[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.