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?”