This legend was given me by Mrs. Jack Hardy, now of El Paso, whose home
was for several years in Alpine, Brewster County. The time of it goes
back only thirty or thirty-five years, and the appearance of the
footprints is vouched for today by some of our substantial citizens who
were cowpunchers then.
In the Big Bend country campers would awake in the mornings to see
tracks of moccasined feet leading to and from the vicinity—apparently
of a man and a woman following. Sometimes, after having been trailed
for miles, sometimes for shorter distances, suddenly the trail would be
lost.
A cowboy sleeping out would awake and say: “Well, boys, ‘Big Foot and
Little Foot’ have been here”; and there would be the ghostly
footprints. By whom they were made, whence they came, whither they led,
is still a mystery. Leaving their mysterious tracks, the treaders came
and went as the winds and the rains, and with as little warning.