. Every new
land has marvels; hence “traveler’s tales.” When facts are taken for
fabrications, then the narrator is tempted to “cut loose” sure enough.
One of the most honest-hearted and reliable frontiersmen that ever
boiled coffee over mesquite coals was Bigfoot Wallace. He came to Texas
from Virginia long before barbed wire “played hell” with the longhorns.
After he had himself become a regular Longhorn he went back to his
old home for a visit. As John C. Duval in the delightful _Adventures
of Bigfoot Wallace_ (1870) has the old frontiersman describe his
reception, he was egged on in the following manner to take the bridle
off and let out the last kink.
A few weeks after my arrival I went to a fandango that
was given for my special benefit. There was a great
crowd there, and everybody was anxious to see the “Wild
Texan,” as they called me. I was the lion of the evening,
particularly for the young ladies, who never tired of
asking me questions about Mexico, Texas, the Indians,
prairies, etc. I at first answered truthfully all the
questions they asked me; but when I found they evidently
doubted some of the stories I told them which were facts,
then I branched out and gave them some whoppers. These they
swallowed down without gagging. For instance, one young
woman wanted to know how many wild horses I had ever seen
in a drove. I told her perhaps thirty or forty thousand.
“Oh, now! Mr. Wallace,” said she, “don’t try to make game
of me in that way. Forty thousand horses in one drove!
Well, I declare you are a second Munchausen!”[1]
“Well, then,” said I, “maybe you won’t believe me when I
tell you there is a sort of spider in Texas as big as a
peck measure, the bite of which can only be cured by music.”
“Oh, yes,” she answered, “I believe that’s all so, for I
have read about them in a book.”
“Among other whoppers, I told her there was a varmint in
Texas called the Santa Fé, that was still worse than the
tarantula, for the best brass band in the country couldn’t
cure their sting; that the creature had a hundred legs and
a sting on every one of them, besides two large stings in
its forked tail, and fangs as big as a rattlesnake’s. When
they sting you with their legs alone, you might possibly
live an hour; when with all their stings, perhaps fifteen
or twenty minutes; but when they sting and bite you at the
same time, you first turn blue, then yellow, and then a
beautiful bottle-green, when your hair all falls out, and
your finger nails drop off, and in five minutes you are
as dead as a door nail, in spite of all the doctors in
America.”
“Oh! My! Mr. Wallace!” said she. “How have you managed to
live so long in that horrible country?”
“Why, you see,” said I, “with my tarantula boots made of
alligator skin, and my centipede hunting-shirt made of
tanned rattlesnake hides, I have escaped pretty well; but
these don’t protect you against the stinging scorpions,
cow-killers, and scaly-back chinches, that crawl about at
night when you are asleep! The only way to keep them at a
distance is to chaw tobacco and drink whiskey, and that is
the reason the Temperance Society never flourished much in
Texas.”
“Oh!” said she, “what a horrible country that must be,
where the people have to be stung to death, or else chaw
tobacco and drink whiskey! I don’t know which is the worst.”
“Well,” said I, “the people out there don’t seem to mind it
much; they get used to it after a while. In fact, they seem
rather to like it, for they chaw tobacco and drink whiskey
even in the winter time, when the cow-killers and stinging
lizards are all frozen up!”
What gusto, what warmth of natural sympathy, what genial expansion!
Here the authentic liar has been translated by circumstances and by
his own genius into the pure aura of truth. There is no distortion,
no “wrenching the true cause the wrong way,” no base intent to win by
arousing false fears or to defraud through false hopes. The artist has
but arranged the objects of his scene and then handed the spectator a
magnifying glass that is flawlessly translucent. The magnified vision,
like that of Tartarin of Tarascon, seems but the effect of a sunlight
transilluminating all other sunlights--the sunlight of Tartarin’s Midi
country, “the only liar in the Midi.” Only here it is the sunlight of
the West, which brings mountain ranges a hundred miles away within
apparent touching distance and through its mirages makes antelopes
stalk as tall as giraffes, gives to buffalo bulls far out on the
prairies the proportions of hay wagons, and reveals spired cities and
tree-shadowed lakes reposing in deserts actually so devoid of life that
not even a single blade of green grass can there be found.
Occasionally one of these authentic liars of the West falls a prey to
his own lying. Frank Root (_The Overland Stage to California_) relates
that one time after a Gargantuan story-teller named Ranger Jones had
finished narrating a particularly blood-curdling “personal experience,”
a stage driver who happened to be among the listeners looked him
squarely in the eye and said, “I hope, Ranger Jones, that you don’t
expect me to believe this story.”
“Well--er--no--really, I don’t,” the narrator answered. “The fact is, I
have lied out here in this Western country so long and have been in the
habit of telling so many damned lies, the truth of it is now that I
don’t know when I can believe myself.” In _Trails Plowed Under_ Charles
M. Russell has a delicious chapter on “Some Liars of the Old West.”
“These men weren’t vicious liars,” he comments. “It was love of
romance, lack of reading matter, and the wish to be entertainin’ that
makes ’em stretch facts and invent yarns.” Among the most famous of
these liars was a man known as Lyin’ Jack, and his favorite tale was on
an elk he once killed that had a spread of antlers fifteen feet wide.
He always kept these, as he told the story, in the loft of his cabin.
One time after a long absence Lyin’ Jack showed up in Benton. “The
boys” were all glad to see him and, after a round or two of drinks,
asked him for a yarn.
“No, boys,” said Jack, “I’m through. For years I’ve been tellin’ these
lies--told ’em so often I got to believin’ ’em myself. That story of
mine about the elk with the fifteen-foot horns is what cured me. I told
about that elk so often that I knowed the place I killed it. One night
I lit a candle and crawled up in the loft to view the horns--an’ I’m
damned if they weren’t there.”
In a book of not enough consequence to warrant the naming of its title,
the author, writing through hearsay and attempting to be veracious,
describes the Texas norther--which comes “sudden and soon in the dead
of night or the blaze of noon”--as being so swift in descent, so
terrible in force, and so bitterly cold that “no old Texan would trust
himself out on the prairies in July or August with the thermometer at
ninety-six degrees, without two blankets strapped at the saddlebow to
keep him from freezing to death should a norther blow up.” Of course
no man of the range carries his blankets on the horn of a saddle and
no Texan ever experienced a genuine norther in July or August. The
description is utterly false, utterly lacking in authenticity. On the
other hand, when “Mr. Fishback of the Sulphurs” relates how one hot
day in December when he was riding home he saw a blue norther coming
behind him, put spurs to his horse, and, racing for miles with the nose
of the wind at his very backbone, arrived at the stable to find the
hind-quarters of his horse frozen stiff whereas the fore-quarters were
in a lather of sweat--such a hair’s breadth doth divide the hot prelude
to a norther from the iciness of the norther itself--we realize that we
are in the company of a liar as authentic as he is accomplished. Surely
such do not violate the ninth commandment; indeed they have become as
little children.
--J. FRANK DOBIE,
Austin, Texas,
Cinco de Mayo, 1934.
[1] Forty thousand, even thirty thousand, mustangs are a lot of
mustangs. In _The Young Explorers_, a book privately printed in Austin,
Texas, about 1892, Duval, pp. 111-112, defends this extraordinary
assertion. The wild horses were encountered between the Nueces River
and the Río Grande. Corroborative of the enormous numbers to be found
in that region is the testimony of William A. McClintock, “Journal of
a Trip Through Texas and Northern Mexico,” _Southwestern Historical
Quarterly_, Vol. XXXIV, pp. 232-233. Bigfoot Wallace was not lying
about the wild horses.
INTRODUCTION
The pioneers who came to Texas to found a cattle industry that
eventually extended from the Río Grande to the Big Bow brought with
them from the older Southwestern frontier a large body of floating
literature of the tall tale variety. The influence of this folk
material is clearly discernible in the works of Longstreet, and
Baldwin, and other Southern humorists who preceded Mark Twain.
The literary use of the tall tale in the South seems to have been
checked by the Civil War, but after that struggle it found a congenial
home and flourished orally in the cow-camps of the new Southwest. While
it is true that the cowboy deserves his reputation for reticence and
reserve, it is also true that when conditions were favorable to the
exercise of the art of story telling, he often proved an inveterate
liar. Among the cattlemen of a generation ago books and periodicals
were scarce, and all sorts of shifts were resorted to for amusement. It
is a tribute to the cowboy’s adaptability that he was able to utilize
as well as he did the resources at his command. So, while the gifted
story-teller was often referred to disparagingly as a “windy,” he was
welcome around the camp-fires, and any large outfit was likely to have
one or more among its numbers.
Old tales that were applicable to the new conditions survived; others
were adapted to the new environment; Crèvecoeur and Münchausen seem
to have supplied others, though of course there is no proof that the
Southwestern analogues were not of independent origin. The adaptations,
if they were such, often exhibit admirable ingenuity. Still other tales
grew directly out of the soil.
The cowboy liked horseplay, and took keen delight in “loading” the
greenhorn. This pastime, which usually occupied the hours after supper
in the evening, consisted in telling for the benefit of the uninitiated
a species of yarn locally known as the “windy.” If the auditor
appeared credulous, the narrators went on vying with each other,
heaping exaggeration upon exaggeration, consciously burlesquing the
misconceptions which the newcomer had brought with him from the East.
Sometimes the listener was informed by a sell at the end of the story
that he had been taken in; more often he was made aware of the fact
by the sheer heights of exaggeration to which the narrative ascended;
occasionally he accepted the story in good faith and went away neither
sadder nor wiser. The good story-teller, then, did not demand credence.
All he wanted was a sympathetic listener. His reward was the joy of
mere narrative.
The result was a literature at once imaginative, robust, and humorous:
one in striking contrast to the better known pensive and melancholy
ballads, which, taken in themselves, present a one-sided picture of the
cowboy’s character.
Since much of the cowboy’s romancing was done to inspire fear in the
newcomer, the fauna of the Southwest, really comparatively harmless,
was represented as dangerous in the extreme. And among the living
things none was better adapted to the cowboy’s purpose than the
rattlesnake. As a matter of fact, there were few fatalities from
snake-bite among cowmen. The rattlesnake rarely strikes without
warning. He presents no danger to mounted men; and when dismounted, the
cowboy was afforded good protection by his boots. Yet because of his
terrifying aspect, his blood-curdling rattle, and the reputation he had
acquired in the East, the rattlesnake was an especial source of terror
to the greenhorn; and he was the subject of many a harrowing tale told
around the campfire, frequently as a prelude to some practical joke.
This means of entertainment was a well established custom in the days
of Big Foot Wallace.
If the existing fauna could not be made impressive enough, imaginary
animals could be drafted into service. These mythological creatures
were numerous, and were not completely standardized either in
terminology or in anatomy. Some were harmless, and the point of the
story was to “sell” the greenhorn. Others were extremely ferocious,
and the tenderfoot was advised to avoid them under all circumstances.
He also received minute instruction in the technique of escaping when
pursued. Like all mythological animals, they were compounded of the
parts of well-known species.
The greenhorn’s misconceptions and his conduct arising therefrom were
frequent themes of western windies, as well as of tales of actual fact.
Another favorite subject of cowboy yarns was the weather. The
changeableness of atmospheric conditions in the Southwest has long
been proverbial, and many a fantastic yarn has been spun to illustrate
this fickleness of weather.
A different type of tall tale was that involving narrow and ingenious
escapes and hair-raising adventures. This sort of tale demanded a
hero, but the cowboy’s love of exaggeration did not lead him into
supernaturalism. The hero of his fiction was a mere mortal who
possessed to a high degree endurance, agility, and the other qualities
which the cowboy of necessity exemplified, and which he consequently
admired. The hero of the cowboy’s tall tale could drink his coffee
boiling hot and wipe his mouth on a prickly-pear. He could ride a
tornado, but he was not a giant, the impact of whose body in being
thrown from one would form the Great Basin of the West; and those who
have attributed to him such a prodigious stature have written too much
under the influence of the Paul Bunyan legend.
Nor did cowboy fiction ever become unified around a single character.
When a hero was needed, his name might be invented on the spot; the
feats of daring might be ascribed to some local character; or the
narrator himself might appropriate the honors. Certain names, however,
were in rather general use, California Joe and Texas Jack being among
the more common.
The nearest living parallel to Don Quixote (in outward circumstances at
least) that I ever saw was an impersonator of one of these legendary
heroes.
Several years ago a man came to Sweetwater, Texas, and announced that
he was _the original_ Texas Jack. He wore khaki trousers tucked in
“hand-me-down” boots somewhat run over at the heels. He had on a red
flannel shirt and bandanna. What drew attention for at least a block
was an elaborate belt with holster attached. The belt was four inches
wide, and had evidently been fashioned from a “back-band” belonging to
a set of heavy draft harness. It was heavily studded with brass and
glistened in the sun. The holster, when examined by officers, showed no
evidence of ever having contained a pistol.
Texas Jack seemed quite harmless. He walked the streets for a few days
and entertained whoever would listen to him with long stories about his
exploits in arresting bad men, a type which he said was very numerous
in the Panhandle of Texas. It seemed that when the Rangers were at a
loss what to do, they sent for Texas Jack, who always brought back his
man and turned him over to the law. His technique was quite simple. He
merely walked in and got the bad man by the ear and led him to jail
while the nonplussed officers looked on in astonishment.
I later saw him at Maryneal, a village twenty miles south of
Sweetwater. There he had an antiquated singleshot, twenty-two calibre
rifle, which he handled so carelessly that he was arrested. I never
learned the outcome of his sanity trial.
I never saw anybody claiming to be California Joe or Pecos Bill.
This latter hero is apparently a late development, for few of the
old-time cowmen have heard of him. Getting into print in 1923, he
seems to be driving his rivals from the field, and is the most likely
candidate for epic honors in the Southwest.
Practically all the tales in this collection came directly from the
cattle folk of West Texas, among whom I was raised (not reared); and
some of them are associated with my earliest memories. Others I have
learned more recently either from cattlemen or from their sons and
daughters who have been my students in the University of Texas and in
the Sul Ross State Teachers College.
I have consulted the available published material on the tall tale
of the cattle country. The bibliography is short, and not all of the
authors who have written on the subject have had the advantage of a
first-hand acquaintance with the yarns of the region. Aside from the
publications of the Texas Folklore Society, my chief indebtedness is to
Mr. Edward O’Reilly’s “Saga of Pecos Bill,” published in the _Century
Magazine_ for October, 1923 (106: 827-833).
Some of this material I have published in the _Southwest Review_, the
_Texas Monthly_, _The South Atlantic Quarterly_, and the _Publications_
of the West Texas Historical and Scientific Society.
MODY C. BOATRIGHT.
PIZENOUS WINDIES
There was just enough light left in the sky to reveal the bedded herd.
The first night-shift had gone on. One could see the riders silhouetted
against the sky as they rode around the cattle quieting them with the
crooning melodies of _Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie_ and _The Trail
of ’83_.
The men had finished supper. Some had spread their beds and were lying
upon them. They had not yet gone through the short ritual of going
to bed. Others sat around the campfire. Red Wallace observed that it
was time to hit the hay. As he started to the wagon for his bed-roll,
he stumbled over a small greasewood bush. A shrill rattle came from
underneath. Red jumped back, picking up a stone.
“You dirty rascal!” he exclaimed. “Thought you’d bite me, didn’t you?
Of all the nerve. Tryin’ to bite me. You cheeky son-of-a-gun. Wanted to
bite me! Take that.” The rock struck the snake squarely on the head.
“A rattlesnake!” exclaimed Lanky, a tenderfoot of the high-school age,
whom the boss had taken on the day before, and whom Joe Martin had
informally christened _Lanky_. “I’ve been wishing all afternoon to see
one.”
“You’ll git to see all them you want to see if you stay with this
outfit, though they ain’t as numerous as they used to be,” answered
Red.
“Are they really as poisonous as they have the reputation of being?”
asked Lanky.
“Pizenous?” asked Red, seating himself on the bed-roll he had just
brought from the wagon. “One of them cut-throats took off three of the
best friends I ever had in this world.
“You see it was like this. Poker Bill was out ridin’ fence. He gits
down to nail up a loose wire, and one of these reptiles nabs him by
the heel. Bill grabs him by the tail and jist naturally flails the
everlastin’ stuffin’ out of him on the fence post. Then Bill takes off
his boot and looks at his heel. The fang ain’t teched the skin; so he
puts back on his boot and goes on his way, thinkin’ nothin’ of it.
About a week afterwards Bill gits a sore heel. He comes in one day at
dinner and tells the boss he can’t work that evenin’ and he lays down
on his bunk and we goes off and leaves him. When we comes in at night,
there lays pore Bill a corpse.
“He must have knowed he was goin’ to die, ’cause there on a piece of
paper was his will all wrote out. It says, ‘My saddle to Red, my bridle
to Pete, and my boots to Ed.’
“Well, we buries pore Bill, havin’ a swell funeral with a circuit-rider
to do the preachin’. Ed, out of respect to the deceased, wears the
boots to the funeral. Purty soon he gits a sore heel. ‘Bill’s boots,’
he says, ‘are a little too big. They made a blister on my heel.’ One
mornin’ he takes to his bunk, sayin’ he guessed his sock had pizened
his heel. That night he breathes his last. Fine man he was, too. They
don’t make better men than Ed Wilson.
“Jist before he dies, he calls us all to his bedside and says, ‘Boys,
I’m goin’ to the big round-up. I ain’t been as righteous as I ought to
of been, but I’m hopin’ the Big Range Boss will cut me into his herd.
Dave, you can have my bridle; Red, you can take my saddle; and Pete,
you can have my boots.’ Them was the last words he ever spoke.
“Ed’s family asks us to send the corpse back to Virginia, which we
does, me going along with it. And I meets Ed’s family and tells
them what a fine man he was, and how he always done his duty, and
ever’thing. And fine folks they was, too.
“When I gits back to the ranch, I finds pore Pete all laid out for the
undertaker. ‘He died of the sore heel,’ says the boss, ‘jist like Bill
and Ed. He says give his boots to you.’
“By this time I was gittin’ suspicious. I takes the boots and examines
them close, and there in the spur-piece of the left boot is the fang of
that dirty, low-down, cut-throat reptile. I takes the pliers and pulls
out the fang, and to make shore it don’t cause any more devilment, I
takes a spade and buries it at the back of the bunk-house.
“Then I puts on the boots and wears them right on. This is them I got
on now. See that place right there that looks like a pinhole? That’s
where I pulled the critter’s fang out.”
“I guess it didn’t do any more harm,” said Lanky.
“None to speak of,” replied Red. “The boss’s old hound dawg comes
along and sees where I buried the fang, and he forgits but what he’d
buried a bone there, and he begins diggin’ like a fool. Purty soon his
paw swells up, and we have to shoot him. But as far as I know that was
the end and the extent of that reptile’s devilment.”
“Well, well,” said Hank. “That puts me in mind of a thing that happened
to Jess Simpson and me jest before I joined this outfit. We was goin’
to a rodeo at Vega in Jess’s flivver, and jest before we gits to
Lubbock, we sees a rattlesnake in the road ahead of us. ‘Watch me git
him,’ says Jess, and jest as the critter raises his head to strike,
Jess busts him one right in the mouth with the front tire of his Ford.
‘One less venomous reptile in the world,’ says Jess, and we drives on
thinkin’ that’s all of that.
“Jest as we gits to Lubbock, Jess notices that a tire is nearly down.
He pulls up to a little garage in the edge of town and has it fixed,
and then we goes on. When we gits to Plainview, we notices that the
tire is nearly flat again; so he has it fixed there. Then we goes on
to the rodeo, and Jess wins a hundred dollars bull-doggin’, and me
seventy-five goat-ropin’, which we spends and starts home.
“We gits back to Plainview and stops at the same garage where we had
our tire fixed comin’ up, and we notices a new man changin’ tires.
‘Where’s the feller that was here last week?’ says Jess. ‘He was so
good to us and fixed our tire so good I thought I’d bring him a little
snake medicine,’ says Jess, sort of winkin’.
“‘Pore feller. We buried him yesterday,’ says the man. ‘His hand all
swole up and he died.’
“‘Now ain’t that too bad,’ says Jess. ‘Fine man he was. I never seen
him till we stopped here last week on our way to Vega, but soon as I
looked him in the eye, I says to my pal here (meanin’ me), ‘There’s a
fine feller. I’m sort of funny that way,’ he says. ‘When I first see a
man, I can look him in the eye and tell whether he’s any ’count or not.’
“‘Tell his family that two of his true friends lament his death,’ I
says. ‘I reckon we better be gittin’ on.’
“We drives on wonderin’ if that dirty reptile did cause the pore
feller’s death. ‘We’ll stop at Lubbock,’ says Jess, ‘and see if the
feller there is all right.’ And so we drives up to the little garage,
which is a one-man outfit, and there was a woman runnin’ it.
“‘Where is the man that was here last week?’ says I.
“‘Oh, my husband?’ says the woman. ‘We laid him away last Tuesday,’
tears comin’ in her eyes as she spoke.
“‘I’m a pore cowpuncher,’ say I, ‘and I spent all my money at the
rodeo, but I’ll write you a draft on the boss for a month’s wages, and
it’ll be honored too, you needn’t be worried about that.’
“‘I’ll do the same,’ says Jess.
“‘You gentlemen are very kind,’ she says, ‘but I couldn’t accept it.
Besides, our home and business is paid for, and there’s the insurance
money.’
“‘How did it happen?’ asks Jess.
“‘I guess it was blood-pizen,’ she says. ‘His finger swelled up, and
he got sicker and sicker and died. Are you all friends of his?’
“‘That we are,’ says Jess, ‘and I want to say right here that there
never was a better man than--than your husband.’
“‘Naw, there wasn’t,’ says I, ‘and we wish you good luck. We’ll have to
be gittin’ away.’
“We drives off overcome with sorrow on account of the death of them two
men. Sometimes yet when I’m ridin’ along by myself, I think of them in
their graves, and I feel that me and Jess somehow had a hand in it,
and I’d jest give my hoss and saddle if it hadn’t happened. Naw, sir,
Lanky. If you see one of them critters in the road, don’t run over him.
You might be the innocent means of takin’ off several lives.”
The fire had died to a bed of coals. It was no longer possible to see
the night herders, but the indistinct songs reached the camp. Lanky was
seated on his bed-roll. The sitters had dwindled to four.
“I didn’t know they were that bad,” observed Lanky.
“That bad!” said Joe Martin. Joe was a veteran of the open range and
of the overland trail. Far and near he was known by the name of “Windy
Joe,” but Lanky had not learned of this last fact.
“That bad!” said Joe again. “Them snakes that Red and Hank told you
about must of been baby snakes. They couldn’t of been real, he-men,
venomous reptiles like the one that killed Ike Morgan. Ike was one of
the best friends I ever had in this world. He worked on the Yellow
House when Red and Hank here was wearin’ foldin’ britches.
“Ike was some cowhand, even if he did have a wooden leg. I reckon I
might as well tell you how he got his wooden leg, while I’m about it.
You see it was like this. Ike was ridin’ the range one winter day, and
as he started up a little canyon, his hoss fell and caught Ike’s leg.
The critter broke two of his own legs in the fall, and there he was on
Ike’s leg and couldn’t git up. And there was pore Ike wonderin’ if he’d
starve before anybody found him.
“Purty soon Ike smelled a norther, and the next thing he knowed, the
norther was there, and the next thing he knowed after that, he had
icicles on his nose. Ike knowed he’d freeze to death, and that _muy
pronto_ if he didn’t find some way to git loose. He figgered and
figgered. That was one thing about Ike, he always used his head. Well,
he figgered and figgered, and purty soon he looked around, and he
seen an axe about a hundred yards off. He ’lowed some nester had been
haulin’ wood out of the canyon and had lost his axe. And mighty glad
Ike was of the nester’s hard luck, too. And jest to show you the nerve
of the man, he goes over and gits the axe and chops off his own leg,
and he didn’t have any chloroform, either, it not bein’ wormy season,
and gits his self loose and walks ten miles into headquarters. That’s
what I call nerve.
“But what I started out to tell you was how Ike met his death. The boss
sent Ike to town and had the blacksmith make him a peg-leg. A fine limb
it was, too. Ike had him a stirrup made to fit it, and he could ride
as good as ever. Many a bronc he peeled after that. He could dance like
a fool, and hold his own in any shootin’ match that any tough _hombre_
ever started. Shame it was that he had to be kilt by a dirty reptile.
“Ike was fixin’ fence in the canyon one evenin’ jest at dusk. He needs
a stay for the fence, and he looks over in the bushes and sees what in
the dusk of the evenin’ looks like a pole. He gits down to pick it up,
and damn me, if it wasn’t one of them low-down reptiles--a big specimen
with twenty-eight rattles and a button. And the son-of-a-gun nabs Ike
by the wooden leg. That don’t worry Ike much, and while the critter
holds him by the peg, Ike takes out his six-shooter and sends the
gentleman on to his happy huntin’ ground, cuttin’ off the twenty-eight
rattles and the button for a keepsake--which I now have and will show
you some time if you’ll make me think of it.
“Ike gits on his hoss and rides to the bunkhouse where me and Ezra
Jenkins are, and when he tries to lift his wooden leg out of the
stirrup, it won’t come. Ezra and me gits the axe and the cold-chisel
and cuts off the stirrup from around the peg and brings Ike in the
house. By that time the leg is as big as a steer, and it is all we can
do to carry him in. Ezra gits his fencing hatchet and me the choppn’
axe, and we begins to try to reduce Ike’s leg to its natural and proper
size. We trims and we trims, and the leg swells and swells. And the
more we trims, the more it swells. However, for the first ten hours
we gains on the swellin’, but we begins to tire and there’s nobody to
spell us. I takes the axe and keeps Ezra busy packing out the chips
and splinters. We works all night choppin’ and trimmin’ and packing
out, but we gits weaker and weaker, and the swellin’ keeps gainin’ on
us. Finally, after three days, we jest naturally gives tetotally out,
and has to set down and see pore Ike die.”
“But,” said Lanky, “a bite on the wooden leg shouldn’t have given him
any pain. How did it kill him?”
“Well, you see it was like this,” replied Joe. “His leg jest swelled
and swelled till it got so big it jest naturally smothered him to
death. Fine feller he was too, one of the best friends I ever had in
this world.”
“There was jest one good thing about it,” added Joe. “Ezra and me had
enough kindling wood to do us all winter.”
Joe chunked up the fire and put on the coffee pot.
“Have a cigarette?” offered Lanky.
“Roll my own,” said Joe, fishing out a shuck.
It was Hank’s turn. “Too bad about Ike,” he said. “But I don’t doubt
a-tall it’s so, like you say, fer I seen a similar case. Very similar
case, except it wasn’t a man’s leg.
“Me and Jim Arbury hitched up the hosses one mornin’ and went out to
bring in a little stove-wood. He headed out towards a little mesquite
thicket, and jest before we got to it, I seen the lead hoss shy.
“‘What’s the matter with old Pete?’ I asks Jim.
“‘What’s the matter with him?’ Jim says. ‘My God, man,’ says he, ‘look
at that reptile! big as a fence post!’
“And shore nuff there’s a great big rattler a-holt of the wagon
tongue. He’d nabbed it, and he wouldn’t let go.
“Jim knowed exactly what to do. He jumped down and pulled out the
couplin’ pin, lettin’ the double-tree go, and drove the team out of the
way. ‘Grab the axe,’ he says. Well, I jumped out with the axe and begun
work. I shore hated to do it, but I knowed it had to be done. I had to
chop off the wagon tongue, and be damn quick about it too, to save the
wagon.”
“Them tales of yours and Joe’s jist made me think how lucky Jack
Pierson and me was not to be kilt one time,” said Red.
“The boss sends us out in the winter time to fence a section
starve-out. We puts up the posts on three sides and then we finds that
the boss hasn’t figgered right, ’cause there ain’t none fer the other
side. We starts to the canyon, thinkin’ we’d have to cut some and snake
’em out. We gits to the rim-rock, and there we sees what looks like
a lot of cedar logs. We remarks on our good luck and wonders how the
timber got there, but when we drives up close, we finds a bunch of big
hibernatin’ reptiles. There was ten thousand, I guess.
“‘Cuss the luck,’ says Jack; ‘I thought we’d found our posts.’
“‘We have,’ says I; ‘and why ain’t we? Them critters are big enough and
stiff enough. We’ll take ’em along.’
“‘You’re the doctor,’ says Jack.
“Well, we gathers up the biggest and the straightest and loads ’em
in. We find we don’t have to dig post-holes. I’d stand one of the
critters on his tail, and Jack would drive him in the ground with a
twelve-pound sledge-hammer. We stapled on the wire, and told the boss
to come out and inspect the job.
“‘Boys,’ he says, ‘you do have a brain, leastways one between you. You
saved at least a week’s work. I’ll let you go to Kansas City when we
ship again.’”
“Was the fence permanent?” asked Lanky.
“It was till spring,” said Red. “You see, when spring come, them
reptiles jist naturally thawed out and come to, and crawled off with a
whole mile of wire. Good six-wire fence we had made, too--hog-tight,
horse-high, and bull-strong.”
“Is it true,” asked Lanky, “that rattlesnakes and king snakes are
natural enemies and fight each other?”
“I don’t know about that,” said Joe, “but I’ll tell what I seen once.
Strange thing it was too. I come upon a king snake and a rattlesnake
one time fightin’ for dear life. Each one would grab the other and then
stick his head under his belly for protection. Finally, jest at the
same time, they nabbed each other by the tail and begun swallering.
There they was, jest like a ring; and they swallered and swallered, and
the ring got littler and littler. Jest then I heard a panther yell, and
I looked up jest a minute--jest a fraction--and when I looked again,
damn me, if them snakes wasn’t gone. I looked for ’em I reckon an hour,
and it was right out on the open prairie where there wasn’t any holes
or rocks, and I never could find them critters.”
[Illustration: “_I feels somethin’ tappin’ me on the leg._”]
“Now, most rattlers,” said Red, “is jist like bad men. They’re jist
naturally mean and will bite you when you ain’t lookin’, no matter
how kind you are to them. You’ll find one onct in a while, however,
that’s a purty decent sort of chap. I recollect one in particular which
was a gentlemanly critter.”
“You’re the first man I ever heard speak a good word for a
rattlesnake,” said Lanky.
“I couldn’t make no complaint about the conduct and behavior of this
particular rattlesnake,” said Red. “He treated me decent enough.”
“What did he do?” asked Lanky.
“Well,” said Red, “I was fishin’ one time out on the Pecos, and I run
out of bait. What I wanted was a frog, and I looked and looked, for
nearly an hour and couldn’t find none. Finally I seen a rattlesnake
tryin’ to swaller a big bullfrog. I thinks to myself, ‘Well, I’m goin’
to have that frog, even if I git snake-bit.’ You see I had a bottle of
snake medicine in my pocket--Old Rock and Rye it was.
“I put my foot on that rattlesnake’s tail and took a holt of that
frog’s hind legs, and jist naturally extracted him right out of the
reptile’s mouth. Well, instead of gittin’ ringy and showin’ fight, like
most rattlers would, this here snake jist looks so sad and down in the
mouth that I couldn’t help feelin’ sorry for the critter.
“‘Here, old feller; cheer up,’ says I, givin’ him a swig of Old Rock
and Rye out of my bottle. He takes a dram and crawls off jist as pert
as a fresh cuttin’ hoss.
“I puts the frog on my hook and sets down to fish. Jist as I was about
to git a bite, I feels somethin’ tappin’ me on the leg. I looks down,
and damn me, if there ain’t that rattlesnake back with two frogs in
his mouth.”
Hank stirred up the coals and put on a mesquite grub. Lanky gave him
his cue by asking if rattlesnakes ever got in people’s beds.
“Occasionally,” said Hank. “Occasionally, though they ain’t as thick as
they used to be. One time I woke up in the night, thinkin’ it was about
time for me to stand guard. I felt something cold on my chest. I knowed
what it was. I says to myself, ‘Now, Hank, keep cool. Keep cool.’ All
the time I was easin’ my hand back around to the top of my head to git
a-holt of my six-gun. I was as careful as I could be, but I reckon the
critter got on to what I was doin’, for jest as I was about to touch
the gun, he raised up his head and opened his mouth to strike. Then I
let him have a bullet right in the mouth. That was the quickest draw I
ever made.”
“I got in a fix jest like that one time,” said Joe, “except, fool like,
I didn’t have my gun handy.”
“What did you do?” asked Lanky.
“Well,” said Joe, “after thinkin’ it over and seein’ there wasn’t
nothin’ I could do, I jest shet my eyes and went back to sleep, and
when I woke up in the morning, the critter was gone. Jest crawled off
of his own free will and accord.”
“Well,” said Red, “that shows what a tenderfoot you was, and Hank,
too. If you’d jist of put hair rope around your bed before you went to
sleep, them snakes wouldn’t of come in.”
“I had read that in stories,” said Lanky, “but I didn’t know if it were
really true.”
“True as the gospel,” said Red.
“How does it work?” asked Lanky.
“Tickles their bellies,” replied Red. “A rattlesnake jist can’t stand
ticklin’. One fall when we was workin’, the cook one night didn’t make
camp till dark. Then we found out he had bedded us in a regular den of
reptiles. We made our beds right up techin’ each other, and put hair
ropes on the ground all around the whole outfit. The next mornin’ we
counted a hundred and twenty-nine rattlesnakes around the beds. They
had jist naturally tickled their fool selves to death tryin’ to crawl
over the rope.”
“The critters, however, ain’t so numerous as they used to be in Pecos
Bill’s time,” said Joe. “That man almost put ’em out of business in his
day.”
“How did he do that?” asked Lanky.
“Bill was a very smart and ingenious lad,” said Joe. “He was the
first man to capture a whiffle-poofle; he was the first man to train
prairie-dogs to dig post-holes; and he was the first man to do a lot
of things. Among other things he invented a way to slay rattlesnakes
wholesale. When Bill wanted to capture or exterminate any sort of
reptile or bird or beast, he would study the critter’s habits and find
out what his weakness was; then he would go off and study and study,
and purty soon he would come back with a way all figgered out. Bill
always used his head. He put in two of the best years of his life
studyin’ rattlesnakes. Not that Bill was afraid of ’em. But one of the
critters bit his horse one time, and then he got mad. But he never let
on. He jest went out and made friends with ’em and lived with ’em, and
noticed their habits and their diet and where they liked to live at
different times of the year, and all that.
“Bill discovered that rattlesnakes had rather have moth-balls to eat
than anything under the sun. A rattlesnake will leave a young and
tender rabbit any day for a moth-ball. Bill found out likewise that a
rattlesnake jest can’t stand chili powder. Those two clues give him an
idear. First he took some chili powder and soaked it in nitroglycerin.
He rolled this into little pills and coated them with moth-ball.
“Then he took these balls and scattered ’em around where the reptiles
stayed. Well, the critters would come out and find the moth-balls and
swaller ’em right down, not thinkin’ there might be a ketch somewheres.
Purty soon the outside coating would melt off, and the chili powder
would burn the critters on the inside. This would make ’em mad, and
they’d beat their tails against the ground and rocks, which exploded
the nitroglycerin and blowed ’em into smithereens. We used to kill ’em
that way here on the ranch, but the boss made us quit after one of the
critters crawled under a steer and blowed him into atoms.”
“I’d think that would be a rather dangerous method,” said Lanky. “But
what is that whiffle-poofle you mentioned a few minutes ago?”
“Oh, you’ll learn when you git a little older,” replied Joe. “You’d
better hit the hay now, Lanky. You stand next guard.”
Lanky bent down to untie his bed-roll. Then he jumped straight into the
air. “My God, I’m bitten!” he yelled.
“Bring the butcher knife and the coal-oil,” said Hank, “and heat a
brandin’ iron.”
“Spect we ought to cut his hand off right now before the pizen
spreads,” said Red. “Where’s the axe?”
“Now, lad, don’t let ’em buffalo you,” said Joe. “You ain’t bit a-tall.”
“But there’s blood on my hand,” said Lanky; “see.”
“That’s a shore sign you ain’t bit,” said Joe. “That’s the snake’s
blood; see. That’s the very snake Red kilt.”
“But he struck me,” said Lanky.
“Shore he did. Them devilish critters will strike after they have their
heads cut off. Reflex. That’s what they call it. Dirty trick they
played on you.”
“Well, well,” said Red. “The critter’s head is gone. Still I think
we better cut his hand off to make shore. Them things is so pizenous
the bite might kill him anyway. I seen a man bit jist like that one
time....”
“And he never was right in his head again,” said Hank.
“Which one of you was it?” asked Lanky.
SPEED
On Lanky’s second night in the cow camp, there were many allusions to
his snake-bite.
“Now, Lanky, watch out for rattlesnakes and don’t git bit again,” said
Hank.
“I hope you’ll recover without an operation,” said Red, “but still I
think we ought to of cut your hand off. No tellin’ what might happen.
Ought to be on the safe side.”
“Don’t let ’em buffalo you, Lanky; don’t let ’em buffalo you,” said
Joe. “You ain’t such a greenhorn as lots of chaps I’ve seen. Why, when
Red here first come to this outfit, he was so ign’rant he didn’t know
split beans from coffee. He thought you had to have a gun to shoot
craps; he thought a dogie was somethin’ you built houses out of. He
thought a lasso was a girl, and _remuda_ a kind of grass. When the boss
got ringy, Red said he was a wrangler. Why, he even thought a cowboy
was a bull.”
“He was nearly as bad as old _Borrego_ Mason’s sheep-herder,” said
Hank. “I reckon Joe’s told you about him, ain’t he, Lanky?--No?
“Well, a guy comes down from the East and tries to git a job runnin’
cattle. He ’lowed he’s jest graduated from college--Harvard or Yale,
or some of them big schools up there. Said he’d been a big athlete and
played in all sorts of games and run in big foot races, and the like.
’Lowed he come to Texas to be a big rancher. He said, though, he’d be
willin’ to begin at the bottom and work his way up, and for the time
bein’ he’d take a job as a common cowhand.
“Well, he went to all the outfits in the whole country, and he couldn’t
git anybody to take him on.”
“Why not?” asked Lanky.
“Well, it was mostly on account of his lingo. He wouldn’t talk United
States, like other people. He wouldn’t ask for a job. He was wantin’
a ‘position’ or ‘employment,’ with a ‘future’ to it. And he wouldn’t
say ‘wages’, but always asked about ‘remuneration’ and ‘emolument’ and
the like. Some of the bosses didn’t know what the hell he was talkin’
about; some of ’em said he must be a rustler; and others said they
wouldn’t hire a damn foreigner until he learned to talk United States,
or at least Mex’can.
“And so the pore feller had to hire himself to a damn sheep man. It
nearly broke his heart. It makes me sorry for the pore fool every time
I think of it.
“And when Old Man Mason took him down to the sheep pens and turned out
the _borregos_, and the pore greenhorn seen he was goin’ to have to
walk, he jest naturally broke down and cried. He told Old Man Mason
that his sweetheart back East had jest died and that he’d come out West
to git over it.
“Old Man Mason told him the first thing to do was to take them sheep
out to graze. He told him to be shore to git ’em back by night, and to
be damn shore to look after the lambs and git every one of ’em back in
the pen. If he didn’t there’d be some tall hell-raisin’ in the camp.
“Old Man Mason went back to his shack and set in the shade all day.
Finally it was might nigh dark, and the herder hadn’t come in with
the woollies. The Old Man waited a while longer, and still the herder
didn’t show up. About nine o’clock he started out to the pens about
three hundred yards from the house, to see if he could see anything of
the critters. On the way out he met his new sheep-herder.
“‘Did you have any trouble with the sheep?’ says he.
“‘Not with the sheep,’ says the herder. ‘But,’ he says, ‘the lambs
occasioned me considerable annoyance and perturbation.’
“Well, Old Man Mason didn’t know what the hell he meant, and he didn’t
want to ask, for fear he’d appear ign’rant; so went on to the pens to
see what was the matter with the lambs.
“The moon was up, and he could see over the rock fence. The sheep was
all huddled up in the middle of the pen, and the Old Man counted a
hundred and seventy-five jack-rabbits runnin’ around and buttin’ the
fence, doin’ their damndest to git out.”
“I got up considerable speed once myself,” said Joe, “once when I was
a good deal younger than I am now; but it wasn’t no rabbit that I was
chasin’; it was a prairie-fire.”
“You mean it was the prairie-fire chasing you, don’t you?” said Lanky.
“Naw,” said Joe. “It was jest as I was sayin’. I was chasin’ the
prairie-fire. It wasn’t the prairie-fire chasin’ me.
“It was back in the early days one time when I was out huntin’ cattle
on the plains. One day in August, I recken it was, I follered off some
cow tracks and got lost from the outfit. I was out two days without
nothin’ to eat. Finally I come on a little herd of buffalo. I shoots a
good fat cow and cuts off a piece of tenderloin.
“Well, when I begins to look around for somethin’ to cook it with, not
a thing can I find. There ain’t a stick of timber, not a twig, nor a
dry buffalo chip nowhere around there. I was hungry enough to have et
that meat raw and bloody, and I needed it too, for I was so hungry that
I was weak in the knees. But somehow I never was much of a raw meat
eater. It ain’t civilized.
“Well, as I was sayin’, I couldn’t find no regular fuel; so I
calkilated I’d try the prairie grass, which was long and curly and dry.
I gathers up a big pile, puts the hunk of meat on my ramrod and holds
it over the grass and lights a match. Jest one flash and the fire’s all
gone, except the wind comes up all at once and sets the dang prairie on
fire.
“Well, sir, I takes out after that prairie-fire, holdin’ my meat over
the blaze. It would burn along purty regular for a while; then all of
a sudden it would give a big jump and tear out across the plains like
hell after a wild woman, and I’d have to do my dangest to keep up with
it. Well, I chased that prairie-fire about three hours, I recken, but
I finally got my meat cooked. I et it--and it shore did taste good,
too--and started back across the burnt country to where I had shot the
buffalo. Damn me, if I hadn’t run so far in three hours that it took me
two days to git back. There my hoss was waitin’ fer me, and I found the
outfit the next day.”
“Yeah, that was purty good runnin’,” said Red. “But you nor the feller
Hank was a-tellin’ about either wasn’t as swift as one of them college
chaps we had on an outfit where I worked once. Not near so swift. Been
a good thing for him if he hadn’t been so fast. Too swift for his own
good.”
“How was that?” asked Lanky.
“Here’s the way it was,” said Red. “He was a greenhorn, but he was
a-learnin’ fast. Would of made a good cowhand, pore feller. He got to
be a purty good shot with a Winchester and six-shooter both, and he was
always practicin’ on rabbits and coyotes and prairie-dogs, and things.
Then he decided he’d have a lot of critters mounted and send ’em back
to his folks.
“Well, he gits everything he wants but a prairie-dog, but he jist can’t
git a-holt of one of them critters.”
“Are they hard to hit?” asked Lanky.
“Oh, he could hit ’em all right. He got so he could plug ’em right in
the eye, but they always jumped in their holes and got away. They’ll do
it every time, Lanky; they’ll do it every time. Why, one day he took
his forty-five Winchester and shot one of the critters clean in two,
but the front-end grabbed the hind-end and run down the hole with it
before he could git there.
[Illustration: “_Jist as he pulls the trigger, he runs to beat hell._”]
“Well, he asked the boss if there was any way he could git one, and the
boss told him to take good aim, and jist as soon as he pulled the
trigger to run jist as fast as he could and maybe he’d git there in
time to grab the critter before he got away.
“Well, he goes out and finds a prairie dog a-settin’ on his hole
a-barkin’ in the sun. He pulls out his six-shooter and takes a good aim
at the critter’s eye, and jist as soon as he pulls the trigger, he runs
to beat hell, jist like the boss told him to. He got there in time, all
right, and bent down to grab the prairie-dog; but jist as he touched
it, the bullet hit him in the back jist below the left shoulder-blade.
When we found him that evenin’, he was crippled so bad we had to shoot
him. Too bad, too, for he had the makin’s of a first-class cowhand.”
“Yeah,” said Joe, “them guys you all been tellin’ about was mighty
swift, but you don’t have to go back East to find speed. Why, I’ve seen
an old cowhand that growed up right here in Texas that could of beat
any of them Eastern fellers.
“Tell you what I saw once. One day after the spring work was over, a
bunch of us decided to have a baseball game. Well, we chose up, but we
liked one man havin’ enough men for two teams.
“‘What we gonna do?’ says I. ‘I guess we’ll have to git along with two
fielders on our side,’
“Pete Dawson spoke up and says, ‘All you men git in the field, and I’ll
pitch and ketch both.’
“And damn me, if that’s not what he done. He got on the pitcher’s box,
which was a prairie-dog hole, and he’d throw a ball so it whistled like
a bullet; then he run in a half circle and git behind the batter and
ketch it.
“Not a batter ever teched the ball. It was jest three up and three down
with them, and there wasn’t nothin’ for the rest of us to do.
“When it was Pete’s bat, he’d jest knock a slow grounder out toward
first, and he’d make a home run before the first-baseman could git
a-holt of the ball. We beat ’em ninty-six to nothin’.
“One time Pete was with us when we was movin’ a bunch of wild Mexico
steers. One night the fool brutes stampeded. We all jumped on our
hosses to try to turn ’em and git ’em to millin’.
“We all had good hosses, especially Pete, who had a fine hoss he’s won
lots of money with; but we couldn’t git ahead of them steers. They was
jest too swift for us.
“Directly Pete jumps off and takes his slicker and six-shooter with
him. He circles around, and in no time, after tromping about a half a
dozen jackrabbits to death, he’s in front of that herd.
“We all expects to see him git kilt, but he jest trots along in front
of the critters wavin’ his slicker and firin’ his six-shooter. After
he’d run that way about ten miles, the herd got to millin’ and purty
soon they quieted down, and we never had no more trouble with ’em.
“That jest naturally took all the pertness and spirit out of them
brutes. They was so ashamed of themselves that from then on out they
was as gentle as a bunch of milk cows.
“The only thing that hurt Pete was that when it was over, his nose was
bleedin’ like six-bits.”
“Got too hot, I suppose,” said Lanky.
“Naw,” said Joe, “that wasn’t it. The bleedin’ was from the outside.
He jest run so fast that the wind jest naturally peeled all the hide
off his nose, and he had to keep it tied up for about ten days till he
growed some more skin.”
“I bet a hoss and saddle,” said Red, “that he couldn’t of turned old
man Coffey’s bull like that. That brute had speed. One time old man
Coffey shipped out a train-load of cattle from where he was ranchin’
on the Lapan Flat; and this here bull decides he wants to go with ’em.
They cut him back, and the train pulls out in the night.
“Well, sir, the next mornin’ them cowpunchers looks out the caboose
winder, and there’s that bull trottin’ along by the train, bellerin’
and pawin’ up the dust, and hookin’ at the telegraph poles as he passes
’em by. He follered that train all the way to Kansas City and had to be
shipped back.
“The fellers started to sell him to the packers jist for spite, but
they knowed old man Coffey never would git over it if they did.”
“Yeah, I heard of that critter,” said Joe. “Fact is I rode a hundred
miles jest to see him once, but I didn’t git to.
“We gits to old man Coffey’s place about dinner time, and we goes in
and asks if he’s home.
“‘Naw, he ain’t at home right now,’ says his wife. ‘Git down and look
at your saddles, and come in and eat.’
“‘Where is he this mornin’?’ I asks.
“‘He left ’bout nine o’clock,’ she says. ‘He’s goin’ over to Phoenix.
Said he might go by Roswell.’
“‘I reckon we won’t git to see him,’ I says.
“‘Jest unsaddle your hosses,’ she says. ‘I look for him back about an
hour by sun, that is, if he don’t have no hard luck.’
“‘Wonder if you could tell us where his fast bull is?’ I says. ‘We come
over to see him.’
“‘Oh,’ she says, ‘he’s ridin’ the bull. That’s how I know he’ll git back
tonight.’”
“I reckon that bull could of outrun a milamo bird,” said Hank.
“No doubt he could,” said Joe. “No doubt he could.”
“What is a milamo bird like?” asked Lanky.
But Joe forestalled Hank by saying, “Lanky, you didn’t git enough sleep
last night, what with all that rattlesnake skeer. I seen you noddin’
while Hank was a-tellin’ about that sheepherder of Old Man Mason’s,
though I couldn’t blame you much for that. Go to bed, son, and maybe
we’ll see a milamo bird tomorrow.”
BIRDS AND BEASTS
It was Lanky’s third night in cow camp. The herd had been bedded, and
the first night shift had gone on. Lanky, sore of muscle, but extremely
contented, sat by the fire with Red Wallace, Hank Williams, and Joe
Martin, the men who on the first night had imparted to him the esoteric
lore of the rattlesnake, and who on the second night had entertained
him with yarns of marvelous speed.
Lanky had proved a good listener. He had done his best to appear
credulous. He had interrupted seldom, and when he had, he had always
followed his cue, and had propounded only the questions that the
narrators wanted him to ask. It is not surprising, therefore, that on
this night the older men were loaded for him.
It was Red Wallace that discharged the first missile.
“We ’as speakin’ of milamo birds last night,” he observed. “I seen sign
today, lots of sign.”
“That’s funny; I done that very same thing,” said Hank. “I seen, I
reckon, a hundred holes where they’d been feedin’.”
“Do you suppose we’re likely to see any of them?” asked Lanky.
“Not likely,” said Joe, “not likely. They’re mighty scerce these days,
mighty scerce, and mighty shy, mighty shy. I ain’t seen one in years.
You might keep your eye peeled though; we might happen on one any time.
We might. You never can tell.”
“Yeah, we might,” broke in Hank. “Still we’re more likely to hear one
than to see one. They’ve got a way of knowin’ when somebody’s about,
though he’s a mile off. Yeah, they’re mighty hard to see, ’specially
these days; mighty hard to see.”
“What sort of a bird is the milamo?” asked Lanky. “What is he like?”
“Oh,” replied Hank, “he’s like a milamo. They ain’t nothin’ else jest
like him.”
“Is he large or small?” asked Lanky.
“He’s rather large,” said Hank, “though not as big as an ostrich
I reckon, though somewhat bigger than a crane, which he somewhat
resembles in general makeup and conformation.
“In the fall when the rains comes and fills up the lakes, like they are
now, the critters comes in, or used to, and feeds around the edges of
the water. They’ve got long legs like stilts for wadin’ in the water, a
long neck, and a long beak that they uses to bore into the soft ground
for the earthworms, which is their principal food and diet.
“I ain’t talkin’ about the little puny earthworms like school boys use
to fish with. Naw, sir, a milamo bird would be ashamed of his self if
he et one of them kind. He digs down into the ground and ketches the
big fellers, shore-nuff he-man worms that looks like inner-tubes. I’ve
seen holes you could hide a hoss’s leg in where them critters ’ad been
escavatin’ for grub. More than one good cow hoss has had to be shot
from steppin’ in holes that these birds has made, not to say nothin’ of
the good cow-hands that has had their necks broke.
“But as I was sayin’ about the milamo bird, he jest has a way of
knowin’ where the big worms lives, and when he comes to a place where
he knows one of them big fellers is all curled up takin’ a nap down
under the ground, he sticks his bill into the soil and begins to bore
and bore, walkin’ around and around. Purty soon his bill goes out of
sight, then his head, then his neck, clean up to his shoulders. That’s
the way you can slip up on one of ’em. If you can ketch him in jest
that stage, maybe you can git sight of him.
“Well, he bores around a while in the hole he has dug; then all at once
he sets back like a hoss when there’s a big steer on the other end of
the rope; and you know then he’s got a-holt of one of them big worms.
The more he pulls, the more the worm stretches. If he lets up the least
bit, the worm jerks his head and neck back into the hole. I seen one
once a-bobbin’ up and down like that for two hours and fifteen minutes
before he finally got his worm.
“Well, he pulls and tussles and yanks and jerks, and finally the worm
jest can’t stand it no longer and has to let go. He shoots out jest
like a nigger-shooter when you turn it loose, and like as not he hits
the milamo in the eye. But he’s a good-natured bird and don’t git ringy
about it. Jest why he does it, I don’t know; maybe he’s so glad to git
the worm out, or maybe he sees the joke’s on him, after all; anyhow,
when the worm comes out and hits him in the eye, he jest naturally gits
tickled and rears back on his hind legs and laughs through his beak so
you can hear him a mile or more.”
“I see,” said Lanky. “A strange bird.”
“But mighty shy,” replied Hank, “mighty shy.”
“Yeah, they’re shy critters all right,” agreed Joe, “but they ain’t
near as shy as the whiffle-pooffle. Why, them things is so bashful they
don’t feel comfortable unless they’re hid in the bottom of a bottomless
lake.”
“Are they a fish?” asked Lanky.
“Not exactly a fish,” explained Joe, “a sort of cross, I reckon,
between an eel and a gila monster.”
“Are there any around here?” asked Lanky.
“Well, maybe,” replied Joe; “maybe a few. Still I doubt it. You see
right around here the lakes go dry sometimes in the dry season, and
the whiffle-pooffle wants water, and plenty of it, _mucha agua_.
Still there may be a few. Out in the Roswell country, they used to be
numerous. Also in Toyah Creek and Leon waterholes. I expect, though,
they’re gittin’ scerce out in them parts now. All game is gittin’
scerce. Still, them critters is mighty hard to ketch, and it’s jest a
few that knows how to do it. Mighty few in fact.”
“Do people fish for them, then?” asked Lanky.
“Some does,” replied Joe, “but it ain’t no use to fish for ’em with a
regular fishin’ outfit. I’ve seen them rich dudes from the East come
out with their fine tackle, rods and reels and all that fool finery,
and fish and fish for ’em all day long and never git a nibble. Still
they can be caught.”
“How does one catch them?” asked Lanky.
“So far as I know it was Pecos Bill that discovered the method. Durin’
Pecos Bill’s time there was a lot of people that didn’t believe there
was any sech animal as the whiffle-pooffle livin’ in the bottom of the
lakes. Bill said he knowed there was, and he’d show ’em. So he studied
and studied, and finally he found a way to capture the critters. First
he gits together a rowboat, a long post-hole auger, and a can of oil.
Then he hunts up the funniest story-teller he can find and takes him
along and sets out.
“He rows out on the lake to where the water’s deep; then he takes the
post-hole auger and bores a hole clean down to the bottom so as the
whiffle-pooffle can come up to the top. Then he has the story-teller
tell the funniest stories he can think of--all about Pat and Mike and
an Englishman and a Scotchman, and all that.
“Purty soon the whiffle-pooffle gits interested and pricks up his ears.
Then Bill tells the story-teller to git funnier. Then purty soon the
whiffle-pooffle is so amused that he comes up through the hole and
sticks out his head. Bill tells the man to keep on gittin’ funnier
and funnier till the whiffle-pooffle comes clean out on top of the
water. Then Bill begins to ply the oars, very gentle-like at first.
The whiffle-pooffle is so interested and amused that he jest naturally
can’t help but foller the story-teller, who all the time is gittin’
funnier and funnier. Bill rows faster and faster, all the time makin’
straight for the bank.
[Illustration: “_Purty soon the whiffle-pooffle gits interested and
pricks up his ears._”]
“Jest before he gits there, when he is rowin’ as fast as he can, he
pours the oil out on the water and cuts sharply to the left. By that
time the whiffle-pooffle has got up so much speed on the slick water
that he can’t stop, and he jest naturally slides right out on the
bank. Then Pecos Bill lands on him. If you ever git one of the critters
on the land, he’s jest as helpless as a year-old baby. But they’re
mighty bashful, mighty bashful.”
“In that particular, thay ain’t a-tall like the club-tailed
glyptodont,” said Red, “which is a very ferocious and vicious beast.
I’ll tell you, Lanky, when you’re ridin’ around in the canyons and meet
one of them fellers, you’d better not git into any disputes with him
about your highway rights. Jist give him the whole road and don’t argue
with him. And be careful you don’t hang around under the rim-rock when
them critters is around.”
“I take it they are animals,” said Lanky.
“Yeah, I guess they belong to the kingdom of beasts,” replied Red.
“Some people call ’em whang-doodles, but they ain’t real whang-doodles,
bein’ much bigger and more ferocious. They’re purty scerce now, but
when we work the canyon tomorrow, I can show you places where they have
been. Yes, sir, I can show you the very spot where one of them fellers
took off one of the very best friends I ever had in this world.”
“A sort of mountain lion, I suppose,” said Lanky.
“Son, one of them babies would make a mountain lion look like a kitten.
Besides, they don’t belong to the feline species nohow, bein’ more like
a kangaroo in build, and about sixteen hands high when on all-fours,
though most of the time they hop along on their hind legs and tail and
keep their forepaws ready to biff anything that gits in their way. And
if one of them critters hits you--well, you’re lucky if they find
anything to bury.
“However, that ain’t their main method of combat; that ain’t the way
one of ’em took off my dear friend--Jack Snodgrass was his name. The
glyptodont has got a big flat tail made out of stuff like cow’s horn,
except there ain’t no bone in it. This tail bein’ springy is a great
aid and help in more ways than one. He can jump along with it and clear
the brush, and he can land on it when he wants to jump off of a cliff,
and he don’t feel no bad effects from the jar.
“Well, I started to tell you how one of them beasts took off my dear
friend Jack Snodgrass. Jack used to work on this outfit, and one fall
he was workin’ the canyon, jist like we’ll be tomorrow, and Jack gits a
glimpse of the glyptodont. Jack was always a curious lad; so he tarried
around to see what the critter was about. Jack was on the other side of
a canyon, anyway, and he ’lowed he’d have plenty of time to make his
stampede if the critter showed any signs of combat. So Jack jist looks
across to see what’s goin’ on.
“Directly the glyptodont gits wind of him and looks at him right
straight for a minute or two. But Jack still ain’t worried none, havin’
the canyon between him and the ferocious beast. He jist stands there
and watches him to see what he is about. Purty soon he notices that the
glyptodont is spadin’ around on the ground with his tail. Presently
he scoops up a big boulder, jist like you’d lift it with a shovel. He
carries this on his tail, bein’ careful not to let it fall off, and
backs up and eases it off on the top of a bigger boulder. Jack begins
to try to figure out a way to capture the brute; he ’lows if he ever
could git him broke, he’d be a mighty handy animal to have around the
place about tankin’ time.
“Well, the glyptodont walks over to the other side of the rock he’s set
up and squats on his hind legs; then he draws up his front legs and
begins to whirl around and around on his hind legs, jist like a spool
of barbed wire on a crowbar when you’re stringin’ fence. After he spins
around a while, he lets down his tail, which hits the rock he’s set up,
which comes through the air like a cannon-ball. That was the last thing
pore Jack ever knowed. We buried him, pore feller, next day--that is,
all of him we could find. When we’re over there tomorrow, I’ll show you
the place where he got kilt, as well as a lot of other places where
them critters has catapulted rocks up and down the canyons jist to keep
in practice and for the fun of seein’ ’em roll. Yeah, them club-tailed
glyptodonts is ferocious animals.”
“They’re vicious brutes,” agreed Joe, “but they ain’t got much on the
gwinter.”
“I never heard of a gwinter,” said Lanky.
“Well,” replied Joe, “did you ever hear of a godaphro?”
“No.”
“Did you ever hear of a side-swiper?”
“No.”
“Did you ever hear of a mountain-stem-winder?”
“No, I never heard of them, either.”
“Well, they’re really all one and the same thing, but the real true
and correct name is gwinter.”
“And what sort of a beast is he?” asked Lanky.
“Well, he’s a grass-eatin’ quadruped,” said Joe, “something like a
cross between a buffalo and a mountain-goat, only he’s a lot more
ferocious. The peculiar thing about the gwinter is his legs. Instead
of havin’ four legs of equal length like a critter ought to have, or
two short legs in front and two long ones behind, like the glyptodont,
these brutes have two long legs on the downhill side and two short legs
on the uphill side. This is mighty convenient for ’em, since they don’t
live on level ground nohow. Some of ’em has their right legs long, and
some of ’em has their right legs short, dependin’ on which way they
graze around the mountains. The Chisos and the Davis and the Guadalupe
mountains used to be full of ’em. Up there, them critters was thicker
than the buffalo or the antelope on the plains, but they’re gittin’
mighty scerce now. Still, they took off many a cow-hand in the early
days, and sometimes yet a tenderfoot gits in the way of one of ’em and
don’t come back home to the chuck wagon at night.
“If one of them critters ever starts toward you, Lanky, don’t for
anything let him know you’re scered. If you try to run, he’ll git you
shore. Jest stand there and look him right in the eye like you was glad
to see him. He’ll be comin’ right toward you with his head down like
a bat shot out of a cannon. Still, don’t move, and if you’re in the
saddle, hold your hoss. Jest let that gwinter alone till he gits in two
steps of you, then take a couple of steps down the hill. He can’t run
the other way, and you’ll be safe. Ten to one he’ll be so mad about it
he’ll try to foller you, anyway, and when he gits his short legs down
hill, he’s a goner. Jest stand by and watch him roll down the mountain
and break his fool neck. That’s one reason why they’re so scerce, the
cowboys learned that trick. Another reason is that they fought among
themselves too much. You see, them that has their long legs on the
right used to meet them that has their long legs on the left as they
grazed around the mountains. And when two of ’em met like that, they
always tangled up. Finally they fought till the weaker side all got
kilt, so now there’s only one kind on each mountain. On some mountains
it’s the right-leggers, and on some mountains it’s the left-leggers.”
“If somebody would capture one alive,” said Lanky, “he could sell him
to a circus for five thousand dollars.”
“That’s been tried, son; that’s been tried,” replied Joe. “However,
your figger’s too small. Once when I was punchin’ cattle in the Chisos,
Barnum and Bailey sent a feller all the way down from New York City
with fifty thousand dollars to pay any man that would cage him a
gwinter. For a long time he couldn’t git nobody to try it, till finally
he come to our outfit.
“‘I won’t endanger the lives of my men in any sech manner and fashion,’
says the boss. ‘However,’ he says, turnin’ to us, ‘if any of you men
want to try it on your own hook, you can. They ain’t much work to do
right now, and I’ll let you off for a few days.’
“Well, we gits our best mounts and ropes, and looks after our cinches,
and sets out. We scouts around a while, and shore nuff we hears one
snort right near the foot of Egg-shell Mountain. We lets out our
wildest yells and fires off our six-shooters, and somehow, by luck I
guess, we gits the critter buffaloed, and he goes tearin’ around the
mountain and us after him. Each time he goes around the mountain he
gits a little higher. We sees our hosses is goin’ to give out if we
don’t figger out some way to spell ’em. We ’lows that since we got the
critter on the run, two of us will be enough to go around the mountain,
and the others stays put. Then on the next round, two more goes, and so
on and so forth. Each time we gits a bit nearer the top. Finally, we
all joins in, in order to be there when he gits to the top and can’t go
no further. And purty soon there he is at the top.”
“How did he escape?” asked Lanky.
“Why, the brute jest turned right through his self, jest clean wrong
side out like a sock, and run the other way.”
“And that was the last you saw of him?”
“Oh, we used to see him occasionally, as we knowed by his long legs
bein’ on the other side; but when winter come, he caught cold and died.
And that’s what you’ll do, Lanky, if you set there by the coals and
shiver. You’d better git a little shut-eye before you stand guard.”
WIND AND WEATHER
The day had been blustery enough, and Lanky’s eyes were red from the
sand’s having cut into his eyeballs. There was still dust in the air,
but at twilight the wind had subsided, and Lanky was experiencing that
feeling of intense relief that comes when the sandstorm is over.
During the day there had been little talk. Lanky had most of the time
ridden within normal hailing distance of Red Wallace; but conversation
would have been difficult, and neither he nor Red had been in the mood
for it. At noon each man swallowed his beans and bacon as rapidly as he
could. Even then, he consumed a considerable quantity of sand.
The old-timers were sitting expectantly around the fire. Their
experience with tenderfeet told them that Lanky would open the
conversation, and that the topic would be the wind.
“Terrible day we had,” he observed. “How much sandstorm weather are we
likely to have?”
“Son,” replied Red, “what you’ve seen today is the gentle zephers of
spring. You ain’t seen a real sandstorm.”
“Then,” replied Lanky, “I’d like to know how I’m to know one when I
meet it.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, Lanky,” said Red. “I’ll tell you exactly how you
can know. Do you recollect seein’ a log-chain hangin’ suspended from
the big hackberry tree in front of the bunkhouse?”
“That immense chain?” asked Lanky.
“Yeah,” said Red. “That’s a log-chain. And you wondered what it was
up there for, no doubt. Well, it’s to tell when there’s a sandstorm.
As long as it’s hangin’ straight down, we know there ain’t no wind to
speak of. When it hangs out at an angle of forty-five degrees, we speak
of a slight breeze. It’s only when she’s stickin’ straight out parallel
to the ground that it’s correct and proper to speak of a windstorm.”
“I’d think winds like that would blow all the houses and windmills
over,” observed Lanky.
“It ain’t only the houses and windmills,” said Hank. “It’s real-estate.
Why, there was a feller come in here one time and filed on a section of
land in Colonel Slaughter’s pasture, and a big sandstorm come along,
and he never did find that section. He advertised in all the papers for
it, offerin’ a reward for its return, and he got lots of answers from
people down in the brush country that had stray sections on their hands
that they wanted to git rid of, but he looked ’em over and said none of
’em had his brand on ’em. And so he had to go back East.”
“Yeah, the wind does some mighty funny things,” said Joe. “I come dang
near losin’ the best saddle hoss I ever had on account of a sandstorm.”
“I guess he got against a drift fence where the tumbleweeds and sand
collected and buried the critter alive,” said Hank.
“Naw, that wasn’t it,” replied Joe, “though I’ve dug many a cow-brute
out of the sand drifts. It wasn’t that. In them days I was workin’
cattle out in the Monahans country. One evenin’ the boss tells me to
swing up a little draw, sayin’ the wagon would be at the head. Well, I
got out of the draw jest at dark, and I looked around, but I couldn’t
see no campfire anywheres in sight. I rode around a while, but still
not seein’ no signs of the wagon, and bein’ tired, I decided to turn
in. I was scered to turn my hoss loose, (Brown Jug was his name) for
fear he’d strike off to the remuda and leave me there afoot. So I
stakes him to a little cottonwood bush on top of a mound. I knowed
better than to hobble the critter, for he was wise to walkin’ off with
the hobbles on. Well, when I got him staked out, I took off the saddle,
which I used for a pillow, and the blanket, which I used for a bed, and
went to sleep.
“In the mornin’ when I woke up and looked around, the scenery wasn’t
exactly familiar. There was a big cottonwood tree which I couldn’t
remember seein’ the night before, and I wondered how I come to miss
it. And I looked some more, and there wasn’t any Brown Jug in sight
anywheres. I thinks to myself, the critter never played a dirty trick
like that on me before, and I ’lows he must be around somewheres.
Shorely, I says to myself, I ought to be able to find the bush I tied
him to. So I whistles three times, and then I hears a weak nicker ’way
up in the top of the tree, and I looks up, and damn me if there wasn’t
that pore critter, with his tongue hangin’ out, dang nigh choked to
death.
“Then I seen what had happened, I’d tied the hoss on top of a
sand-dune. The wind had come up and the sand had blowed away. What I
calculated on bein’ a bush was in fact a great big tree--so dang big in
fact, that the thirty-foot lariat wouldn’t let pore Brown Jug more than
half way to the ground. If I hadn’t woke up jest when I did, the pore
brute would of choked to death shore.”
“How did you get him down?” asked Lanky.
“Oh, that was easy,” said Joe. “In them days I always had my old
six-gun by me, and I jest whipped her out and put a bullet through the
rope and let Brown Jug down. The fall didn’t seem to hurt him none, and
after he blowed a little while, he was as pert as ever.
“However, the wind got up again in the middle of the mornin’, and the
only way I could keep the hoss on the ground was to tie big rocks to
the horn of the saddle.”
“That shows you’ve got more sense than a prairie-dog,” said Hank,
“which surprises me. Many a time on the South Plains durin’ a
sandstorm, I’ve seen them critters ten feet in the air, diggin’ with
all their might, tryin’ to git back in their holes.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ve seen,” said Red, “and it was the funniest
sight I ever saw caused by a sandstorm. One day in the spring the boss
sent me out to pizen prairie-dogs. He was one man I didn’t work for
long; he jist couldn’t stand to see a man not doin’ somethin’. So when
the wind would git bad and he didn’t want to go out his self, he would
send us out to ride fence and pizen dogs and the like.
“Well, this time I rode over to where I knowed there was a big town,
and I rode up, and what do you suppose I saw? The sand was all blowed
away, and there was them holes stickin’ forty feet in the air. I
never knowed before that time how crooked them critters made their
residences.”
“The wind’s purty hard on the rodents sometimes,” said Hank. “I knowed
a wind, however, that helped out a pore human down on Sulphur Draw that
was about to starve. This feller had come in to farm, and he raised a
cribful of corn, but the ranchers wouldn’t buy it because it wasn’t
shelled, and wouldn’t go in a morral. So the pore farmer was about to
starve, and his old lady and kids to boot.
“This feller was jest fresh from the sticks and didn’t have much
confidence in anybody, anyway, and he ’lowed the ranchers was waitin’
for a chance to steal his corn. So he nailed up the crib door good and
tight. He noticed a knothole in one of the walls, but he saw it was too
little for an ear of corn to go through; so he jest let that go.
“One day a wind come up, and the farmer and his folks hid in the dugout
like prairie-dogs, and the next day the wind laid, and they crawled out
and looked around; and there was corn cobs scattered all alongside the
crib. The old man thought shore somebody had stole his corn, but when
he got the crib door open, he saw it there all shelled as purty as if
he’d done it his self.
“He was a sort of ignorant and superstitious man, and the next day when
I happened by, he says to me that the fairies had come and shelled his
corn. Well, I never did take no stock in fairies and the like, and I
knowed there must be a reasonable and sane explanation somewheres. So
I picked up one of the corn cobs and stuck it in the knothole. It was
jest a good tight fit. Then I told the old man what must of happened.
The wind got up and would of blowed all his corn out of the crib, but
the knothole wasn’t big enough for an ear to go through. Hence each
ear got shelled, and all the corn was left in the crib. It was jest as
simple as that. Perfectly natural. If them old fellers we read about
that believed in fairies and witches, and all that crap, had jest of
used their heads, they’d found out that everything’s natural and simple
enough. They put me in mind of Mex’cans. But as I was about to say, the
old man sold his corn and got on purty well.”
“There was a farmer close to us one time,” said Joe, “that lost his
milk cows in a curious manner. He had a little patch of pop-corn, and
one hot day the cows broke into the patch and started eatin’ it up. All
of a sudden that corn begun poppin’ and flyin’ every which away.”
“Did the shooting grains kill the cows?” asked Lanky.
“Naw,” said Joe. “When the fool critters saw all that pop-corn flyin’
through the air, they thought it was snow, and jest naturally froze to
death.”
“Do you ever have tornadoes out here?” asked Lanky.
“You mean cyclones?” asked Joe. “Well, yes, sometimes. A queer thing
happened to me one time up here jest below the Caprock. We was goin’ up
the trail, and one evenin’ it was hot as blazes and sultry and still.
The cattle was gittin’ nervous and we was all expectin’ hell to break
loose any time. And shore nuff it did. A cloud come up in the northwest
and it thundered and lightened, and then the storm struck us. Them
steers jest naturally histed their tails and left the country. I was on
a good hoss, but it was all I could do to stay in sight of them cattle.
My pony was givin’ me all he had, and he wasn’t gainin’ on them steers
none. Neither was the other boys gittin’ close to ’em.
“D’rec’ly I looked back over my shoulder like, and there was them
clouds bilin’ and whirlin’ around in the sky; then all at once a funnel
drops down and takes out after me. I started quirtin’ my hoss. I feel
right mean about it yet when I think about it, for he was doin’ his
best to ketch that herd, and he couldn’t do no more.
“Well, the next thing I knowed I was up in the air still in the saddle
with my hoss under me, whirlin’ round and round like a top. That
cyclone carried me around in the air like that for a half an hour or
more, me scered all the time that it was goin’ to drop me. But it
didn’t. After a while it sets me down jest as gentle as a mother with
her baby.
“I looks up, and there’s the herd comin’ hell-bent for election right
toward me. I gits off my slicker and fires off my six-shooter and turns
them steers and gits ’em to millin’. Purty soon the other boys rides
up, and we gits ’em quieted down, and the whole outfit has to set up
and sing to ’em all night.
[Illustration: “_Jist as I teched the crown a feller yelled out._”]
“The next day we counted ’em out, and we hadn’t lost a head; not a
single cow-brute was missin’. If it hadn’t been for that cyclone,
we’d been gathering cattle for a week, and then likely we wouldn’t of
found ’em all.”
“That’s the way it is,” said Red. “Some winds is good and some winds is
bad, but I’d rather have sandstorms and risk a cyclone once in a while
than to have mud in the rainy season like they have on the Black Land
divide.”
“We found lots of mud when we drove through last fall,” said Lanky.
“You jist thought you found mud,” replied Red. “You ought to have
seen them flats before they begun makin’ roads. When I first hit that
country, they was jist fencin’ off the lanes, and when I got a job, the
boss put me to ridin’ fence. One day I was ridin’ along by the lane,
and I looked over and there was a good, brand-new Stetson hat layin’ on
the top of a mud-hole. I thinks to myself, ‘That’s a good hat, and I
might as well have it as the next feller.’ So I got down and got a-holt
of a fence-post to steady myself, and reached out to git it. Jist as
I teched the crown a feller yelled out: ‘Hey, what you doin’ there?’
he says. Then I noticed for the first time that there was a man’s head
stickin’ out of the mud. I asked the feller if he needed any help, but
he said he was ridin’ a mighty good hoss, and he guessed he’d make it
through all right. He afterwards got to be a mighty good friend of
mine. Pete Jackson was his name.”
“Well, sir,” said Joe, “speakin’ of mud, that puts me in mind of one
experience I had goin’ up the trail in ’83. We was kinda late in
gittin’ through, and the rainy weather had already set in before we
crossed the Black Land divide. We hadn’t hardly got across when we
begun to notice that our hosses was losin’ all their pertness. The
boss’s pet cow-hoss got as lazy as a jackass. My own favorite hoss,
Brown Jug, jest got sleepier and sleepier, till finally he jest laid
down and went to sleep and never did wake up. We lost half of our
remuda jest like that.
“The boss was terribly worried because he didn’t like the idea of
trainin’ on foot, and besides he didn’t know whether his hands would
stay with him or not if he didn’t have nothin’ for ’em to ride. Well,
I figured there must be a cause of hoss sickness jest as there is for
everything else. So I begins to take note. I notices that all the sick
hosses has mud-balls on their tails. Then I guesses what must be the
matter. The weight of the mud on the critters’ tails was makin’ sech a
pull on the brutes’ hides that they jest couldn’t shet their eyes. And
I figured that bein’ unable to shet their eyes, they was jest naturally
dyin’ for sleep. I tells the boss, and we cuts off the balls of mud. As
soon as we would cut one off, the critter would fall into a deep sleep,
jest like Adam in the Bible. Some of the worst ones slept steady for
four days and nights, and then woke up fresh and pert as ever.”
“Still,” said Red, “it ain’t the mud and it ain’t the wind that makes
Texas weather bad; it’s the sudden and quick changes.”
“That’s right,” said Hank; “that’s right, as our new boss found out
once. He ’lowed he was goin’ to keep a record of the weather. So
he comes home with a brand-new thermometer and hangs it up on the
front porch, and calls us boys to look at it. Well, sir, while we was
standin’ there the mercury runs up to about ninety or a hundred to git
a good start. Then all of a sudden, down she goes with sech a jar that
she jest naturally knocks the bottom right out of the tube and ruins
the boss’s new thingamabob. Good instrument it was too; not jest a
mercantile advertisement, but a good one that he had bought and paid
money for.
“But that didn’t faze that man none. He sent off back East somewheres
and had one made to order with a rubber cushion in the bottom of the
tube to take up the jar when the mercury fell. He got a patent on the
idear and got rich. His thermometers are in use all over the Southwest.
They’re the only kind that’ll stand the climate.
“This feller was jest crazy about his new thermometer. He was always
lookin’ to see how cold it was or how hot it was. Once a norther
come up in the night, and he jest had to git up and go look at his
instrument. He struck a match so he could see, and the match jest
froze, and he had to build a fire and warm it up before he could blow
it out.”
“That might sound a bit windy to a feller that didn’t know the
country,” said Joe, “but it’s probably so. I seen sunshine freeze right
on the streets of Amarillo one time. Durin’ one of the long cold spells
they had up there, all the chickens died for want of sleep. You see,
they couldn’t tell when it was night, and the sunshine stayed froze so
long they jest naturally died.”
“Speakin’ of things freezin’,” said Red, “I’ve seen words freeze. Once
we was out in a blizzard cuttin’ drift fences, and tryin’ to point
the herds to the canyons. And we’d yell and cuss the critters, but we
couldn’t even hear ourselves. Well, sir, we finally got the brutes into
the brakes and was on our way back when it started moderatin’. All of a
sudden we heard the dangest mess of yellin’ and cussin’ and cow-bawlin’
that you ever heard tell of. Presently we recognized the very words we
had spoke on the way down.”
“It seems to me,” said Lanky, “that I learned a story something like
that from Addison and Steele.”
“Doubtless,” said Red, “doubtless you did. This that I was tellin’
about happened right over here on Addison and Steele’s outfit. I was
workin’ for ’em at the time.”
“Yeah,” said Hank, “them northers come mighty sudden at times. One
time Bill Anker and me rides up to a tank, and the day’s so warm and
purty we decides to go in swimmin’. We was jest ready to strip off,
when all of a sudden we notices the bullfrogs all along the dam jumpin’
out of the willows like bats shot out of a cannon. They hit the water
all right and went under, but them critters got fooled that time. They
poked out their heads like they always do; and there they was froze
tight as a hat-band in the ice. All along the side of the tank for
about ten feet from the dam, the ice was jest naturally speckled with
frog heads.”
“That puts me in mind,” said Joe, “of a tale Bill Bishop used to tell.
Bill said one time he started in swimmin’ and dove off of a high bluff
into a deep hole of water. But jest as he was leavin’ the bluff, a
drought come and dried up all the water. Bill thought shore he’d kill
his self on the rock bottom of the creek-bed, but down comes a rise
from a rain up above and fills up the hole jest in time to save him.”
“Lucky,” said Lanky.
“Yes,” said Joe, “I guess he was, yet not so powerful lucky, after all.
Jest as he was stickin’ up his head, it got froze in the ice like them
frogs Hank was tellin’ you about, and he had to stay there all day
before the boys come and chopped him out. Leastwise that’s what he used
to tell, but he was sech a damn windy that you never knowed when he was
tellin’ the truth and when he was tryin’ to load somebody.”
BY THE BREADTH OF A HAIR
Lanky had become intensely interested in the narratives of Joe and his
apprentices. He was happy that he had been assigned to the same guard.
All during the day he had been trying to think of the most pregnant
question to put when the day’s work should be over, and he should again
sit with the windy trio around the campfire. He thought of one that he
felt sure would elicit an interesting yarn.
“What,” he asked Joe, “was the narrowest escape you ever had?”
Joe pulled out a shuck. He reached leisurely the sack of Bull Durham
in his vest pocket. He rolled the cigarette with deliberation. He was
not going to play the fool by committing himself in any superlative way
until he had heard from his upstart rivals, young men trying to usurp
the arts and prerogatives universally recognized as belonging to the
old.
“Well,” he said, “that would be hard to say, hard to say. When a man
knocks around as much as I have, and in the days when the West was
wild, too, he’s bound to of had many a close call, what with Mex’cans,
rustlers, bad men, stampedes, blizzards, and the like. However, one of
the worst sceres I ever had was once when I got caught in a buffalo
stampede. I reckon you know somethin’ about the buffalo?”
“Yes,” said Lanky, “I’ve read a little bit about them.”
“Well,” said Joe, “I can’t say as I’ve read very much about ’em. I seen
the plains black with ’em. And I’ve killed a many a one in my day, too.
“Well, I started out to tell you what a close shave I had one time
at Buffalo Gap. I was a fool young buck then, and one mornin’ in the
spring after I first hit that country, I heard a great roarin’ and
bellowin’, and I listened a while, wonderin’ what it was. Then I
says to myself, ‘I bet that’s a buffalo herd;’ for I had heard the
old-timers tell about ’em, and how they come through the pass called
Buffalo Gap every spring, goin’ north.
“I rides up on one of the hills that overlooks the Gap so as I could
look right down on the beasts as they come by. There I stops to see ’em
pass. I didn’t git there much too soon, for right away the whole pass
was choked with buffalo as thick as they could crowd; jammed in closer
than steers in a stock car.
“I was ridin’ a fool bronc, and he got to rearin’ and pitchin’, and the
first thing I knowed, we was rollin’ down the hill together. Well, the
hoss turned three or four cats in the air, and first he was on top and
then I was, but the critter lit feet down right on top of the backs of
them buffalo; and I was still in the saddle and didn’t have no bones
broke. Don’t ask me whether I pulled leather or not, Lanky; don’t ask
me that.
“Well, them brutes begun to run, and the first thing I knowed they was
in a regular stampede. I seen what was happenin’. They was carryin’ me
and that hoss north jest as fast as they could run, which was purty
fast. Yes, sir, purty fast.
“I reins the hoss around and turns him south and digs his sides with
the rowels; and he runs toward the south jest as fast as he could--and
he was a right pert pony, too.
“Well, sir, I rides and I rides, all the time keepin’ my eye peeled for
the tail-end of the herd. But I sees nothin’ but buffalo, miles and
miles of ’em.
“It was about the middle of the mornin’ when my hoss fell off with me
like that, and an hour by sun I was still ridin’ all the time looking
for the end of the herd and thinkin’ it shorely would come some time. I
happened to look to the side, and what do you think I seen, Lanky? What
do you think I seen?”
“Help coming, I suppose,” said Lanky.
“No sech luck,” said Joe; “no sech luck. It was the bushes we broke and
the rocks we turned over when me and that hoss rolled down the hill.
“Well, I rides another half hour, I guess, and I begins to feel the
hoss quiver and shake under me, and I knowed the jig was about up.
When a hoss does that way, Lanky, he’s about ready to drop dead, and I
knowed that might happen any time.
“Purty soon I sees an openin’, and jest as that pony jumped off the
rump of the last buffalo, damn me if he didn’t drop in his tracks, dead
as a hammer. I knowed that was goin’ to happen when I felt him quiver.
“Well, I climbed out on the hill afoot, forgittin’ to git my saddle;
and damn lucky it was I forgot, too; for as soon as I got to the top of
the hill and set down on a rock to rest, I looked back, and there was
the main herd comin’ into sight, roarin’ and bellowin’ like a cyclone.
“I had to walk back to my outfit; and several days later, I rode back
to the pass, but all I found of that hoss and saddle was a little
greasy spot on the ground.”
“That was a narrow escape,” said Lanky. “I suspect you have had as many
close calls as anybody.”
“Well, I couldn’t say about that,” said Joe. “But I know that if that
hoss had give out ten minutes sooner, Joe Martin wouldn’t be settin’
here talkin’ to you tonight.”
“Yeah,” said Hank. “Joe always was a lucky cuss. If he was to fall in
a sewer, he’d come out with a lily in each hand. Now, me, I was born
too late. Land all took up, buffalo all gone; no more trail drivin’
up north. Still, what with reptiles and beasts and Mexico steers and
buckin’ hosses, and the like, I’ve had my share of close calls.
“Funny how some little thing you don’t expect jest as like as not comes
along and takes you off.”
“Nothin’ ain’t got you yet, Hank,” said Red. “You’re here, ain’t you?
What you kickin’ about?”
“I was jest thinkin’ how near I come to bein’ kilt once. And if it
hadn’t of been for Zac Weber, I would of been.
“That lad could handle a six-gun, I can tell you. I’ve seen him knock
down six flyin’ quail with his old Colt forty-five, ridin’ at a high
run. He could turn six pigeons loose at one time and knock ’em every
one down before they could git away. When he went duck huntin’ he
never packed anything but his old six-shooter. Some of the boys had
shot-guns, but Zac said his conscience never would git over it if he
turned one of them murderous implements loose on a pore helpless fowl.
And he never shot a duck on the water, either. Not Zac. Mighty glad I
was that he could shoot like that, too, for he saved my life.”
“Bandit trouble?” asked Lanky.
“Naw, worse,” said Hank, “though I could tell you something about Glen
Springs, but that’s not the time Zac saved my life.
“Have you ever seen a centipede, Lanky?”
“No,” said Lanky; “I don’t suppose I have.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what they look like so as you’ll know ’em. And
don’t ketch ’em for playthings, Lanky, don’t ketch ’em for playthings.
Jest as well pet a rattlesnake. They’re flat yeller worms with a
hundred legs, like fringe on each side, and on every foot there’s a
little hook that the centipede can hook into things that he walks on.
And them hooks is so pizenous that if he walks across your skin while
he’s mad, your flesh will putrefy, and you’ll go as crazy as a locoed
hoss, and like as not take to the bushes like a jackrabbit unless
somebody holds you. That’s how pizenous they are.
“Well, what I started out to tell you was, one time at dinner me and
Zac was settin’ on the ground about fifty feet apart facin’ each
other eatin’ our beans and sow-belly. All at once I got a glimpse of
somethin’ like a yellow streak runnin’ up my vest on my bandanner, but
I jest barely did git a glimpse and couldn’t tell what it was.
“‘Is there somethin’ on my neck?’ I says to Zac.
“‘Good God, man!’ says Zac. ‘It’s a centipede!’
“Well, we’d took off our gloves to eat, and I knowed if I tried to
knock the critter off, I’d jest make him mad, and he’d git me shore.
And I knowed if Zac come over to knock him off with a stick or
somethin’, he’d be dead certain to chase him off on my neck.
“‘Let him alone,’ I says, ‘and maybe he’ll crawl off after while.’
“‘Jest be still,’ says Zac. And he whips out his old six-shooter, and I
hears the bullet whistle by my ear.
“‘I got him,’ says Zac.
“And I takes off my bandanner, and there is jest a little speck where
the bullet had jest barely teched it. I always did feel grateful to Zac
after that, for he shore did save my life that day.”
“You think, then, that if the centipede had touched your skin, he would
really have killed you?” asked Lanky.
“I don’t think nothin’ about it,” said Hank. “I know it. Why, I tell
you what happened. You see, Zac didn’t have time to look what was on
the other side of me when he shot, but jest as he pulled the trigger,
he noticed an old cow-brute standin’ about fifty yards off chewin’ his
cud. Well, this old steer jumped, so Zac said he must of hit him. Still
we couldn’t see no wound on him. We roped him and looked at the critter
close and found a bullet hole in his dew-lap.”
“In his what?” asked Lanky.
“Why, in his dew-lap,” said Hank. “That’s the grissle thing that hangs
down from the neck of a cow-brute jest where it joins on to the
breast. They used to vaccinate for the black-leg by makin’ a hole in
it. We knowed the steer couldn’t be hurt much there; so we turns him
loose, and he gits up, and starts off.
“He hadn’t gone more than twenty steps, when his neck was all swole up,
big as a saddle-hoss. Then he begin to rave and charge and beller so
pitifully that we jest shot him to git him out of his misery.
“That’s how pizenous them centipedes are. When I saw that pore brute
all swole up and out of his head with torment, I knowed what a close
call I’d had.”
Lanky’s attention had been divided between Red and the narrator. He
had glanced several times at Joe also, who was sitting complacent,
but not contemptuous, listening with the respect due a good liar even
though a comparatively inexperienced one. But Red, during the first
part of Hank’s narrative had been in a deep study. He rolled several
cigarettes, only to throw them away after taking a puff or two. He
appeared to listen; yet it was obvious that the narrator did not have
his full attention. Near the climax to Hank’s tale, however, his
countenance brightened up, and from that time he sat quietly as one
having an ace in the hole. When Hank finished, he was ready.
“I didn’t have no crack shot, nor no friend of no kind to help me out
once when I come near passin’ in my checks out in the Glass Mountains.
“I never did know what was the matter with that fool hoss I was ridin’.
He’d always been a mighty sensible animal--fine cow-pony, quarter hoss,
single-footer, and the best night hoss on the outfit. I’d rode him
hard that day, and I thought maybe he was tired of life and took a
sudden notion to kill his self like an English feller that come to our
outfit and stayed a while once. Then, again, I thought he might of went
blind all at once. I never could figger it out. Anyway, he never acted
like that before.”
“What did he do?” asked Lanky.
“What did he do? He done a plenty. Still I don’t blame him, pore brute.
There must have been somethin’ the matter.
“You see, I was ridin’ back to the headquarters on a dark night. I
was about half asleep, for I knowed that old Frijole--that was his
name--would find the way. He always could. Well, I was ridin’ along
that way, when all of a sudden I finds us both fallin’ down through
empty space. Seemed like we never would hit the ground, and before we
got bottom, I figgered out what had happened.
“Out in the edge of the Glass Mountains there was a big sink-hole right
out on the mesa. It was as big across as a house, and six lariats deep
right straight down--we afterwards measured it--and Frijole had loped
off into that dang hole with me, and there we was makin’ for the bottom.
“I thinks to myself, ‘This is where you pass in your checks, Red. Some
gits it early and some gits it late, but they all gits it.’ Then we
hits bottom.
“I guess I was shook up purty bad, for I woke up after while, and there
I was settin’ on a dead hoss. You see, Frijole had broke his neck
landin’, pore feller. I always will wonder what was a eatin’ on him to
make him lope off into a hole like that. Must of been somethin’.
“Well, I seen there wasn’t nothin’ I could do but wait for daylight and
then try to figure out some way to git out; so I jist laid down and
took a nap till mornin’.
“When daylight come, I got up and looked around, but the walls was
straight up and down, and there wasn’t nothin’ I could git a-holt of
to climb out. Then I took the rope off my saddle and begun to look for
somethin’ twenty feet or so up that I could rope, thinkin’ I could pull
myself up that far, and then maybe rope somethin’ else a little higher
up, and pull myself up again, and so on till I was out.
“But there wasn’t a thing, Lanky, not a bush nor a rock, nor nothin’
stickin’ out I could git a loop on. Everything as slick as glass.
‘Well, maybe the boys will come and hunt me,’ I thinks, ‘but how in the
hell will they know to look down in here?’
“I waited all day, and not a soul come: and I waited all the next day,
and still nobody come. The third day I was still there and no better
off than I was in the beginnin’.
“By that time I was wishin’ I was dead, for I had drunk up all the
water in my saddle canteen, and I was gittin’ hungry, too.”
“Couldn’t you have eaten some of the horse meat?” asked Lanky.
“Yes, I guess I could of,” said Red, “but at first I wouldn’t out
of friendship for the brute--for even if he did git me in there, I
always figgered there was somethin’ wrong; he went out of his head
or somethin’--and after I got hungry enough to of et him, anyway,
his carcass had spoiled and was stinkin’ somethin’ terrible. That’s
principally what made it so bad. Every breath I drawed was misery.
“Finally I says, ‘Red, you can’t stand this no longer. You’d shoot a
pore dumb brute if you saw him in torment like this.’ And so I cocks
my six-shooter and holds it to my head, but somehow I can’t pull the
trigger. ‘Stand it a little while longer,’ I says to myself, ‘and if
help don’t come, shoot.’ I done that three or four times, I guess.
“After a while buzzards begun flyin’ over the hole--dozens of ’em
sailin’ round and round. They knowed there was somethin’ dead
somewheres around, but they was havin’ trouble locatin’ it. They
kept comin’ lower and lower, till directly one comes down into the
sink-hole. Then some more come, and they would fly right down close to
me. ‘I reckon you come after Frijole,’ I says, ‘but jist wait a little
while and you can have me too.’
“And jist then I had an idear. I picks up my lariat right quiet-like
and begins unravelin’ it into little strands. In each little strand
I tied a noose. Then I takes my seat by the side of the carcass and
jist waits. Directly a big turkey buzzard comes right down close, and
I throws a loop over his head and fetches him down. Then I stakes him
to my belt, givin’ him about six foot of rope. After a while I gits
another one. I keeps on until I gits twenty of the vultures staked to
my belt; then I fires off my six-shooter, scerin’ ’em all at once.
[Illustration: “_Well, sir, them birds jist naturally lifted me right
out of that sink-hole._”]
“Well, sir, them birds jist naturally lifted me right out of that
sink-hole.”
“You were lucky,” said Lanky.
“Lucky! Lad, that wasn’t luck; that was head work. You ain’t heard
about my luck yet. Them buzzards begun flyin’ away with me, but I seen
what direction they was goin’, and I jist let ’em alone and watched the
lay of the land. And when they had me right over a big hay-stack at the
headquarters of my own outfit, I reached down and unbuckled my belt,
and damn me, if I didn’t land right on the hay without any hurtin’
a-tall.
“I walked up to the house and had a square meal--and I et, too, I’ll
tell you--and then I felt as fresh and pert as ever.”
“That was a lucky landing,” said Lanky.
“It shore was,” said Red. “I got off light. The worst thing about it
was that them vultures carried off my belt; and a cracker-jack it was,
too, trimmed with rattlesnake hide and gold studs. Twenty-eight dollars
and fifty cents it cost me over the counter at K. C., Misourey.”
Lanky expected Joe to tell the next story, but the veteran smoked
placidly, and graciously surrendered his turn to Hank.
“A thing like that nearly happened to me once,” said Hank, “except it
was a canyon instead of a sink hole.
“I ought to of had more sense than to ride a fool bronc like the
critter I was on around a place like that, but I was green in them
days. You see I was ridin’ around a rimrock, lookin’ out for steers in
the canyon down below, and down below it was, shore-nuff--five hundred
feet straight down--jest as straight as a wall.
“Well, I’d rode along that way for a while, when suddenly I took a fool
notion to smoke. So I rolled me a fat _tamale_, and pulled out a match
and struck it on my saddle-horn.
“Jest then that fool bronc bogged his head and begun pitchin’ and
bawlin’ like six-bits, and the next thing I knowed he’d fell off that
rim-rock. And it was five hundred feet to the bottom if it was an inch.
When that hoss hit the bottom, he jest naturally spattered all over the
scenery.”
“And you?” asked Lanky.
“Well, you see,” said Hank, “when we went off that rim-rock together, I
knowed that that saddle that I had been tryin’ so hard to stay in was
no place for me then; so I got off; and I had to be damn quick about
it, too. I wasn’t much more than off the brute when he hit the bottom.”
Lanky expected Joe to send him off to bed. There were cattle to gather
during the day and to hold at night until all the pastures should be
worked, and it was Joe who usually reminded the unseasoned boy that
sleep was necessary, even if Lanky preferred the romancing of the older
hands.
But Joe merely chunked up the fire.
“That puts me in mind,” said he, “of a hunt I went on once in the
Guadalupe Mountains. You see, we was out after big-horn sheep--used to
be lots of ’em up there, but they are ’bout all gone now. Few up in
the mountains where the tin-horn hunters never go.
“I was follerin’ some of them critters around a ledge, and presently
I looked around and seen where I was. The ledge was jest about a foot
wide; and I looked down, and there was a bluff right straight down for
five hundred feet, and I looked up, and there was a wall five hundred
feet straight up. There wasn’t no way to git off that ledge but to go
on or to turn back like I come, and in some places the footin’ was
mighty ticklish, mighty ticklish.
“Well, I walked along till I come to a slick place, and my foot
slipped, and I had to let go my gun to keep from fallin’. I shore hated
to lose that thirty-thirty, too, for we had been friends for years, and
many a deer and antelope and bear and panther I had fetched down with
it. But I jest naturally lost my balance and had to let her go to save
my neck.
“Well, not havin’ any gun, I thought I had jest as well go back to the
camp; so I started back like I come. I goes around a little bend, and
there comes a mountain lion, a-creepin’ along towards me, jest like a
cat tryin’ to slip up on a snow-bird.
“Says I, ‘Joe, this ain’t no place for you. I expect you’d better go on
the way you first started.’
“So I turns around and goes back around the bend. When I gits about a
hundred yards, there I sees a big grizzly bear comin’ to meet me! and
when he sees me, he sets up and shows his teeth and growls.
“Says I, ‘Joe, maybe you’d better go back the other way, after all.’ I
thought maybe the cougar would be gone. But as soon as I gits turned
around--and I had to be mighty careful in turnin’, for the ledge was
powerfully narrow--when I turns around, I sees the big cat sneakin’
along toward me. And when I look the other way, there comes the bear.
And they are both gittin’ closer and closer, and there I am, and it’s
five hundred feet straight down, and it’s five hundred feet straight
up.”
“How did you get off?” asked Lanky.
“How did I git off? Why, I couldn’t git off. They got me, but whether
it was the bear or the cougar, I never did know.”
Joe finished with a flourish but without a smile.
He pulled out his watch. “Doggone,” he said, “I never had no idear it
was so late. We ought to of been asleep before now. Lanky, you ought
not to let these boys keep you up so late. They’d talk you to death if
you’d jest set here and listen to ’em.”
THE GENESIS OF PECOS BILL
“I suppose,” said Lanky, as he sat by the camp-fire with Red and Hank
and Joe, now his fast friends, “that the cowboy’s life is about the
most interesting one there is. I’d like it. Live outdoors, plenty of
fresh air to breathe, interesting work--that’s the life.”
“I ain’t kickin’,” said Joe. “You see I’m still at it, though I’ve
cussed it as much as anybody in my time, and swore off and quit, too,
more than once. But somehow when spring comes, and the grass gits
green, and I know the calves is comin’, somethin’ jest naturally gits
under my hide, and I come back to the smell of burnt hair and the creak
of saddle-leather.”
“Yeah,” said Red, “it’s jist like a dream I had once. I dreamt I died
and went up to a place where there was big pearly gates, and I walked
up and knocked on the door, and it come wide open. I went in, and there
stood Saint Peter.
“‘Come in; welcome to our city,’ he says. ‘I’ve been lookin’ for you.
Go over to the commissary and git you a harp and a pair of wings.’
“‘All right,’ says I, feelin’ mighty lucky to git in.
“As I walked along on the gold sidewalk, I sees a lot of fellers roped
and hobbled and hog-tied.
“‘What’s the matter?’ says I; ‘Saint Peter, you’re not tryin’ to
buffalo me, are you?’
“‘Naw,’ he says, ‘what makes you think so? Your record ain’t nothin’
extra good, but you didn’t git cut back, did you? Here you are. You’re
in. Ain’t that enough?’
“‘Ain’t this hell?’ I says.
“‘Naw’, says Peter, ‘this ain’t hell a-tall.’
“‘Are you shore this ain’t hell?’ I asks.
“‘Naw,’ he says, ‘this ain’t hell. What makes you think it is?’
“‘Why,’ I says, ‘what you got all them fellers roped and tied down for?’
“‘Oh,’ he says, ‘them fellers over there? You see them’s cowboys from
the Southwest, and I have to keep ’em tied to keep ’em from goin’ back.
I think maybe they’ll git range broke after while so I can turn ’em
loose, but it seems like it’s takin’ a long time.’”
“However,” said Joe, “the cow business ain’t what it used to be, what
with barbed wire, windmills, automobiles and trucks, and the like. They
don’t want cowhands any more; what they want is blacksmiths, mechanics,
and the like. Still, I reckon it’s a good thing, for they couldn’t git
cowhands if they did want ’em.
“Now, here’s Red and Hank. Good boys, both of ’em. And I’ve learned ’em
a lot about cattle; and they take money at the rodeos, but they ain’t
like the old cowhands. I don’t know jest what it is, but they ain’t the
same.
“And they ain’t but mighty few real cowmen any more. Now, take the big
mogul of this outfit. Good feller, always pays wages every month--which
is more than some of the old-timers could do. But he ain’t no cowman.
Sets up all day at a big desk in town--has a secretary, stenographer,
and the like. Why, if Pecos Bill had a-done a thing like that, he would
of been so ashamed of his self, he would of jest naturally laid down
and died.”
“Who is this Pecos Bill I’ve heard you mention?” asked Lanky.
“Who is he? Why, ain’t you ever heard of Pecos Bill?”
“Not till I came here.”
“Well, well, I reckon you’ve heard of Sam Houston, and Sam Bass and
General Lee and George Washington and Pat Garrett, ain’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard a little about them but not anything about Pecos
Bill.”
“That jest shows that the fellers that make our books don’t know what
to put in ’em. The idear of leavin’ out Pecos Bill.”
“But who was Pecos Bill?”
“Who was he? Why, he was jest about the most celebrated man in the
whole dang cow country.”
“What was his real name?”
“So far as I know the only real name he ever had was Pecos Bill. Don’t
suppose anybody knows what his daddy’s name was. You see, in his day
it wasn’t good manners to ask a feller his name, and besides it wasn’t
good judgment either. And it ain’t been so long. Many a greenhorn bein’
ignorant of that little point of good manners has looked down the
muzzle of a six-shooter and then died.
“Pecos Bill’s daddy didn’t say what they called him back in the
States, and nobody asked him. They jest called him the Ole Man, for he
was old--about seventy some odd when he came to Texas.”
“When did he come to Texas?” asked Lanky.
“I couldn’t say about that exactly,” said Joe. “It must of been right
about the time Sam Houston discovered Texas. Anyhow, the Ole Man loaded
up all his twelve kids and his Ole Woman and his rifle, and all his
other stuff in an oxwagon and lit out hellbent for Texas as soon as he
found out there was sech a place. They say other people that come later
didn’t have no trouble findin’ the way. They jest went by the Indian
skeletons that the Ole Man left along his road.
“Well, they finally got to the Sabine River. The Ole Man stops
his oxen, old Spot and Buck, he calls ’em, and rounds up all his
younguns and has ’em set down and listen while he makes ’em a speech.
‘Younguns,’ he says, ‘that land you see on the other side of the river
is Texas, wild and woolly and full of fleas. And if you ain’t that way
only more so, you ain’t no brats of mine.’”
“I’d always heard that Pecos Bill was born in Texas,” interrupted Red.
“Jest wait,” said Joe. “Jest wait; have I said he wasn’t? Them was the
other kids.
“As I was about to say, they crossed the river and camped for the
night. That was in Texas, savvy. And that night Pecos Bill was born.
The next mornin’ the Ole Woman put him on a bear’s skin and left him
to play with his self while she made the corn-pone for breakfast. And
right then’s when they come dang near losin’ Pecos Bill.
“Bears or Indians?” asked Lanky.
“Neither one,” said Joe. “Bears and Indians didn’t mean nothin’ to
that old man. He would have et ’em for breakfast. Once later when the
Ole Man and the older brats was gone, the Comanches did try to git
Bill, but the Ole Woman lit into ’em with the broom-handle and killed
forty-nine right on the spot. She never knowed how many she crippled
and let git away. No, it wasn’t the Indians. It was miskeeters.”
“Malaria?” said Lanky.
“You guessed wrong again,” said Joe. “This is what happened. The Ole
Woman was cookin’ corn-pone, and all of a sudden it got dark, and there
was the dangest singin’ and hummin’ you ever heard. Then they seen it
was a swarm of big black miskeeters; and they was so thick around Bill
that you jest couldn’t see him.
“The Ole Man felt his way to the wagon and got out his gun. He thought
he’d shoot it off in the air and scere them miskeeters away. He pointed
the muzzle of the gun toward the sky and pulled the trigger. What he
seen then was a little beam of light come through. It was jest like
bein’ in a dark room and lookin’ out through a piece of windmill pipe.
That was jest for a minute, for right away the hole shet up, and them
miskeeters swarmed around Pecos, and the Ole Man seen they was goin’ to
pack him off if he didn’t do somethin’ right away.
“Then he happened to recollect that he’d brought his hog-renderin’
kettle along; so he fought his way back to the wagon and rolled it out
and turned it over the kid. He was scered the lad would git lonesome
under there by his self, so he jest slipped the choppin’ axe under the
edge of the kettle for the chap to play with.
“Well, them danged miskeeters jest buzzed and buzzed around the kettle,
tryin’ to find a way to git in. D’rec’ly they all backed off, and the
Old Man and the Ole Woman thought they’d give up and was goin’ away.
Then all at once one of them miskeeters comes at that kettle like a
bat out of hell. He hit the kettle and rammed his bill clean through
it; and he stuck there. Then another one come at the kettle jest like
the first one had; and he stuck, too. Then they kept comin’, and every
one stuck. The Ole Man and the Ole Woman and the older brats stood
there watchin’ them miskeeters ram that kettle. After each one of them
varmints (they was too big to be called insects) hit the kettle, there
would be a little ring--_ding!_ like that. Purty soon the old folks
got on to what was happenin. Every time a miskeeter would ram his
bill through the kettle, Pecos would brad it with the choppin’ axe.
Well, after while them miskeeters jest naturally lifted that kettle
right up and flew off with it. The others thought they had Pecos Bill
and follered the kettle off. Of course the Ole Man hated to lose his
utensil. He said he didn’t know how the Ole Woman was goin’ to render
up the lard and bear’s grease now; but it was worth a hundred kettles
to know he had such a smart brat. And from that time the Ole Man would
always talk about Bill as a chap of Great Possibilities. He ’lowed that
if the brat jest had the proper raisin’, he’d make a great man some
day. He said he was goin’ to try to do his part by him; so he begun
givin’ him a diet of jerked game with whiskey and onions for breakfast.
He lapped it up so well that in three days the Ole Woman weaned him.”
“Did the Ole Man settle there on the Sabine?” asked Lanky.
“Naw,” said Joe. “He squatted on a little sandy hill on the Trinity
somewheres east of where Dallas is now. It was jest an accident that he
stopped where he did.”
“How was that?” asked Lanky.
“Well,” said Joe, “you see, it was like this. They was travelin’ west
in their customary and habitual manner, which was with the Ole Man and
the six oldest kids walkin’ alongside Spot and Buck, and the Ole Woman
and the seven youngest kids in the wagon. Jest as they was comin’ to
the foot of a sandy hill, a big rain come up. It rained so hard that
the Ole Man couldn’t see the wagon, but he stuck close to them trusty
oxen of his, and they went right up the hill. When he got to the top,
he seen that it had about quit rainin’; and he looked back and seen the
wagon still at the bottom of the hill, and there was the brats that had
been walkin’ with him under it.”
“Did the harness break?” asked Lanky.
“Naw, it wasn’t that,” said Joe. “You see, he was usin’ a rawhide
lariat for a log-chain, and it had got wet. I reckon you know what
rawhide does when it gits wet, don’t you, Lanky? It stretches. There
ain’t no rubber that will stretch like wet rawhide. Well, that’s what
happened to that lariat. It stretched so that the Ole Man drove his
oxen a mile up the hill without movin’ the wagon an inch. Not an inch
had he moved her, by gar.
“Well, the sun was shinin’ now, and it got brighter and brighter, and
while the Ole Man was wonderin’ what in the dickens to do next, Ole
Spot jest dropped down dead from sunstroke. That sort of got next to
the Ole Man, for he said that brute had been a real friend to him, and
besides he was worth his weight in gold. Still, he ’lowed he’d might as
well skin him. So he got out his old Bowie knife and started to work.
“Well, sir, while he was skinnin’ Spot, a norther came up, and damn me,
if Ole Buck didn’t keel over, froze to death.
“So the Ole Man decided he’d jest as well stop there where he was. So
he told the Ole Woman to bring up the brats. He throwed the ox yoke
over a stump; and the Ole Woman brought up some chuck and some beddin’
from the wagon. Then they et supper and tucked the kids into bed. The
Ole Man tried to blow out the lantern, but she wouldn’t blow. He raised
up the globe, and there was the flame froze stiff as an icicle. He jest
broke it off and buried it in the sand and turned in and went to sleep.
“The next mornin’ when he woke up, it was clear and the sun was warm.
Well, the Ole Woman cooked a bite, and while they was eatin’, here come
the wagon right up the hill. You see the rawhide was dryin’ out. That’s
the way it does.”
“That’s what it does, all right,” said Red. “Once I knowed a
clod-hopper that made his self a rawhide hat. It worked fine till one
day he got caught out in the rain. Then the sun come out, and that hat
drawed up so he couldn’t git it off. And it was drawin’ up and mashin’
his head somethin’ terrible. Lucky for him, it wasn’t very far to a
tank, and he got off and stood on his head in the water a few minutes
and it come right off.”
“Well,” said Joe, “that’s what the rawhide log-chain done. It dried
out, and that wagon come right up the hill; and when it got up to where
the Ole Man and the Ole Woman was, the Ole Man got his choppin’ axe
and begun cuttin’ down trees to make him a cabin. And that’s where he
settled.”
“Did Pecos Bill grow up there in East Texas?” asked Lanky.
“He left when he was a mere lad,” said Joe. “But he lived there a
little while. The Ole Man got along fine till his corn give out,
because there was plenty of game. But he jest couldn’t do without his
corn-pone and his corn whiskey. So he cleared a little patch and put it
in corn.”
“And worked it without his steers?” asked Lanky.
“Why not?” said Joe. “He made him a light Georgie-stock out of wood,
and the Ole Woman and one of the bigger kids could pull it fine. He
made some harness out of the hide of Old Spot, and he’d hitch ’em and
plough all day.
“They used to all go out in the field and leave Pecos Bill in the cabin
by his self. One day when Bill was about three years old, the Ole Man
was ploughin’ and jest as he turned the Ole Woman and the kid he had
hitched up with her around to start a new row, the Ole Woman begun
yellin’ and tryin’ to get out of the harness.
“‘What’s eatin’ on you, Ole Woman?’ says the Ole Man. ‘I never seen you
do like this before. Must have a tick in your ear.’
“The Ole Woman yelled that she seen a panther go in the cabin where
Bill was.
“The Ole Man told her not to git excited. ‘It’s a half hour by sun till
dinner time yet,’ he says, ‘and that dang panther needn’t expect no
help from me nohow. The fool critter ought to of had more sense than to
go in there. He’ll jest have to make out the best way he can.’
“So they ploughed on till dinner time, and when they come back to the
cabin, there was Pecos Bill a-chewin’ on a piece of raw panther flank.
“They lived there another year or two before the Ole Man taken a notion
to leave.”
“I reckon you know how he come to git the idear in his head, don’t you,
Joe?” said Red.
“I’ll bite,” said Joe. “Go ahead.”
“Why, this ain’t no sell,” said Red. “I’ve heard Windy Williams tell it
a hundred times.
“One time the Ole Man had the Ole Woman and one of the big kids hitched
up to the plough in his customary and habitual manner, jist as Joe
has been tellin’ about, and all at once here comes a piece of paper
blowin’ across the field. The Ole Woman shied a little bit off to one
side; then the kid got to prancin’, and then they tore loose and went
lickity-split, rearin’ and tearin’ across that corn patch, draggin’
the Ole Man with ’em. The Ole Man stumped his toe on a root, and then
they got loose from him and tore up the Georgie-stock. After while they
quieted down, and the Ole Man got up and fetched ’em in. Then he went
out and picked up the piece of paper where it was hung on a stump. He
seen it was an old newspaper. That set him to wonderin’.
“The next mornin’ he got his rifle and begun lookin’ around. About five
miles from his place he found some wagon tracks, and he follered the
tracks till he come to a new cabin about fifty miles up the creek. Then
he come home and told the Ole Woman and the kids to git ready to leave.
He calkilated the country was gittin’ too thickly settled for him.”
“How did he get away without a team?” asked Lanky.
“Oh, that was easy,” said Red. “He sent Pecos Bill out to ketch a
couple of mustangs, and in about an hour the lad run ’em down. The Ole
Man fixed up the harness he’d been usin’ to plough with, and loaded in
his stuff and his wife and kids, and pulled out.
“They kept goin’ west till finally they come to the Pecos River, which
the Ole Man said he’d ford or bust. He got across all right, but as he
was drivin’ up the bank on the west side, the end-gate come out of the
wagon, and Pecos Bill fell out. The Ole Man and the Ole Woman never
missed him till they got about thirty miles further on; then they said
it wasn’t worth while turnin’ back. They said they guessed the chap
could take kere of his self, and if he couldn’t he wasn’t worth turnin’
back for nohow. So that’s how Pecos Bill come to be called Pecos Bill.”
“What became of him?” asked Lanky. “What happened to him then?”
“What happened to him then?” said Red. “That would take a long time to
tell.”
“We’ll tell you about that some other time, Lanky,” said Joe.
ADVENTURES OF PECOS BILL
“How old was Pecos Bill when he was lost on the Pecos River?” Lanky
asked Joe on the next night when supper was finished and the four were
sitting around the fire smoking.
“I guess he must of been about four year old,” said Joe. “Some says
he was jest a year old, but that can’t be right. The Ole Man made two
or three crops down on the Trinity before the country got so thickly
settled that he had to leave.”
“What became of the family?” asked Lanky.
“That would be hard to answer,” said Joe; “hard to answer. I don’t
suppose there’s a soul that knows for certain. There’s been tales about
’em bein’ et up by wild beasts, but that ain’t likely; and there’s been
tales about ’em bein’ killed by the Indians, but that ain’t likely
neither. Why, them Red-Skins would run like scered jack-rabbits when
they seen the Ole Man comin’, or the Ole Woman either. Then there’s
tales about ’em dyin’ for water in the desert, which may be so; but
more than likely they settled somewheres and lived a happy and peaceful
life.”
“The chances are,” said Red, “that they settled in the Lost Canyon, and
their offspring may be livin’ there yet for all anybody knows.”
“Where is the Lost Canyon?” asked Lanky.
“That’s jist what nobody don’t know,” said Red; “but it’s out in the
Big Bend Country somewheres, and it opens into the Río Grande. It gits
wide, and there’s springs in it, and buffalo a-grazin’ on the grass,
and it’s a fine country.”
“How do you know about it?” asked Lanky. “Have you ever been there?”
“Naw,” said Red, “but people has. But you never can find it when you’re
lookin’ for it. Them that finds it, finds it accidentally, and then
they can’t go back. That’s jist the place that would of suited Pecos
Bill’s Ole Man, and the chances are that’s where he stopped. Some day
I’m goin’ to happen on that canyon myself, and if I do, I’ll jist stake
me out a ranch; that is unless it’s inhabited by Pecos Bill’s race. If
it is, I reckon I’ll let ’em have it.”
“And what became of Pecos Bill?” asked Lanky.
“Why,” said Joe, “he jest growed up with the country. There wasn’t
nothin’ else he could do. He got to runnin’ with a bunch of coyotes and
took up with ’em. He learned their language and took up all their bad
habits. He could set on the ground and howl with the best of ’em, and
run down a jack-rabbit jest as quick, too. He used to run ahead of the
pack and pull down a forty-eight point buck and bite a hole in his neck
before the rest of the coyotes got there. But he always divided with
the pack, and that’s probably the reason they throwed off on him like
they did.”
“Did he ever teach anybody else the coyote language?” asked Lanky.
“Jest one old prospector that befriended him once. That was all. You
see the old man couldn’t find no gold and he went to trappin’, and he
used the language that Bill had taught him to call up the coyotes and
git ’em in his traps. Bill said it was a dirty trick, and he wouldn’t
teach nobody else how to speak coyote. Bill would of killed the old
prospector if it hadn’t of been that the old man done him a favor once.”
“What did he do?” asked Lanky.
“Why, it was him that found Bill and brought him back to civilization
and liquor, which Bill had jest about forgot the taste of.”
“How old was Bill at that time?” asked Lanky.
“Oh, I guess he was about ten years old,” said Joe. “One day this old
prospector comes along and he hears the most terrible racket anybody
ever heard of--rocks a-rollin’ down the canyon, brush a-poppin’, and
the awfullest howlin’ and squallin’ you could imagine; and he looks
up the canyon and sees what he first thinks is a cloud comin’ up, but
purty soon he discovers it’s fur a-flyin’.
“Well, he decides to walk up the canyon a piece and investigate, and
purty soon he comes on Pecos Bill, who has a big grizzly bear under
each arm jest mortally squeezin’ the stuffin’ out of ’em. And while the
old prospector stands there a-watchin’, Bill tears off a hind leg and
begins eatin’ on it.
“‘A game scrap, son,’ says the old prospector, ‘and who be ye?’
“‘Me?’ says Bill. ‘I’m a varmit.’
“‘Naw, ye ain’t a varmit,’ says the old prospector; ‘you’re a human.’
“‘Naw,’ says Bill, ‘I ain’t no human; I’m a varmit.’
“‘How come?’ says the prospector.
“‘Don’t I go naked?’ says Bill.
“‘Shore ye do,’ says the old Prospector. ‘Shore ye’re naked. So is the
Indians, and them critters is part human, anyway. That don’t spell
nothin’.’
“‘Don’t I have fleas?’ says Bill.
“‘Shore ye do,’ says the old prospector, ‘but all Texians has fleas.’
“‘Don’t I howl?’ says Bill.
“‘Yeah, ye howl all right,’ says the old prospector, ‘but nearly all
Texians is howlin’ most of the time. That don’t spell nothin’ neither.’
“‘Well, jest the same I’m a coyote,’ says Bill.
“‘Naw, ye ain’t a coyote,’ says the old prospector. ‘A coyote’s got a
tail, ain’t he?’
“‘Yeah,’ says Bill, ‘a coyote’s got a tail.’
“‘But you ain’t got no tail,’ says the old prospector. ‘Jest feel and
see if you have.’
“Bill felt and shore nuff, he didn’t have no tail.
“‘Well, I’ll be danged,’ he says. ‘I never did notice that before. I
guess I ain’t a coyote, after all. Show me them humans, and if I like
their looks, maybe I’ll throw in with ’em.’
“Well, he showed Bill the way to an outfit, and it wasn’t long till he
was the most famous and noted man in the whole cow country.”
“It was him,” said Hank, “that invented ropin’. He had a rope that
reached from the Río Grande to the Big Bow, and he shore did swing a
mean loop. He used to amuse his self by throwin’ a little _Julian_[2]
up in the sky and fetchin’ down the buzzards and eagles that flew
over. He roped everything he ever seen: bears and wolves and panthers,
elk and buffalo. The first time he seen a train, he thought it was some
kind of varmit, and damn me if he didn’t sling a loop over it and dang
near wreck the thing.
“One time his ropin’ shore did come in handy, for he saved the life of
a very dear friend.”
“How was that?” asked Lanky.
“Well, Bill had a hoss that he thought the world of, and he had a good
reason to, too, for he had raised him from a colt, feedin’ him on a
special diet of nitroglycerin and barbed wire, which made him very
tough and also very ornery when anybody tried to handle him but Bill.
The hoss thought the world of Bill, but when anybody else come around,
it was all off. He had more ways of pitchin’ than Carter had oats. Lots
of men tried to ride him, but only one man besides Bill ever mounted
that hoss and lived. That’s the reason Bill named him Widow-Maker.”
“Who was that man?” asked Lanky.
“That was Bill’s friend that I was goin’ to tell you about Bill savin’
his life,” said Hank. “You see this feller gits his heart set on ridin’
Widow-Maker. Bill tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen.
He said he could ride anything that had hair. It had been his ambition
from youth, he said, to find a critter that could make him pull
leather. So Bill, seein’ the pore feller’s heart was about to break,
finally told him to go ahead.
[Illustration: “_A-settin’ on that tornado and a-spurrin’ it in the
withers._”]
“He gits on Widow-Maker, and that hoss begins to go through his
gaits, doin’ the end-to-end, the sunfish, and the back-throw; and about
that time the rider goes up in the sky. Bill watches him through a
spyglass and sees him land on Pike’s Peak. No doubt he would of starved
to death up there, but Bill roped him by the neck and drug him down,
thus savin’ his life.”
“Yeah,” said Red, “Widow-Maker was jist the sort of hoss that suited
Bill exactly. For one thing, it saved him a lot of shootin’, because
he didn’t have no trouble keepin’ other people off his mount; and as
for Bill, he could ride anything that had hair and some things that
didn’t have. Once, jist for fun, he throwed a surcingle on a streak of
lightin’ and rode it over Pike’s Peak.
“Another time he bet a Stetson hat he could ride a cyclone. He went
up on the Kansas line and simply eared that tornado down and got on
it. Down he come across Oklahoma and the Panhandle a-settin’ on that
tornado, a-curlin’ his mustache and a-spurrin’ it in the withers.
Seein’ it couldn’t throw him, it jist naturally rained out from under
him, and that’s the way Bill got the only spill he ever had.
“Yeah,” continued Red, “I reckon Bill was mighty hard to throw. A smart
lad he was, and a playful sort of feller, too. In his spare time he
used to amuse his self puttin’ thorns on things--bushes and cactuses
and the like, and he even stuck horns on the toads so they’d match up
with the rest of the country.”
“I see he’s been at work in this country,” said Lanky. “Did he live all
his life in Texas?”
“Naw, he didn’t,” said Joe. “Bill was a good deal like his old man.
When he had killed all the Indians and bad men, and the country got
all peaceful and quiet, he jest couldn’t stand it any longer, and he
saddled up his hoss and started west. Out on the New Mexico line he met
an old trapper, and they got to talkin’, and Bill told him why he was
leavin’, and said if the old man knowed where there was a tough outfit,
he’d be much obliged if he would tell him how to git to it.
“‘Ride up the draw about two hundred miles,’ says the old trapper, ‘and
you’ll find a bunch of guys so tough that they bite nails in two jest
for the fun of it.’
“So Bill rides on in a hurry, gittin’ somewhat reckless on account of
wantin’ to git to that outfit and git a look at the bad _hombres_ that
the old man has told him about. The first thing Bill knowed, his hoss
stumps his toe on a mountain and breaks his fool neck rollin’ down the
side, and so Bill finds his self afoot.
“He takes off his saddle and goes walkin’ on, packin’ it, till all at
once he comes to a big rattlesnake. He was twelve feet long and had
fangs like the tushes of a _javelina_; and he rears up and sings at
Bill and sticks out his tongue like he was lookin’ for a scrap. There
wasn’t nothin’ that Bill wouldn’t fight, and he always fought fair; and
jest to be shore that rattlesnake had a fair show and couldn’t claim he
took advantage of him, Bill let him have three bites before he begun.
Then he jest naturally lit into that reptile and mortally flailed the
stuffin’ out of him. Bill was always quick to forgive, though, and let
by-gones be by-gones, and when the snake give up, Bill took him up and
curled him around his neck, and picked up his saddle and outfit and
went on his way.
“As he was goin’ along through a canyon, all at once a big mountain
lion jumped off of a cliff and spraddled out all over Bill. Bill never
got excited. He jest took his time and laid down his saddle and his
snake, and then he turned loose on that cougar. Well, sir, the hair
flew so it rose up like a cloud and the jack-rabbits and road-runners
thought it was sundown. It wasn’t long till that cougar had jest all he
could stand, and he begun to lick Bill’s hand and cry like a kitten.
“Well, Bill jest ears him down and slips his bridle on his head, throws
on the saddle and cinches her tight, and mounts the beast. Well, that
cat jest tears out across the mountains and canyons with Bill on his
back a-spurrin’ him in the shoulders and quirtin’ him down the flank
with the rattlesnake.
“And that’s the way Bill rode into the camp of the outfit the old
trapper had told him about. When he gits there, he reaches out and
cheeks down the cougar and sets him on his haunches and gits down and
looks at his saddle.
“There was them tough _hombres_ a-settin’ around the fire playin’
_monte_. There was a pot of coffee and a bucket of beans a-boilin’
on the fire, and as Bill hadn’t had nothin’ to eat for several days,
he was hungry; so he stuck his hand down in the bucket and grabbed a
handful of beans and crammed ’em into his mouth. Then he grabbed the
coffee pot and washed ’em down, and wiped his mouth on a prickly-pear.
Then he turned to the men and said, ‘Who in the hell is boss around
here, anyway?’
“‘I was,’ says a big stout feller about seven feet tall, ‘but you are
now, stranger.’
“And that was the beginning of Bill’s outfit.”
“But it was only the beginnin’s,” said Red; “for it wasn’t long
after that that he staked out New Mexico and fenced Arizona for a
calf-pasture. He built a big ranch-house and had a big yard around
it. It was so far from the yard gate to the front door, that he used
to keep a string of saddle hosses at stations along the way, for the
convenience of visitors. Bill always was a hospitable sort of chap, and
when company come, he always tried to persuade them to stay as long
as he could git ’em to. Deputy sheriffs and brand inspectors he never
would let leave a-tall.
“One time his outfit was so big that he would have his cooks jist dam
up a draw to mix the biscuit dough in. They would dump in the flour and
the salt and the bakin’-powder and mix it up with teams and fresnoes.
You can still see places where the dough was left in the bottom of
the draw when they moved on. Alkali lakes they call ’em. That’s the
bakin’-powder that stayed in the ground.
“One time when there was a big drought and water got scerce on Bill’s
range, he lit in and dug the Río Grande and ditched water from the Gulf
of Mexico. Old man Windy Williams was water boy on the job, and he said
Bill shore drove his men hard for a few days till they got through, and
it kept him busy carryin’ water.”
“I guess it took about all of Bill’s time to manage a ranch like that,”
said Lanky.
“Not all, not all,” said Joe. “That was his main vocation and callin’,
but he found time for a good many other things. He was always goin’ in
for somethin’ else when the cattle business got slack.
“When the S. P. come through, he got a contract furnishin’ ’em wood.
Bill went down into Mexico and rounded up a bunch of greasers and put
’em to cuttin’ wood. He made a contract with ’em that they was to git
half the wood they cut. When the time was up, they all had big stacks
of cordwood, Mex’can cords, you understand, that they don’t know what
to do with. So Bill talked it over with ’em and finally agreed to take
it off their hands without chargin’ ’em a cent. Bill always was liberal.
“He done some of the gradin’ on the S. P. too. This time he went out
and rounded up ten thousand badgers and put ’em to diggin’. He said
they was better laborers than Chinks, because he could learn ’em how
to work sooner. Bill had some trouble, however, gittin’ ’em to go in a
straight line, and that’s why the S. P. is so crooked in places.
“He also got a contract fencin’ the right-of-way. The first thing that
he done was to go out on the line of Texas and New Mexico and buy up
all the dry holes old Bob Sanford had made out there tryin’ to git
water. He pulled ’em up and sawed ’em up into two-foot lengths for
post-holes.”
“I’ve heard that Paul Bunyan did that with dry oil-wells,” said Lanky.
“Paul Bunyan might of for all I know,” said Joe. “But if he did, he
learned the trick from Pecos Bill, for this was before oil had been
invented.
“However, it cost so much to freight the holes down that Bill give up
the plan long before he had used up all of Bob Sanford’s wells, and
found a cheaper and better way of makin’ post-holes.”
“What was his new method?” asked Lanky.
“Why, he jest went out and rounded up a big bunch of prairie-dogs, and
turned ’em loose where he wanted the fence, and of course every critter
of ’em begun diggin’ a hole, for it’s jest a prairie-dog’s nature to
dig holes. As soon as a prairie-dog would git down about two feet,
Bill would yank him out and stick a post in the hole. Then the fool
prairie-dog would go start another one, and Bill would git it. Bill
said he found the prairie-dog labor very satisfactory. The only trouble
was that sometimes durin’ off hours, the badgers that he had gradin’
would make a raid on the prairie-dogs, and Bill would have to git up
and drive ’em back to their own camp.”
“Did Bill have any other occupations?” asked Lanky.
“Well,” said Joe, “he used to fight Indians jest for recreation, but he
never did make a business of it like some did, huntin’ ’em for a dollar
a scalp. In fact Bill was not bloodthirsty and cruel, and he never
scalped an Indian in his life. He’d jest skin ’em and tan their hides.”
“That reminds me,” said Hank, “of another business he used to carry
on as a sort of side-line, and that was huntin’ buffalo. You see, it
was the hides that was valuable, and Bill thought it was too much of
a waste to kill a buffalo jest for the hide; so he’d jest hold the
critters and skin ’em alive and then turn ’em aloose to grow a new
hide. A profitable business he built up, too, but he jest made one
mistake.”
“What was that?” asked Lanky.
“One spring he skinned too early, and a norther come up, and all the
buffalo took cold and died. Mighty few of ’em left after that.”
“Did Bill ever get married?” asked Lanky.
“Oh, yes,” said Joe. “He married lots of women in his day, but he never
had the real tender affection for any of the rest of ’em that he had
for his first wife, Slue-Foot Sue.
“Bill savvied courtin’ the ladies all right; yet he never took much
stock in petticoats till he met Slue-Foot Sue; but when he saw that gal
come ridin’ down the Río Grande on a catfish, it jest got next to him,
and he married her right off.
“I say right off--but she made him wait a few days till she could send
to San Antonio for a suitable and proper outfit, the principal garment
bein’ a big steel wire bustle, like all the women wore when they
dressed up in them days.
“Well, everything would have gone off fine, but on the very day of the
weddin’ Sue took a fool notion into her head that she jest had to ride
Widow-Maker. For a long time Bill wouldn’t hear to it, but finally
she begun to cry, and said Bill didn’t love her any more. Bill jest
couldn’t stand to see her cry; so he told her to go ahead but to be
keerful.
[Illustration: “_That gal come ridin’ down the Río Grande on a
catfish._”]
“Well, she got on that hoss, and he give about two jumps, and she left
the saddle. He throwed her so high that she had to duck as she went up
to keep from bumpin’ her head on the moon. Then she come down, landin’
right on that steel bustle, and that made her bounce up jest as high,
nearly, as she had went before. Well, she jest kept on bouncin’ like
that for ten days and nights, and finally Bill had to shoot her to keep
her from starvin’ to death. It nearly broke his heart. That was the
only time Bill had ever been known to shed tears, and he was so tore up
that he wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with a woman for two weeks.”
[2] A type of loop. Pronounced _hoolián_.
THE EXODUS OF PECOS BILL
Lanky had been sent for, and this was his last night in camp. His face
was tanned; he had gained in weight; he had earned money in his own
right. He felt that he was now a man.
He and his cronies sat around the fire in silence. Joe and the boys
would miss the kid, and he hated to leave. This silence wouldn’t do.
“What became of Pecos Bill?” asked Lanky.
“That would be hard to say,” said Joe, “hard to say. Everybody knows
he’s gone, jest like the open range and the longhorn steer; but jest
how and where he passed in his checks, I don’t suppose anybody will
ever find out for certain. A lot of the fellers that knowed him are
dead, and a lot of ’em has bad memories--a lot of the old-timers has
bad memories--and some of ’em are sech damn liars that you can’t go by
what they say.”
“You’ve seen Pecos Bill, haven’t you, Joe?” said Lanky.
“Well, yes, that is I seen him when I was a young buck. But I never
seen him die, and I never could find out jest how he was took off. I’ve
seen some mighty hot arguments on the subject, and I’ve knowed one or
two fellers to die with their boots on after gittin’ in a quarrel in
jest that way.”
“I heard one account a few years ago,” said Red, “that may be right.
There was a feller in Amarillo named Gabriel Asbury Jackson. He’d
worked his self out of a job in Kansas and had come to Texas to buck
the cigarette evil. One time he cornered a bunch of us that was too
drunk to make a git-away and begun talkin’ to us about smokin’.
“‘Young men,’ he says, ‘beware of cigarettes. You think you’re smart
to smoke a sack of Bull Durham every day, do you? Well, look at Pecos
Bill. A stalwart young man he was, tough as nails, a fine specimen. But
he got to foolin’ with cigarettes. What did they do for him?’ he says.
‘Why, nothin’ at first. But did he quit? No!’ he says. ‘He puffed away
for ninety years, but they finally got him. And they’ll git you, every
mother’s son of you, if you don’t leave ’em alone.’”
“That ain’t so,” said Joe. “That man was jest a liar. Cigarettes never
killed Pecos Bill. He was, however, a great smoker, but he never
smoked Bull Durham. He made him up a mixture of his own, the principal
ingredients bein’ Kentucky home-spun, sulphur, and gun-powder. Why, he
would have thought he was a sissy if he’d smoked Bull Durham.
“When the matches was scerce Bill used to ride out into a thunderstorm
and light his cigarette with a streak of lightnin’, and that’s no doubt
what’s back of a tale you hear every once in a while about him bein’
struck and kilt. But nobody that knows how Bill throwed a surcingle
over a streak of lightnin’ and rode it over Pike’s Peak will ever
believe that story.”
“I heard it was liquor that killed pore Bill,” said Hank.
“Must of been boot-leg,” said Red.
“Naw,” said Hank. “You see, Bill bein’ brought up as he was from tender
youth on whiskey and onions, was still a young man when whiskey lost
its kick for him. He got to puttin’ nitroglycerin in his drinks. That
worked all right for a while, but soon he had to go to wolf-bait; and
when that got so it didn’t work, he went to fish-hooks. Bill used to
say, rather sorrowful-like, that that was the only way he could git an
idear from his booze. But after about fifty years the fish-hooks rusted
out his interior parts and brought pore Bill to an early grave.”
“I don’t know who told you that windy,” said Joe. “It might of been
your own daddy. But it ain’t so. It’s jest another damn lie concocted
by them damn prohibition men.”
“I heard another tale,” said Red, “which may be right for all I know. I
heard that Bill went to Fort Worth one time, and there he seen a Boston
man who had jist come to Texas with a mail-order cowboy outfit on; and
when Bill seen him, he jist naturally laid down and laughed his self to
death.”
“That may be so,” said Joe, “but I doubt it. I heard one tale about
the death of Pecos Bill that I believe is the real correct and true
account.”
“And what was that?” asked Lanky.
“Well, Bill happened to drift into Cheyenne jest as the first rodeo was
bein’ put on. Bein’ a bit curious to know what it was all about, he
went out to the grounds to look the thing over. When he seen the ropers
and the riders, he begun to weep; the first tears he’d shed since the
death of Slue-Foot Sue. Well, finally when a country lawyer jest three
years out of Mississippi got up to make a speech and referred to the
men on horseback as cowboys, Bill turned white and begun to tremble.
And then when the country lawyer went on to talk about ‘keepin’
inviolate the sacred traditions of the Old West,’ Bill jest went out
and crawled in a prairie-dog hole and died of solemncholy.”
Lanky looked at Red and Hank. They had not missed the point, but they
chose to ignore it.
Joe talked on. “After several years,” he said, “when all Bill’s
would-be rivals was sure he was dead, they all begun to try to ruin his
reputation and defame his character. They said he was a hot-headed,
overbearin’ sort of feller. They was too scered to use the word, even
after Bill died, but what they meant was that he was a _killer_.
“Now, Pecos Bill did kill lots of men. He never kept no tally his
self, and I don’t suppose nobody will ever know jest how many he took
off. Of course I’m not referrin’ to Mex’cans and Indians. Bill didn’t
count them. But Bill wasn’t a bad man, and he hardly ever killed a man
without just cause.
“For instance, there was Big Ike that he shot for snorin’, that Bill’s
enemies talked up so much. But them that was doin’ the talkin’ would
forgit to mention that Bill had been standin’ guard over Mexico steers
every night for six weeks and was gittin’ a bit sleepy.
“Then there was Ris Risbone. Ris was one of these practical jokers, and
he ramrodded an outfit that fell in behind Bill’s on the trail. Ris had
a dozen or so jokes, and when he pulled one, he slapped his knees and
laughed and laughed whether anybody else was a-laughin’ or not. One day
Ris rode up to Bill’s chuck-wagon when there wasn’t nobody there but
the cook, and he was asleep in the shade of the wagon with his head
between the wheels. Ris slipped up and grabbed the trace chains and
begun rattlin’ ’em and yellin’ ‘Whoa! Whoa!’ The pore spick woke up
thinkin’ that the team was runnin’ away, and that he was about to git
his pass to Saint Peter. He jumped up and bumped his head on the wagon;
then he wakes up and looks around, and there stands Ris slappin’ his
knees and laughin’. Jest then Bill rides up, but he never said nothin’.
“When the outfits got to Abilene, Bill was in the White Elephant with
some of his men, fixin’ to take a drink. Jest as Bill was about to drop
his fish-hooks in his glass, Ris poked his head in at the winder and
yelled, ‘Fire! Fire!’--and Bill did.
“In one killin’, however, Bill acted a bit hasty, as he admitted his
self. One day he called Three-Fingered Ed out of the saloon, sayin’
he’d like to speak with him in private. Bill led Ed out into a back
alley, and there they stopped.
“‘Say, Ed,’ he says, lookin’ him right in the eye, ‘didn’t you say that
Mike said I was a hot-headed, overbearin’ sort of feller?’
“‘Naw,’ says Ed, ‘You mistook me. He never said that.’
“‘Well, doggone,’ says Bill, ‘ain’t that too bad. I’ve gone and killed
an innocent man.’
“Well, Lanky, maybe your pa’ll let you come back next fall.”
THE END
Transcriber’s Note
This book was written in a period when many words had not become
standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling
variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been
left unchanged unless indicated below.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the
end of the chapter in which the anchor occurs. Obvious printing
errors, such as backwards, upside down, missing or partially printed
letters and punctuation, were corrected. Descriptors were added to
illustrations without captions.
The following spelling corrections were made:
biggest and the [straighest] straightest
we [liked] lacked one man
we work the canyon [tomorow] tomorrow
I’d jest [made] make him mad
the old [traper] trapper
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