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.