Mody C. Boatright

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 70] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 88] up and curled him around his neck, and picked up his saddle and outfit and went on his way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We find we don’t have to dig post-holes. I’d stand one of the critters on his tail, and Jack [Pg 11] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Durin’ Pecos Bill’s time there was a lot of people that didn’t believe there was any sech animal [Pg 32] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.”
[Pg 68] 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.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 84] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 ”