Pecos Bill

by James Cloyd Bowman

  “Say!” growled Moon Hennessey to his nearest pal. “Wonder where the Old Man gets all this Garden of Eden stuff! I wish he’d forget all his silly nonsense.”

  “You don’t really mean it!” snorted Gun Smith to Pecos Bill. “It’s so sweet, it’s almost sickenin’.”

  “Of course, I mean it,” answered Pecos seriously. “Gun Smith, you take the men out and get the herd rounded up and ready to start in forty-five minutes.”

  “It can’t be done that soon,” objected the foreman. “Better make it three hours. Some of the steers is on the range at quite some distance from here.”

  “Well, what I mean is that we start immediately. That is, do not waste a minute in getting the herd in motion.”

  “Yes, sir,” now replied Gun Smith, respectfully.

  “Set the herd moving in a direction about two points to the west of north. I’ll be with you to show you the way,” Pecos answered in a tone of voice that meant no fooling. “You men had best pack your saddle bags. We’ll not be coming back this way again—at least not for a long time.”

  “Yes, sir! Yes, sir!” answered the men as they set things in motion.

  “And you, Bean Hole, get everything packed into the chuck wagon and don’t waste any time.”

  “I’ll be ready quicker’n you can say Jack Robinson,” Bean Hole answered as he began stacking his kettles and plates and his slabs of bacon and his bags of cornmeal.

  Very soon the herd was on the march. All day long the cattle lumbered slowly forward. All day the men urged them on. Bean Hole brought up the rear with his chuck wagon and mules.

  When night came, Pecos Bill, with one jerk of his wrist, threw the loop of his lasso completely around the entire herd to prevent their being startled into a stampede. The cattle seemed actually to like this, for they slept like kittens. Gun Smith and his men were thus given the chance to get their sleep, while the cows got up in the morning fresh for the journey of the day. At the end of a week the herd reached the foot of Pinnacle Mountain. Other ranchers usually found it very hard to move their herds an average of ten miles a day, but on this trip Pecos and his men had averaged twenty-six miles.

  As they came to the foot of the mountain, Pecos Bill began eagerly: “Well, this is the place, boys! You see, we can simply take over a part of Paul Bunyan’s cooking shack for our headquarters. At first we may have to spend some time getting the cattle used to grazing on the sloping side of the mountain. But as soon as this is done, we can give our spare hours to building a corral fence around the base.

  “After this little chore is finished, there’ll be nothing whatever to do but to sit around from morning to night, trying to find out who can tell the biggest lie. And when we get tired of tall talk, we can, for the sake of a change, try sticking to the truth for a day or two. Thus between Ananias and George Washington, we’ll surely find plenty of chance for food and nourishment.”

  “But who will take care of the cattle?” asked Moon Hennessey. As usual he was finding fault.

  “Why worry, Moon?” Pecos laughed. “The cattle will take care of themselves. There’s an endless supply of bunchgrass and plenty of fresh springs of clear, cold water. Yes, and there is every possible kind of climate. If the cattle become too hot in the sun, they can walk around on the other side of the mountain and find rest in the shade. If they are too cold, they can easily seek a sunny pasture. If the weather is too warm at a low altitude near the base, they can climb higher. If they feel chilly, they can go down where it’s mild. There will always be as many kinds of weather as the most nervous steer can wish. If the storm rages on the north slope, the cattle can find refuge on the south slope, and if the storms happen to strike from the south, why, of course, the cattle can be depended on to put the mountain between themselves and the raging wind.”

  “It’s all very wonderful indeed,” said Gun Smith, suddenly catching Pecos Bill’s spirit of looking on the bright side of things.

  “It’s what I call the cowman’s Garden of Eden!” Pecos laughed.

  “Right you are,” Gun Smith answered. “Adam and Eve never had half the snap that will soon be ours. All we’ll ever have to do is to keep our corral fence in repair. Once in every full moon, say, we’ll take a little pleasure jaunt around the mountain to see if maybe one or two of the posts or poles threaten to loosen up.”

  Suddenly carried away by the joy of the occasion, Mushmouth broke into a wild, free song. He played the melody on one side of his mouth with his lip piano and sang the words with the other side:

  “Oh, glory be to me,” says he,

  “And fame’s unfadin’ flowers!

  All meddlin’ hands are far away:

  I ride my good top hawse today

  And I’m top rope of the Lazy J—

  Hi! kitty cat, you’re ours!”

  It was in high spirits indeed that the work at Pinnacle Mountain started. The men at once began calling themselves the Lazy J outfit.

  Moon Hennessey alone could see evil days ahead. “If any of them clumsy critters ever loses their footing there’s nothin’ in God’s universe—not even this corral fence we’re goin’ to build—will ever stop them. They’ll keep right on rollin’ till they get to Kansas City or Chicago. And by the time they’ve stopped, there won’t be enough left of ’em to make a decent hamburger steak!”

  Soon Pecos Bill started to build the fence. He went out one morning before the men were awake and called at the settlement of straight-snouted prairie dogs beside the foot of the mountain. After giving a dozen squeaks and grunts in the prairie dog language, Pecos had the whole colony out of their houses, twisting their noses and paying strict attention to each word that he told them.

  “Every place I leave the print of my bootheel there one of you must dig a hole, do you understand?”

  Every prairie dog wriggled his friendly snout and squeaked, “Yes, we all understand.”

  “Very well, my little brothers,” Pecos squeaked in reply. “Follow me.”

  The scampering colony was immediately at his heels. “Dig the holes deep and straight,” Pecos squeaked as he ran along, “Here is the place to begin.”

  Pecos Bill started on the jump and at regular intervals of ten feet he left a deep print of his heel. One prairie dog stopped at each heel print and started immediately to dig his well. The others scampered on, ready to take their turn.

  By the time Gun Smith and his men were ready for breakfast, Pecos had covered the entire twelve or fifteen miles around the foot of the mountain and was ready to eat. At the end of the meal he announced quietly what he had done.

  “Well, I’ve made a start. The postholes for our corral fence are all dug.”

  “What kind of a joke do you call this, anyway?” asked Moon Hennessey in a loud voice.

  “You see, I simply asked the colony of prairie dogs to help me,” replied Pecos dryly. “Together we did the entire job in just forty-eight minutes!”

  After breakfast Pecos told Gun Smith to direct the men in setting a post in every hole. This was not hard to do, for Paul Bunyan had left plenty of unused scraps of cedar that were the right size.

  Pecos Bill demonstrates the method of making an animal jump out of his skin.

  The next morning Pecos began loosening the hide behind the ears of each of his old moss-horned steers. Then he grabbed each by the tail and scared him so that he simply jumped out of his skin. He cut these hides into leathern thongs and taught the men how to lash the poles to the posts. As soon as the thongs had shrunk in drying, the fence was as solid as a stone wall.

  Before Pecos Bill had finished there were a lot of forlorn-looking naked old critters sneaking about, trying to hide themselves until they grew other skins. Every one of these steers had previously been skinned at least once, and some of the older and tougher ones twice.

  By wasting no time, Pecos and his men were able to complete the entire twelve miles of corral fence in four days and a half.

  “Well, we may as well call it a week, in round f
igures,” laughed Pecos, very well satisfied with the spirit shown by Gun Smith and the others. “It would have taken an entire week, too, if it hadn’t been for the fact that the prairie dogs did their bit in helping us out with the postholes.”

  “I wonder how long it’ll be,” asked Moon Hennessey in doubt, “before our steers begin to wear off their legs on the near side so’s to be able to get around on the side of the mountain without limpin’.”

  “Time alone will tell,” answered Gun Smith with curt brevity.

  CHAPTER 8

  PECOS BILL GENTLES THE DEVIL’S CAVALRY

  Pecos Bill had taught the cowmen how to raise steers and had instilled the spirit of play into their work, and so the valley of the Rio Grande was beginning to be crowded with herds of cattle. Even a state the size of Texas seemed entirely too small to pasture the rapidly multiplying livestock.

  There developed, naturally enough, a great many cattle rustlers, or, in plain language, thieves. These men had in the past followed the herds of buffalo and had shamelessly slaughtered them for their skins. They were called skinners, and now that the buffalo had become scarce, these skinners found it easy to become outlaws. They were used to getting something for nothing. Why not keep right on?

  This is exactly what they did. They would swoop down upon a choice herd that was grazing far out on the range. Then they would fall vigorously upon the cowpunchers who were on guard, accusing them of stealing the cattle. The rustlers would, of course, claim that they themselves were the rightful owners of the herd, and with high-powered rifles across their saddles, they would quickly drive the cattle away to their own ranch.

  Among the most notorious of these gangs of rustlers was the Devil’s Cavalry. Their ranch was known far and wide as Hell’s Gate Gulch, where nature had, it seemed, formed a perfect refuge for them. For this ranch of theirs was a large box canyon with abrupt, rocky ledges and impenetrable chains of hills upon all sides. Between these hills lay a fertile spreading valley.

  There was but a single entrance to the canyon and this lay through a long, tortuous, rippling stream of water that ran between precipitous rocks. It was thus easy for the Devil’s Cavalry to lead astray all who tried to follow their trail. Only one cowboy had ever been clever enough to solve the mystery of the entrance, and upon entering the canyon he was immediately riddled with bullets. Only a short corral fence across the dancing stream was needed to secure the stolen cattle from all danger.

  Whenever the gang brought a herd of cattle into their secluded box canyon, they quickly covered the original brand of the rightful owner with a larger brand of their own. This brand was in design a large wheel with spokes so thickly set that their impression easily covered any other brand of the entire range country.

  They were such daring rascals that they were always on hand when the government military posts needed a fresh supply of beef. And they had no difficulty selling their stock, for theirs was always the choicest herd of steers to be found anywhere.

  Many frontier towns had, by this time, sprung up overnight like mushrooms. They were made up of hastily constructed shacks, and served as trading posts and supply camps. Very soon their citizens discovered that the cowpuncher craved excitement. Bars were established. The firewater flowed freely. After long months of hard riding in the saddle, in the cowboys came to blow in half-a-year’s wages in a single night.

  Now the leaders of the Devil’s Cavalry liked nothing better than galloping into Dallas, one of the most lively of the frontier towns. There they would gulp down a glass or two of whiskey, then stagger out into the street with the open intention of scaring the natives out of their skins.

  Old Satan, one of their most feared leaders, would then swagger about, pretending to be drunk, brandishing pistols, and singing out in a thick voice, “I’m the toughest, wildest killer in the land of the Rio Grande. I’m so tough I eats rawhide without boilin’ it. When I’m really hungry, I bites off the ears and snouts of grizzly bears. When I meets a rattlesnake, I gives him the handicap of takin’ the first bite. I’ve killed a lot of them rattlers that way by givin’ them a drop or two of my own hydrophobia. I lives in a box canyon where the air is so plumb full of lead bullets there ain’t hardly any air left to breathe. The further up the canyon you goes, the wilder and woollier the inhabitants gets. I lives at the very top end! It’s so hot up there that when one of our outfit dies and arrives in hell he naturally sends back for his blankets to keep him warm!”

  Then he would sing this ditty:

  “I’m wild and woolly and full of fleas,

  I’m hard to curry beneath the knees,

  I’m a he-wolf from Hell’s Gate Creek

  I was dropped in thunder from a lightning streak,

  And it’s time to shoot up the town! Whoopee!”

  After carrying on like this until he actually became bored at frightening innocent people, he and his companions would end by shooting up the town. They would take anything that they wanted from the shelves of the various stores, then dare the shopkeepers, if they weren’t satisfied, to ride out to Hell’s Gate Gulch and settle the scores. They punctuated every statement by a bullet hole through a lamp globe or a windowpane, with the result that when it was noised about that the Devil’s Cavalry was entering town, the officers of the law would sneak away and hide until these fearsome desperadoes were at a safe distance on their way home.

  Things got so bad finally that the government offered a reward of $500 for the capture of the gang, dead or alive.

  Just about the time this reward was posted, Pecos Bill had everything organized up on Pinnacle Mountain. So he thought he’d take a little time off himself. Leaving things in care of good old Gun Smith, he loped off to Dallas, his boots under his arms, and his lariat over his shoulder.

  The Devil’s Cavalry had just cleaned out the town the day before his arrival, and everybody was as unstrung as a lassoed wild bronco. When Pecos Bill walked innocently into the general store, his chest was high and his spurs jingled merrily. The proprietor changed his cud of tobacco, twiddled at his rawhide suspenders, looked out of the corner of his eye and prayed that this might not be another visitor from Hell’s Gate Gulch.

  The Devil’s Cavalry

  Pecos Bill merely smiled as he listened to the fearsome tales of the desperadoes, and said coolly when he had heard it all, “Where did you say this Hell’s Gate Gulch happens to be?”

  “Well, nobody knows for sure,” the man answered in a fidgety tone, “but everybody is about positive it’s up the north fork of the Red River, in the Wichita Mountains.”

  “And which is the shortest cut to take to get to the place?” Pecos Bill asked.

  “Get there, did you say?” the storekeeper repeated in a tone that clearly indicated Pecos Bill could not possibly be in his right mind. “Why should you want to know?”

  “Only because I’m going to make these cattlemen a visit. I think I’d like to meet them.”

  “You ain’t an outlaw too, be you?” asked the startled proprietor. “Or are you looking for the most painless way of gettin’ off the earth for good?”

  “You entirely misjudge me,” replied Pecos Bill quietly. “I’m an ordinary cowpuncher, looking for a little Sabbath day quiet.’’

  “Well, you’re a strange cayuse,” commented the storekeeper as he shifted his quid of tobacco.

  Pecos continued to ask questions until he learned the quickest trail for going to the Gulch. Then he bought himself the best horse and saddle that he could find in Dallas, for he thought he would appear less suspicious if he rode rather than went on foot.

  “The thing I don’t like about this journey,” he said to himself after he had ridden most of the day at breakneck speed, “is that it’s so slow. If I’d only dared to pull off my boots and gallop across the mesa alone, I would have been knocking at Hell’s Gate door hours ago.”

  It was at high noon on the second day of his journey, as Pecos Bill was urging his bronco forward at a sharp gallop, that he met with m
isfortune. By this time, he had reached the foothills of the Wichita Mountains, and his instinct told him that the Gulch was but a short distance ahead.

  Then suddenly things began to happen. The granddaddy of all the rattlesnakes, as large around the middle as a man’s thigh and at least a dozen feet long, sat up at the side of the trail, hissed viciously, and made an angry strike at the passing bronco’s leg. The horse bounded quickly aside, stepped into a prairie-dog hole, and broke his left front leg just above the pastern. Pecos leapt to the ground, drew his pistol, and without delay, put the suffering animal out of its misery.

  But the great Rattlesnake had, by this time, coiled itself directly in front of Pecos Bill. This was rather annoying, for with saddle and bridle in hand, Pecos was in a hurry to proceed on his journey.

  “What do you want?” hissed Pecos, talking to the snake in its own language.

  “You’re the son of the Coyotes I heard about years ago, if I’m not mistaken. Now do you know me? I’ve waited for years to get back at you!” hissed the snake between lightning flashes of its tongue.

  “You’ve already done it,” hissed Pecos. “Get out of my way before I jerk off your head. I’m in a big hurry!”

  The snake now moved even more directly in front of Pecos, darted its great flat shining head back and forth, and shot out its nervous forked tongue still farther as it spoke. “You can’t fool me! I know who you are. I’ve had to listen to entirely too much talk about what a wonder you are. And I don’t believe a word of it. The Coyotes coddled you so much you haven’t any strength of your own. Now I’m going to show you what’s what and who’s who!”

  “Is that so?” replied Pecos with a prolonged hiss, and his tongue fairly shot fire as he spoke. “Well, come on, show what’s back of that bragging you’ve been doing all these years. I’ll give you the first three bites. Get out of my way, or you’ll be sorry!”