Bill went down into Mexico and rounded up a bunch of greasers and put
’em to cuttin’ wood. He made a contract with ’em that they was to git
half the wood they cut. When the time was up, they all had big stacks
of cordwood, Mex’can cords, you understand, that they don’t know what
to do with. So Bill talked it over with ’em and finally agreed to take
it off their hands without chargin’ ’em a cent. Bill always was liberal.
“He done some of the gradin’ on the S. P. too. This time he went out
and rounded up ten thousand badgers and put ’em to diggin’. He said
they was better laborers than Chinks, because he could learn ’em how
to work sooner. Bill had some trouble, however, gittin’ ’em to go in a
straight line, and that’s why the S. P. is so crooked in places.
“He also got a contract fencin’ the right-of-way. The first thing that
he done was to go out on the line of Texas and New Mexico and buy up
all the dry holes old Bob Sanford had made out there tryin’ to git
water. He pulled ’em up and sawed ’em up into two-foot lengths for
post-holes.”
“I’ve heard that Paul Bunyan did that with dry oil-wells,” said Lanky.
“Paul Bunyan might of for all I know,” said Joe. “But if he did, he
learned the trick from Pecos Bill, for this was before oil had been
invented.
“However, it cost so much to freight the holes down that Bill give up
the plan long before he had used up all of Bob Sanford’s wells, and
found a cheaper and better way of makin’ post-holes.”
“What was his new method?” asked Lanky.
“Why, he jest went out and rounded up a big bunch of prairie-dogs, and
turned ’em loose where he wanted the fence, and of course every critter
of ’em begun diggin’ a hole, for it’s jest a prairie-dog’s nature to
dig holes. As soon as a prairie-dog would git down about two feet,
Bill would yank him out and stick a post in the hole. Then the fool
prairie-dog would go start another one, and Bill would git it. Bill
said he found the prairie-dog labor very satisfactory. The only trouble
was that sometimes durin’ off hours, the badgers that he had gradin’
would make a raid on the prairie-dogs, and Bill would have to git up
and drive ’em back to their own camp.”
“Did Bill have any other occupations?” asked Lanky.
“Well,” said Joe, “he used to fight Indians jest for recreation, but he
never did make a business of it like some did, huntin’ ’em for a dollar
a scalp. In fact Bill was not bloodthirsty and cruel, and he never
scalped an Indian in his life. He’d jest skin ’em and tan their hides.”
“That reminds me,” said Hank, “of another business he used to carry
on as a sort of side-line, and that was huntin’ buffalo. You see, it
was the hides that was valuable, and Bill thought it was too much of
a waste to kill a buffalo jest for the hide; so he’d jest hold the
critters and skin ’em alive and then turn ’em aloose to grow a new
hide. A profitable business he built up, too, but he jest made one
mistake.”
“What was that?” asked Lanky.
“One spring he skinned too early, and a norther come up, and all the
buffalo took cold and died. Mighty few of ’em left after that.”
“Did Bill ever get married?” asked Lanky.
“Oh, yes,” said Joe. “He married lots of women in his day, but he never
had the real tender affection for any of the rest of ’em that he had
for his first wife, Slue-Foot Sue.
“Bill savvied courtin’ the ladies all right; yet he never took much
stock in petticoats till he met Slue-Foot Sue; but when he saw that gal
come ridin’ down the Río Grande on a catfish, it jest got next to him,
and he married her right off.
“I say right off--but she made him wait a few days till she could send
to San Antonio for a suitable and proper outfit, the principal garment
bein’ a big steel wire bustle, like all the women wore when they
dressed up in them days.
“Well, everything would have gone off fine, but on the very day of the
weddin’ Sue took a fool notion into her head that she jest had to ride
Widow-Maker. For a long time Bill wouldn’t hear to it, but finally
she begun to cry, and said Bill didn’t love her any more. Bill jest
couldn’t stand to see her cry; so he told her to go ahead but to be
keerful.
[Illustration: “_That gal come ridin’ down the Río Grande on a
catfish._”]
“Well, she got on that hoss, and he give about two jumps, and she left
the saddle. He throwed her so high that she had to duck as she went up
to keep from bumpin’ her head on the moon. Then she come down, landin’
right on that steel bustle, and that made her bounce up jest as high,
nearly, as she had went before. Well, she jest kept on bouncin’ like
that for ten days and nights, and finally Bill had to shoot her to keep
her from starvin’ to death. It nearly broke his heart. That was the
only time Bill had ever been known to shed tears, and he was so tore up
that he wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with a woman for two weeks.”
[2] A type of loop. Pronounced _hoolián_.
THE EXODUS OF PECOS BILL
Lanky had been sent for, and this was his last night in camp. His face
was tanned; he had gained in weight; he had earned money in his own
right. He felt that he was now a man.
He and his cronies sat around the fire in silence. Joe and the boys
would miss the kid, and he hated to leave. This silence wouldn’t do.
“What became of Pecos Bill?” asked Lanky.
“That would be hard to say,” said Joe, “hard to say. Everybody knows
he’s gone, jest like the open range and the longhorn steer; but jest
how and where he passed in his checks, I don’t suppose anybody will
ever find out for certain. A lot of the fellers that knowed him are
dead, and a lot of ’em has bad memories--a lot of the old-timers has
bad memories--and some of ’em are sech damn liars that you can’t go by
what they say.”
“You’ve seen Pecos Bill, haven’t you, Joe?” said Lanky.
“Well, yes, that is I seen him when I was a young buck. But I never
seen him die, and I never could find out jest how he was took off. I’ve
seen some mighty hot arguments on the subject, and I’ve knowed one or
two fellers to die with their boots on after gittin’ in a quarrel in
jest that way.”
“I heard one account a few years ago,” said Red, “that may be right.
There was a feller in Amarillo named Gabriel Asbury Jackson. He’d
worked his self out of a job in Kansas and had come to Texas to buck
the cigarette evil. One time he cornered a bunch of us that was too
drunk to make a git-away and begun talkin’ to us about smokin’.
“‘Young men,’ he says, ‘beware of cigarettes. You think you’re smart
to smoke a sack of Bull Durham every day, do you? Well, look at Pecos
Bill. A stalwart young man he was, tough as nails, a fine specimen. But
he got to foolin’ with cigarettes. What did they do for him?’ he says.
‘Why, nothin’ at first. But did he quit? No!’ he says. ‘He puffed away
for ninety years, but they finally got him. And they’ll git you, every
mother’s son of you, if you don’t leave ’em alone.’”
“That ain’t so,” said Joe. “That man was jest a liar. Cigarettes never
killed Pecos Bill. He was, however, a great smoker, but he never
smoked Bull Durham. He made him up a mixture of his own, the principal
ingredients bein’ Kentucky home-spun, sulphur, and gun-powder. Why, he
would have thought he was a sissy if he’d smoked Bull Durham.
“When the matches was scerce Bill used to ride out into a thunderstorm
and light his cigarette with a streak of lightnin’, and that’s no doubt
what’s back of a tale you hear every once in a while about him bein’
struck and kilt. But nobody that knows how Bill throwed a surcingle
over a streak of lightnin’ and rode it over Pike’s Peak will ever
believe that story.”
“I heard it was liquor that killed pore Bill,” said Hank.
“Must of been boot-leg,” said Red.
“Naw,” said Hank. “You see, Bill bein’ brought up as he was from tender
youth on whiskey and onions, was still a young man when whiskey lost
its kick for him. He got to puttin’ nitroglycerin in his drinks. That
worked all right for a while, but soon he had to go to wolf-bait; and
when that got so it didn’t work, he went to fish-hooks. Bill used to
say, rather sorrowful-like, that that was the only way he could git an
idear from his booze. But after about fifty years the fish-hooks rusted
out his interior parts and brought pore Bill to an early grave.”
“I don’t know who told you that windy,” said Joe. “It might of been
your own daddy. But it ain’t so. It’s jest another damn lie concocted
by them damn prohibition men.”
“I heard another tale,” said Red, “which may be right for all I know. I
heard that Bill went to Fort Worth one time, and there he seen a Boston
man who had jist come to Texas with a mail-order cowboy outfit on; and
when Bill seen him, he jist naturally laid down and laughed his self to
death.”
“That may be so,” said Joe, “but I doubt it. I heard one tale about
the death of Pecos Bill that I believe is the real correct and true
account.”
“And what was that?” asked Lanky.
“Well, Bill happened to drift into Cheyenne jest as the first rodeo was
bein’ put on. Bein’ a bit curious to know what it was all about, he
went out to the grounds to look the thing over. When he seen the ropers
and the riders, he begun to weep; the first tears he’d shed since the
death of Slue-Foot Sue. Well, finally when a country lawyer jest three
years out of Mississippi got up to make a speech and referred to the
men on horseback as cowboys, Bill turned white and begun to tremble.
And then when the country lawyer went on to talk about ‘keepin’
inviolate the sacred traditions of the Old West,’ Bill jest went out
and crawled in a prairie-dog hole and died of solemncholy.”
Lanky looked at Red and Hank. They had not missed the point, but they
chose to ignore it.
Joe talked on. “After several years,” he said, “when all Bill’s
would-be rivals was sure he was dead, they all begun to try to ruin his
reputation and defame his character. They said he was a hot-headed,
overbearin’ sort of feller. They was too scered to use the word, even
after Bill died, but what they meant was that he was a _killer_.
“Now, Pecos Bill did kill lots of men. He never kept no tally his
self, and I don’t suppose nobody will ever know jest how many he took
off. Of course I’m not referrin’ to Mex’cans and Indians. Bill didn’t
count them. But Bill wasn’t a bad man, and he hardly ever killed a man
without just cause.
“For instance, there was Big Ike that he shot for snorin’, that Bill’s
enemies talked up so much. But them that was doin’ the talkin’ would
forgit to mention that Bill had been standin’ guard over Mexico steers
every night for six weeks and was gittin’ a bit sleepy.
“Then there was Ris Risbone. Ris was one of these practical jokers, and
he ramrodded an outfit that fell in behind Bill’s on the trail. Ris had
a dozen or so jokes, and when he pulled one, he slapped his knees and
laughed and laughed whether anybody else was a-laughin’ or not. One day
Ris rode up to Bill’s chuck-wagon when there wasn’t nobody there but
the cook, and he was asleep in the shade of the wagon with his head
between the wheels. Ris slipped up and grabbed the trace chains and
begun rattlin’ ’em and yellin’ ‘Whoa! Whoa!’ The pore spick woke up
thinkin’ that the team was runnin’ away, and that he was about to git
his pass to Saint Peter. He jumped up and bumped his head on the wagon;
then he wakes up and looks around, and there stands Ris slappin’ his
knees and laughin’. Jest then Bill rides up, but he never said nothin’.
“When the outfits got to Abilene, Bill was in the White Elephant with
some of his men, fixin’ to take a drink. Jest as Bill was about to drop
his fish-hooks in his glass, Ris poked his head in at the winder and
yelled, ‘Fire! Fire!’--and Bill did.
“In one killin’, however, Bill acted a bit hasty, as he admitted his
self. One day he called Three-Fingered Ed out of the saloon, sayin’
he’d like to speak with him in private. Bill led Ed out into a back
alley, and there they stopped.
“‘Say, Ed,’ he says, lookin’ him right in the eye, ‘didn’t you say that
Mike said I was a hot-headed, overbearin’ sort of feller?’
“‘Naw,’ says Ed, ‘You mistook me. He never said that.’
“‘Well, doggone,’ says Bill, ‘ain’t that too bad. I’ve gone and killed
an innocent man.’
“Well, Lanky, maybe your pa’ll let you come back next fall.”
THE END
Transcriber’s Note
This book was written in a period when many words had not become
standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling
variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been
left unchanged unless indicated below.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the
end of the chapter in which the anchor occurs. Obvious printing
errors, such as backwards, upside down, missing or partially printed
letters and punctuation, were corrected. Descriptors were added to
illustrations without captions.
The following spelling corrections were made:
biggest and the [straighest] straightest
we [liked] lacked one man
we work the canyon [tomorow] tomorrow
I’d jest [made] make him mad
the old [traper] trapper