“But I can’t think of going with you today. I’ve at least got to go back and take my farewell of the pack.”
“Well then, tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll come for you. And I’ll say we’ll teach you the gentlest of all ancient arts, the art of the ranch. Oh yes, you’ll still be right in the great out-of-doors. With your strength like an ox and your spry heels, you’ll become the greatest of all the great cowmen the world has ever known.”
Chuck’s words stirred something deep within Cropear’s nature. What it was, he did not know. But he saw clearly in this instant, that come what might, he must go with Chuck. Lifting his head with a gesture of determination, he said solemnly, “Brother Chuck, I hear the call! Today I bid you adieu; tomorrow I join you!”
With these words and without once looking back, Cropear loped easily over the chaparral, across the rolling mesa. He skirted the sagebrush and was soon lost in the haze of the distant mesquite.
Chuck rubbed his eyes for a moment to make certain that this was something more than a daydream. Then he pulled on his high-heeled boots, tightened his jingling spurs, swung aboard his astonished buckskin pony, and was off. All the way home to the ranch house he sang so loud that he fairly cracked his voice:
“With my seat in the sky and my knees in the saddle,
I’m going to teach Pecos Bill to punch Texas cattle.
Get along, little dogies, get along, get along;
Get along, little dogies, get along.
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya!
Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya!”
CHAPTER 3
PECOS BILL MEETS A COWPUNCHER
When Chuck reached the ranch house he was still loudly singing with a sharp nasal twang:
“Coma ti yi youpy, youpy ya!”
“Where’ve you been all this time and what’s happened to you now, Chuck?” drawled Legs, his best pal, who was sitting on the back steps waiting for supper. “I’ve always said the world would sure come to an evil end when you turned musical. You sound like a cross between a blackbird and a kingfisher.”
“Well, if you’d been where I’ve been, and if you’d seen what I’ve seen, you’d be musical too! I just keep singin’ along to prove to myself that I’m not loco!” answered Chuck as he swung down from the saddle.
“You don’t say,” said Legs curiously.
“Yes, I’ve just come from down across the Pecos where I met a human who thinks he’s a Coyote! He’s runnin’ around down there with no clothes like a regular varmint. He’s got enough red hair down the back of his neck to braid a rope a mile long. And the sagebrush on his face and chest would cover half the ranch. Yes, and he’s prattlin’ about what noble creatures the Coyotes are, and what low-down, depraved degenerates we inhumans are!” As he spoke, Chuck sat down.
“You don’t mean it,” Legs laughed and slapped his boot with his open palm in glee.
“When I told him he was a human, he said that couldn’t possibly be true, because he said he had got fleas same as all other Coyotes!”
“We’re Coyotes then too, you bet!” Legs laughed.
“Then I tried to convince him that he’d got no tail and so he couldn’t possibly be a Coyote. Well, after a while I was able to show him that he looked more like me than he looked like his whole pack of varmints put together. Yes, and you won’t believe me when I tell you that he easily outran the best I could do on Old Pepper for more’n ten miles. He can run antelope and jackrabbits off their feet, and there’s no mistake about it. I saw him do it with my own two eyes, I’m tellin’ you.”
“Guess I best get my gun, Chuck, and take you out to the place for locoed cayuses. You’re as crazy as a frothin’ steer!” drawled Legs.
“Yes, and listen to this,” Chuck continued without noticing the remark, “This human’s got a tattooed star on his forearm just like this one I wear here. It looks to me as if he’s my brother, Pecos Bill, the one I told you that got lost overboard when the folks was movin’ us children to the Rio Grande. The fact seems to be that the Coyotes have reared this lost brother of mine as a loyal member of their pack, and that they’ve made him believe all these years that he’s a full-blooded Coyote himself. Yes, and what’s more, they’ve taught him to hate us inhumans worse than if we was bad-blooded rattlesnakes.”
“Well,” grinned Legs, “congratulations. You get loonier and loonier. You’re locoed all right. Wait a minute till I fetch my gun, before you begin to froth at the mouth and get dangerous.”
“Tomorrow mornin’,” said Chuck seriously, “I’m goin’ to take an extra bronco and some of my clothes and go down to the river and tow him back here to the ranch. Then you’ll very soon see that you’ll be just as locoed about him as I am. And if everything don’t turn out just like I’m tellin’ you, then I’ll eat your lead.”
Two hours later as the men of the ranch squatted round their fire, eating their evening meal, Chuck related his experience to them.
At first they all declared that Chuck should be shot for trying to make them believe such a yarn. But when he seemed to them a bit too anxious to bet them everything he owned, even to his buckskin shirt and his Mexican saddle and Old Pepper, his bronco pony, they weren’t so sure.
“Well, if it’s as you say,” said Gun Smith, the natural leader of the outfit, “we’re goin’ to have a regular circus when the noble son of a Coyote arrives. By the time we have initiated him into the sacred rites of the Ancient and Renowned Order of the Knights of the Round Table of the Genus Bovine, the cowpuncher, he’ll know at least one thing, I’m tellin’ you. He’ll never forget that a Human is a Human and that a Coyote is a Coyote!”
The others were in cordial agreement. “We’ll soon pound all the Coyote ideas out of his head!” they shouted.
“I move that we make Gun Smith the master of ceremonies,” announced Fat Adams.
“Agreed,” called everybody in a hearty chorus.
“What you tell the greenhorn Coyote to do, we’ll see that he does it, and that promptly, or our names is not the Boys of the I. X. L. Ranch!” pledged a dozen voices.
“I don’t care much what you do to him,” drawled Chuck with serious face. “Only, please remember he’s my baby brother. Don’t you go shootin’ him or breakin’ any of his bones. And remember this, he’ll likely turn out a pretty stubborn cayuse before you’ve got him goin’. Believe me, he’s nobody’s fool. He learns things quicker’n anybody I’ve ever seen.”
“I foresee we’re goin’ to have a very warm evenin’ as soon as he arrives,” chuckled Gun Smith.
“In fact, he looks to me like the smartest of the whole Hunt family,” Chuck added dreamily.
Thus it was agreed that Pecos Bill should receive everything in their bag of tricks when it came to giving him the customary initiation of a greenhorn entering the cow camp.
The following morning when Chuck guided Old Pepper and the trailing pony across the river at the ford, he found Pecos Bill sitting on his haunches, waiting. Pecos had just finished putting on an old, ill-fitting man’s suit, and he was more uncomfortable than he had ever been before in his life.
At first Chuck could scarcely believe his eyes. When he did fully recognize his brother, he let out a hearty laugh.
“You didn’t pick ’em quite soon enough,” he grinned broadly.
“I don’t understand at all what you mean,” Pecos answered.
“You left ’em on the bush two or three months too long…Your clothes, I mean. They’re a mile and a half too big for you. What were you tryin’ to do when you bought them—get your money’s worth?”
“I didn’t buy them,” Pecos answered, feeling very upset that his brother did not like his clothes. “They were given to me!”
“And who, may I ask, handed ’em down to you?”
“The Coyote pack. My brothers, of course. We all knew that it wouldn’t be quite right for me to go with you to the ranch house without anything on, and so the Coyotes stripped these off the body of a cowboy who was killed in a fight la
st night, far over the mesa.”
“I’ll have to tell you,” Chuck replied very seriously, “that you’re makin’ a terrible bad mistake. It ain’t considered good manners, Pecos, to be found wearin’ the clothes some other man has died in.”
Then, to make sure that Pecos was not trying to fool him, Chuck swung easily down from Old Pepper and made a personal examination. Sure enough, there was the bullet hole and the blood stain, and the numerous teeth marks of the Coyotes. After a few seconds, Chuck added, “Pecos, you had best take ’em off right away!”
Strange, thought Pecos to himself, that these humans are so careful not to wear the clothes of a dead man, when all the while they wear clothes made of dead animals.
Now Chuck sauntered easily over to where Old Pepper was nibbling the bunchgrass and untied a neat bundle from behind his saddlebags. “Here, brother Pecos, try these.”
Pecos was much perplexed. But he struggled out of the dead man’s suit and picked up the clothes Chuck had brought him.
“You’re as awkward, Pecos, as the noodle that hung his trousers high on a peg and then tried to take a runnin’ start and jump into them,” Chuck commented. “Here, take hold of the top this way.”
After Pecos had succeeded in wriggling into his clothes, Chuck stood back and admired him. “Why, you’ll be handsomer than General George Washington, brother Pecos, when you get some of the bristlin’ sagebrush off your neck and that autumn tinged bunchgrass off your cheeks and chin.”
What a strange race these humans are, thought Pecos again to himself. They seem to delight most of all in undoing everything that Mother Nature has done so well for them.
Pecos knew that although he was rapidly learning a great deal, he was still far from being the man his brother was. And he felt shy and bashful.
“Here, Pecos, stand still,” Chuck was now saying, as he got out a sizable pair of scissors. “I got a job to do. You can’t go ridin’ up to the ranch with such a nestin’ place for the varmints around your neck and ears.”
“But I thought you said yesterday that all humans had fleas,” Pecos objected nervously.
“The only difference,” crooned Chuck, “is that the Coyotes have got a few more fleas according to size than the humans.”
As he talked, Chuck’s shears moved rapidly and great shocks of red hair fell to the ground. “It’ll take only another minute to crop off a couple o’ yards of your mane with these warranted bronco shears,” Chuck rattled on. “There, that’s a thousand percent better already. Yes, and now we’ll just waltz up and down your cheeks a few times for good measure. Why, you can just hear the fleas howl as the shears overtake ’em. Never mind, you’re beginnin’ to look somethin’ like yourself now. By the little roan bull’s bellow, you’re as perfect as old Davy Crockett, and the world will bear me out in that statement as soon as she’s been properly introduced.”
Chuck stopped to admire his handiwork.
“Man alive,” he continued musically, “you’re the first brother o’ mine I’ve ever seen that I’m proud to call my own. Let me tell you, you put to shame every other human of the whole Southwest Empire, or I’m a liar.”
After he had worked half an hour longer trimming and brushing his brother, Chuck began to think of the ranch house. “Well, brother Pecos, now that you’re lookin’ so fine, we had best be ridin’ along.”
Pecos Bill gets his first haircut.
Pecos started to walk over to the waiting ponies, but his gait resembled nothing so much as a kitten with paper tied to its feet.
“These boots! They’re terrible,” he groaned. “My feet, oh, my feet! Please, Brother Chuck, let me wear the boots my brother Coyotes gave me.”
“Now, my boy,” Chuck smiled kindly, “a cowpuncher’s feet has got to be as small almost as the feet of a woman.”
Pecos mournfully squatted on his haunches to relieve the pain. “Feet like a woman!” he groaned.
Chuck was firm. “You’ve got to make up your mind to it. That’s all. Cowboy does as cowboy does, my lad.”
“Is it as bad as that?” Pecos sighed under his breath. “Is there no freedom among humans? Why, even the wild Coyote pack allows some choice.”
“I see clearly enough,” Chuck smiled as he observed how impossible it was for Pecos to walk, “I see that you’ll have to wear the dead man’s boots…But never breathe a word about where you got ’em, for if the I. X. L. outfit ever gets on to it, they’ll be on your neck.”
“Worse and more of it!” Pecos moaned.
“Your feet has been out to pasture too long for their own good,” Chuck continued with a kindly grin. “But after you keep ’em in the corral for a month of Sundays or longer, they’ll shrink down just like the sides of a fat steer in winter, or pork that’s killed in the decrease of the moon.”
So Pecos changed his boots and the reunited brothers started on their way.
As their ponies cantered along toward the ranch house of the I. X. L. outfit the thought that most agitated Pecos Bill was his strengthened conviction that all human beings—with the exception, perhaps, of his brother Chuck—were depraved inhumans. They must be, if Chuck was as afraid of them as he seemed. Why shouldn’t a person wear dead men’s boots?
CHAPTER 4
PECOS BILL BECOMES A COWPUNCHER
When Chuck arrived at the ranch house with Pecos Bill, the bronzed cowpunchers were squatting on their heels in an irregular circle about their open fire. Their tin plates were piled high with hunks of their favorite boiled cow and potatoes and frying-pan bread. Violent black coffee was steaming in their tin cups.
Chuck began by introducing his brother: “Gun Smith, this is Pecos Bill. Pecos, this is Fat Adams. This is Mushmouth. And this is Bullfrog Doyle. This is Moon Hennessey. Pretty Pete Rogers, meet my brother, Pecos. Bean Hole—”
It’s a funny way they have of naming one another, thought Pecos as his sharp eyes caught a vivid picture of each. Gun Smith had a great Colt cannon—a revolver—dangling from each side of his belt, with a third gun thrust into the open bosom of his shirt. Fat Adams was so lean and tall that he didn’t even cast a shadow when he stood sideways to the sun. Mushmouth had a lip piano—his mouth organ—in each breast pocket. He was as lean and large jointed as a hungry Timber Wolf. Bullfrog Doyle, whose feet kept moving about as if he were tap dancing, reminded Pecos of a nervous Prairie Dog.
Moon Hennessey had a mouth as big as the Pecos River, and looked as if he could drink the ocean dry, if necessary. Legs was a squatty, bow-legged creature, whose shanks were so short that he could walk half a day within the circle of an ordinary calf noose without reaching the edge. Pretty Pete Rogers was a dandy. He was as proud and sleek as a Peacock and had his ten-gallon hat and belt ornamented with a hundred silver cartwheels, better known as dollars. And Bean Hole, the cook, was as fat as a butter barrel.
While Chuck was still in the act of introducing Pecos Bill, the men all suddenly jumped to their feet and ran away, pell-mell, leaving their food behind them. At a safe distance they turned about, with hands on guns, and began talking loudly for Pecos Bill’s benefit.
“What kind of varmint is it?” they exclaimed, pointing at Pecos.
“It can’t be a Coyote, for it ain’t got a tail like a Coyote!”
“It ain’t a Giraffe either. Its neck ain’t long enough!”
“If it was a Mountain Lion, its growl would be louder!”
“It ain’t got quite nasty enough eyes for a Wouser!”
“It looks mighty dangerous, though, whatever it is!”
“It sure does!”
“Do you really suppose it’s got the hydrophobia?”
“Say, did you ever see a critter in your life look so downright vicious?”
Then with a show of extreme caution, the men returned, but nervously and on tiptoe. One by one they took up their plates and again began to eat. All the while they looked suspiciously out of the corner of their eyes at Pecos Bill, as if ready to run should he make the slightest move.
Pecos Bill entirely missed the point. “These humans, after all, aren’t so different from the Coyotes,” he was saying to himself. “They have just as much caution as the wild animals.”
The cowpunchers were enormously elated, for they thought their deception was successful, and that Pecos Bill actually was believing that they were scared out of their wits.
Next, Chuck motioned Pecos to a place within the irregular circle and Bean Hole brought him a plate stacked with victuals. The men were all watching him like cats watch a mouse to see how he would eat.
Now the clever Coyotes had taught Pecos a lesson which at this moment served him well. “Always look before you leap,” Grandy had yipped a thousand times into Pecos Bill’s ears.
So Pecos had looked and had quickly seen that the cowboy custom had decreed that the knife of the cowboy must go into the mouth with every bite of food. He also saw that no time was allowed for talk while the meal was in progress.
Trying to use a knife was at first awkward and clumsy for Pecos Bill, and he lost his first and second bites on the ground between his legs. He even hit his nose once or twice instead of his mouth. But after some effort he learned to spear the chunks of meat in the very center, and to shovel the grub stake as fast as anybody. Pecos Bill was, in fact, so bent on making a good first impression that he never once thought to notice how flat the cooked food tasted.
As soon as Gun Smith had finished eating, he got up leisurely and began sauntering carelessly around the circle. He rolled a cigarette in one hand with cool unconcern. He lit his match with a quick flip of his thumbnail. Then he threw a tomato can into the air, drew his gun from his breast with perfect ease, and put a hole through the very center of the flying tin. Next he cracked off the neck of a flying bottle, and finally he put a hole through the center of a small coin which he had thrown so that it would alight in the plate from which Pecos was eating.
Pecos Bill Page 3
